Daily Review with Clay and Buck - Jul 21 2026

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. As a consumer, you decide which companies succeed with your purchasing power. Pure Talk wants to say a heartfelt thank you for choosing them. Because of you, Pure Talk had a record-breaking year. You've helped them donate over half a million dollars to America's warrior partnership to help prevent veteran suicide. You also help provide 1,000 hand-sown made-in-America flags to veterans, and you're supporting U.S. jobs by choosing a proudly American company. From the Pure Talk family, thank you for your trust and God bless America. A promotion usually comes down to one thing on your resume that the other candidates don't have. Codecademy gets you there. Build skills in AI, data, cybersecurity, or programming through lessons you complete right in your browser. No lecture halls or long tutorials. Start building the skill that sets you apart with Codecademy. Visit codecademy.com. That's C-O-D-E-C-A-D-E-M-Y dot com. Welcome in Tuesday edition, Clay and Buck Internal Civil War. With the Democrat Party as the fear of the rise of socialists and communists inside of the left grows and begins to spread to saner members of that party, we will address and discuss. Secretary of Treasury, also known as the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, going to be on with us at 2.30 Eastern in the third hour of the program. We are often running. on YouTube as well as nearly 600 AM FM affiliates across the country and Sirius XM. We appreciate all of you hanging out with us. And Buck, you and I, and by the way, it's primary day in Arizona. Arizona, of course, one of the great battlegrounds out there, a nominee going to be picked to run against Katie Hobbs, who is one of the most vulnerable incumbent. governors anywhere in the country, Democrat or Republican. So we will follow that and certainly be talking about it tomorrow. But we begin with, I think it's fair to say, Buck, you may know him personally. I do not. I think it is fair to say that Van Jay Jones is one of the most. intellectually consistent to the extent it exists and or rational of the Democrat prognosticators on television on a regular basis. Is that damning someone with faint praise or having worked at CNN, would that in your mind be an accurate way to describe him considering the larger cohort of colleagues that he is competing with? I mean, if we were looking at the depth chart of the other team, so to speak,

Van Jay Jones is one of the more capable, and I would tell you, and you can get mad at me, but it's all true. One of the more charming when he wants to be people on the Democrat side and has been... moderating over there in recent years relative to the field. Okay, so I just want everyone understood. Relative to other Democrat commentators, he has become more establishment, I think, as he has gotten older. And a lot of you, if you spend five minutes talking to him, as I have several times in the past, you would find him actually quite affable, which I cannot say for a lot of people on the left in the commentary business, but. Van actually is a good guy to hang out with in the green room. Okay. Yes. So that's a good. Because he was fired from the Obama administration, and this goes back, you know, his sort of radical green party or, you know. He said some pretty radical stuff way back in the day. He is less radical. He's kind of on the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez trajectory, built the brand as a radical and now moving more mainstream, which is something we'll return to here as a theme on the show. So here he is on CNN saying these are not progressives. These are regressives going after the left wing in his party. Again, CNN, Van Jay Jones, cut 32. I am tired, tired of a set of people on the very far left in the Democratic Party. Ideas that are literally insane, nutty, moronic, dangerous, bigoted, are not progressive. They're regressive and they should not be in our party. Okay, so that is one part of this. I believe we have another cut where he's saying, my phone is blowing up with people after he called out the far left on his party cut 11. This phone has been blowing up all day. Governors from both parties, senators from both parties, Democrats in the House calling thanking me for saying what everybody's been saying behind the scenes, which is that this stuff is going too far. I am a progressive Democrat. You want to talk about prison reform? I've done prison reform. I never said, have no prisons. Where are you going to put the Klan? I've done police reform. I never said no police. Where are you going to put the pedophiles? It's going to grab the pedophiles. This stuff is going too far. And part of the thing that has to happen is we saw what happened in the Republican Party when things started going. going in a nutty direction and nobody stood up. I am happy that the young people are fighting for affordability, Medicare for all, all the good things. I've been waiting my whole life to see a youth movement do what it's doing. But it's being hijacked by people who are putting in nutty ideas. Okay, so Buck, here I think Van Jay Jones, why he is an interesting voice for this is the far left of the Democrat Party. The New York Times has a story about that this morning.

I believe 85% of the so-called Democrat Socialists are white. So the Democrat Party, which claims that it is this great rainbow coalition of people of a variety of different backgrounds, the far left of the Democrat Party is overwhelmingly relatively rich college-educated white kids who don't have a lot in common with very many black and brown voters. And I think it's interesting that Van Jay Jones and the black guy is calling them out. A couple of things here. One is, yes, the far-left ideologues of the Democrat Party are overwhelmingly white. I would disagree with Van Jay Jones in this notion of it's being hijacked. This is now party mainstream, actually. that they're just saying out loud what a lot of the Democrats really do believe, whether it's about Israel or it's about the trans stuff or it's about the open borders. Who has, what prominent Democrat has fully repudiated Biden's open borders policy, meaning saying that this was terrible. Our party betrayed the American people. We let in 10 million illegals plus, 10 million plus, whatever the number is, on purpose. Clay, not a single one. And they won't. Because that's actually what the Democrat Party really is. The problem isn't that the left is hijacking the party. It's that they're being a little too loud going into the midterm election and a little too honest about what they really believe. Now, the other thing that I think is interesting, and this also goes to your point about the Democrat Socialists of America. that the minority, the primary minority voting blocks, the Democrats are, you know, black voters and Hispanic voters. And I think that a lot of Democrat black and Hispanic voters do view the politics of their party as a much more transactional thing, right? It's, I want, you know, I want Medicare for all, or I want, you know, more benefits. I want more state assistance. I want more state, whatever it may be. It's the white. you know, master's degree in whatever, you know, zoology. Gender studies. Gender studies from Portland that are saying that, you know, we should have full-blown communist policy, meaning the takeover of industry by the state and all that sort of stuff, right? So there is this divide, but I will tell everybody, they will come together. And they will share power. It's not really a divide where they're squabbling within the family, so to speak, but there's not really a major separation here because ultimately they're willing to do whatever it takes to be in power because they want a massively powerful state. This is where I do think there should be more attention paid to it. Zohran Mamdani won. largely being elected as his base on people in their 20s and 30s whose mom and dad helped pay their rent in New York City that have decided they don't like capitalism anymore. So this tension is very real. And I think what do you talk about class versus wealth? What's the phrase you use? Class, no, it's wealth versus status is the dichotivist.

Okay. So I think one of the... foremost drivers of the far left right now is people who are high status from an education perspective. Yes. But they are not able to have the societal success that they believe they should be entitled to based on their degree pedigree. And so they resent what they see in the larger world and they have to figure out a reason why they are not having the success that they should be having. I feel like you saw what I saw probably on X, which was the Nate Silver, Chris Hayes from MS Now back and forth. Am I right on this? Well, this is trending right now on social media. Right. Because Nate Silver called out what he says is the base of the left, which is overly educated young people. And I do think when you spend $300,000 on a degree and you come out and you make $60,000 a year. There's a lot of people who feel like the system is broken because they did everything that they think should be rewarded and they aren't. That is true. And the next step in this and a lot of our people right now with us are going to be nodding their heads. There is so much seething resentment from upper middle class, primarily whites, not entirely, but upper middle class whites in liberal enclaves, either a city or a very blue suburb, who go to... It doesn't even have to be an elite school, but some kind of a name brand school, a brand college that people know of, or they get a degree that's supposed to sound fancy. And they're now 30, 35, maybe 40. And the guy who started a plumbing company or the guy who has been selling RVs or the guy who's a really skilled electrician. is making money, hand over fist, buying a boat and a jet ski for the weekend, and the gender studies major is furious about this. That is a very real blue, red, left, right, dynamic right now in America. White collar jobs are getting replaced, and blue collar jobs, many of them are becoming... uh more valuable the asset the skill that you actually have the other thing i would add into this buck is they may well know people who happen to jump on the right company train and go work in some ai business

So it's not only that they feel like they're being squeezed and left behind by the plumber or the electrician out there who's having more financial success than they are. And they're looking around and saying, but he didn't do as well on the SAT as I did. But he didn't get as many different AP credits as I did. Why is he doing better? And then the guy who is their contemporary, who may have gone to their school. is suddenly worth millions of dollars because he went to go work for open AI or XAI or whatever it is. And that divide, like you're in that middle part and you feel like you're getting left behind. And the only way to explain it is capitalism is broken. And so I need to be a socialist now. This is a critical, but this is the whole, this is behind the whole DSA ethos right now and why all these people are, Clay. And I love bringing the data to this conversation, which Nate Silver. sort of spurred this by what we talked about. We should pull some of that. We can just read through for everybody some of that online exchange. By the way, Chris Hayes is an outlier in that he went to Brown University, the most intellectually unserious of the Kay Ivey League. Just a fact. You brown graduates can get mad at me. It's true. In the most intellectually unserious of the Kay Ivey League and the most liberal as well, by the way, not a surprise. And he is a millionaire many times over by doing what we do commentary. But he's speaking for the class of white, Brooklynite. I went to Brandeis. I went to Colgate, you know, whatever, GW, no offense, Clay. I went to one of these schools that's super expensive, Amherst. And I don't now have some fancy job that's paying me what I think I'm worth. To my point that I just made, because I think a lot of people might even sneer. They go, oh, yeah, sure, Buck. The plumbers are making more than guys with master's degrees. If you own your plumbing business, you are. If you've got four or five employees, 80%, I'm sorry, 20% of millionaires now are headed by retirees. Of the remaining 80% of people with a million dollars or more net worth, okay? Over two-thirds are self-employed small business owners. Yeah. Guys, I mean, the facts are the facts. Look, the best way to make money in America is to own a business. That's just the reality. Now, are there other ways that you can go through the elite educational cadre and end up wealthy? Yes. Are there some incredibly highly paid lawyers who are making millions of dollars a year? Yes, highly paid doctors and whatnot. But the best way to make money is to own a small business that might not even be a very sexy business. Can I tell you something true? I don't think we ever talked of this before. You, I think, are an outlier in this way in that you were willing to do. You had a law degree, but we're willing to do the media thing with a wife and kid or kids at the time? Two kids. Two kids.

There is no way I would have started this career if I was married with Kay. It's no way. Because I thought the failure, I knew the failure rate was super super, meaning failure rate that you could stay in this business and make a living over the long term. A lot of people drop out, go do something else. And by the way, a lot of them are very happy and they have great lives. And, you know, they had fun doing media for five or ten years. You are the rare bird in that you must have looked at Laura. I've been like, yeah, I'm going to write stuff online and make money doing it. Like, that's, I did the same thing, but I was a single guy. No kids, no debt, no nothing. And so I could live very, very cheaply. I'm just saying if it wasn't for that, Clay, I would have gone to a business and probably tried to start a business like a normal business in America. I have a great wife, and I also have very high risk tolerance. And one might say a lot of self-confidence that may or may not be justified, but so far has served me well. And part of that is I was just talking about people who make millions of dollars. You know, law partners at big time law firms, they make 10, 15. Some of them now are making $20 million a year. That's the kind of lawyers that big insurance companies, that big business, those are the guys and gals that they are hiring. Do you have those kind of resources? No, you do not. But guess what? You may be fighting against them. And that's why you need the best legal representation you can find. And that's what we're doing at claytravislaw.com. Nationwide, we have the ability to represent you. and go toe to toe with the big attorneys at the big insurance companies, at the big law firms that are fighting against your interest. This is for the little guy. This is to be able to find the right representation nationwide. We can look over your case. It doesn't cost you anything at all. You can go check it out. There's a phone number there if you want to call it as well. Claytravislaw.com. I've been a lawyer for over 20 years now. Claytravislaw.com, get the kind of lawyer you need to fight back against the big business lawyers out there, charging $1,000 an hour, making millions of dollars a year. Claytravislaw.com. We'll get lawyers who can fight for you nationwide. Clay Travis Law. Looking for normal in a world of crazy. Clay and Buck have your back. A promotion usually comes down to one thing on your resume that the other candidates don't have. Codecademy gets you there. Build skills in AI, data, cybersecurity, or programming through lessons you complete right in your browser. No lecture halls or long tutorials. Start building the skill that sets you apart with Codecademy. Visit codecademy.com. That's C-O-D-E-C-A-D-E-M-Y.com. Second hour, Clay and Buck kicks off right now. Everybody, thanks for being here with us, as always. Interesting to see the hand ringing from within the Democrat establishment over the rise of the far left from within the Democrat ranks.

They, Clay, I think that there's something going on here. They want to harness this rabid enthusiasm. But they also don't want it to get, to be in charge, right? It's like they want to have a pit bull to roam the junkyard to keep people away. But they want to be able to put on a leash when they want to as well. They don't want this left wing stuff to get too. Sorry, now I don't even mean now the pit bull owners are going to come after. Let me tell you something. If you want to waste your whole day responding to emails, say anything about pit bulls being ferocious, anything at all. I know you're not really a big dog guy. I'm a huge dog guy. Pit bull owners, guys, I'm just, every time you mention this, we get, I, this is one where I don't have a crazy, strong take on it. And so everybody just gets mad at you for your super strong pit bull take. I'm not doing it today, okay? Pit bull owners, we're not doing this today. I know your pit bull is as sweet as a little baby piglet and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not doing it today. Okay, I just want to put that aside. You know, one day you'll know that I'm right, but put that aside. So they want to be able to control this left-wing enthusiasm. And so they want to give voice to it while not ceding too much of the power in the party going into this midterm election. So that's why you have, for example, isn't Mark Warner? Isn't he worth like hundreds of millions of dollars? Am I right about this? Right? Isn't he want to do. He's super wealthy. I don't know how wealthy he is, but I think 100 million plus would be a good, a good, a good guess. Crazy rich. Crazy rich. Okay. So this guy's got a lot of cash. And here he is talking about, this cut 13, talking about it. So this is the senator from Virginia saying, why are DSA, Democrat Socialists of America, Democratic Socialists of America, why are they having a moment right now? Listen to this. Play 13. I very much disagree with some of the DSA positions. But there is a level of wealth inequality in this country that we got to address. It's one of the reasons why on the AI issues, we need a revenue stream that the tech community pays into to help on this worker transformation. One of the things that I get upset with on the Democratic side, and I think we're starting to change this and recognize this, we talk a good game sometimes, but actually delivering. A huge frustration for me was when we put all the money, $62 billion into broadband. President Biden, we didn't put a mile of fiber in the ground because partially the law set up, but we had way too much bureaucracy. I think the Democratic Party directionally is right. I think we ought to talk less and deliver more. And that frustration if we don't deliver more comes out with some of these folks on the extreme. Clay, they are good at promising stuff and appealing to people's emotions, but...

They are bad at actually governing. They can't get anything done. I think one of the best examples of this, they still talk about health care. Think about how, one of my great frustrations, and I'm going to hand it to you with this, but one of my great frustrations is with people who don't take accountability. and don't learn from mistakes. We all make mistakes. We all make errors. Everybody, you know, Clay, even you are wrong sometimes. We all make mistakes. Okay, this can happen. And Clay's like, I mean, really, though? Am I really? But yes, we all make errors. But do you learn from them or not? Do you get better? Do you get smarter? Do you get stronger? Do you get faster? Those are the things that you should be thinking about as you do this. Democrats are talking about Medicare for all now as if this is some brilliant new idea. People like me were telling them in 2010, 15 years, 16 years ago, depending, you're going to ruin health care with your Obamacare nonsense. And you're eventually just going to be crying about how we need a single payer system, Medicare for all, yada, yada, yada. And yet instead of saying, wow, you guys are right, Obamacare is a travesty, it did triple everybody's premium costs. It didn't make anything better. And you saw us a mile away with this Medicare for all. What do they do? Exactly what they said they would do. Or we said they would do. So a bunch of things. One, I think we were talking about the rise of Democrat socialism, which is just a pathway to communism. I do think many young people have the historical knowledge of a goldfish. And if you and I, even though you like to make fun of how much older I am, you were able to grow up in an era when you were cognizant of communism and the battle of the Cold War going on. And if you grew up in the 1980s or the 90s, certainly if you grew up in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, you experienced that. So you have seen the evil that communism can bring to bear. Many of the people listening to us right now, we could open up phone lines and we would just say, hey, did you grow up during a communist era before you were fortunate enough to become a United States citizen? What did you see there? Many people right now living in Cuba. A lot of reports came out about the failures of Cuba. Actually seeing what happens when far left-wing policies are put in place. Used to be something that Americans had experienced. Now there is none of that. And so these kids, young people, who frankly are idealistic, often morons, they don't know any better. And then you've got glib and very talented social media stars like Zohran Mamdani, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, like even Bernie Sanders, who can sell this to a new generation that doesn't have the skills to realize they're being sold a bill of goods.

We played that cut of Senator Mark Warner. He used to represent. An element of the Democrat Party. You referenced his wealth. I think he is a self-made wealthy person through business. There used to be Democrat politicians who made money and then went into politics. He's maybe the last one who understands how to make a profit and how to pay employees. Well, I hate this, though. By the way, he's worth $200 million. Because there are disclosures about this. He's worth over $200 million. He's more, he, his kids, his kids, kids, kids, unless they get really crazy with their money, they're never going to have to really work or worry about money. What I think is interesting, though, is instead of seeing the pathway that he had, understanding that America makes that possible and wanting more of that. by the way, not just the opportunity for people, but also the wealth generation effect of what he's been able to do, meaning there's a lot of people along the way that he's paying, that he's giving money to, that he's employing, that he's doing, he's going to play this game of, yeah, I'm going to pretend like I feel sorry for what I made as well, and I want to play footsie with these imbeciles who think that if we have clowns dressing up, literally dressing up as Mao, as that Hasan Piker guy did recently. He's wearing like a Mao suit in public. Good way to get attention. That this always fails. It never works. And it always leads to disaster and more suffering. Here is Andrew Cuomo, another establishment, Old Guard Democrat. Who has this to say? Play 12. The Democratic Party is in the middle of the Civil War, right? And you have moderate mainstream Democrats, such as myself, which have been challenged by the far-left extremists. Socialism has not worked anywhere on the globe promises of free lunch, free buses, free rent, free everything. There is no such thing that's free. Someone always pays. This is a dream. This is nirvana. This is utopia. Yeah. And they're selling to young people who are buying it. But it's not going to work. And this socialist movement is the best thing the Republicans have going for them. He's correct until the end, right? I mean, he doesn't understand that his team is actually the socialist team. They just call themselves Democrats. This also, I think, is symptomatic of a refusal to look in the mirror. And let me explain what I mean by this. We talked about the wake of the 2024 election.

Were Democrats going to look in the mirror and say, hey, the reason we lost wasn't because people heard our message and rejected it. It was because we didn't tell our story good enough. The messenger was wrong. It should have been somebody other than Kamala Harris. Here is what I think Democrats are missing. And I would put myself in this camp. And I think there are many people out there listening to us right now who are similar to me. The Democrat Party that you grew up with does not exist anymore. You go back and look at things that Barack Obama said in 2008. Certainly you go back and look at things that Bill Clinton said in 1992 and 1996. Heck that Al Gore said, leaving aside the crazy climate change stuff in 2000, that party does not exist. And Buck, why does that matter? If they were intelligent. Bill Clinton managed to get elected in 1992. Yes, partly because Ross Perrault was in the race and partly because George Bush Sr. did not run a very good campaign in 92, but also because he went back to the drawing board after beatdowns in 1980, 1984, 1988, and said, we have to come up with a new message because we're just wrong. And the Democrat Party right now is just anti-Trump, no matter what Trump says, by the way, even if Trump says some things that Democrats advocated for as recently as a few years ago, can we get the audio? Did you see this circulating on social media book of Kamala Harris saying we need way more paper ballots to make sure that our elections are secure in 2019? I mean, if sometimes you sit around out there and you think to yourself, boy, this doesn't, like the opinion that I have now, you're telling me as a far right wing opinion, it doesn't, it seems like a very moderate opinion for 2008, 2012, 2016, even 2019. They have gone so insanely radical. And they haven't recognized that the reason people are rejecting them is because of their message, not because their message isn't being communicated well enough. So anyway, I just think this is super important because the failure to acknowledge why you lost is a huge part of why I believe they will continue to lose. Maybe they can scrape somebody, drag somebody over the line like they did Biden in 2020 by just lying about what he actually believes. But the reality is they're wrong on all the issues that matter. And voters who are paying attention, even voters like me who voted Democrat when we were younger have left them. I bet there are a million people listening to us today, Buck. I mean this seriously.

that at some point in time have voted for Democrats and are here because they actually do pay attention to what the arguments are and they recognize that Democrats are just wrong on all of these issues. Yeah. I think. Well said. Thank you. And again, what they may do is find, I think it's going to be Kamala Harris. Because I think identity politics is so overtaking the party. As I've said, I think she's going to be the nominee. Maybe Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going to be able to be a more moderate version of Kamala Harris and appeal to the same minority female voters and be able to kind of clip away some of those supporters. I don't know. The other option is they just go find the blandest white guy possible, Andy Beshear, and try to drag him across the finish line and argue he's a red state governor. He's like Bill Clinton all over again. That's the Biden move, basically. Yeah, that basically is what they did with Biden. That seems like, well, because he doesn't really stand for very much, he's moderate, which is not actually true, but nonetheless, yeah, no, that is always possible. It would be very, look. Hey, just from the pure entertainment and information perspective, watching the Democrats fight this out over the next 18 months or so is going to be fascinating. It will be really interesting to see how this goes because I don't think there is a – this is a rare moment where there is no conventional wisdom at all about who the party leader is or will be. It's totally an up-for-grab situation. It's like day one of the World Cup. Some of us pick England and then get very sad. But it could be anybody is the point. There's a whole bunch of different options in here. Legacy Box is incredible. It's a company that we love. They've been a sponsor here for years. I've used them for my own family's memories. Clay is using for his family's memories. It's just really cool. They take your old media, as you know. Now, a lot of you've done it, and that's great. You should tell other people about it. And if you haven't done it yet, now is the time. They take the old media that you have, videotapes, film, real slides, over a dozen different now out-of-date formats. But... that have incredible memories on them, video, photo, all that stuff. Legacy Box has transferred that old media to new digital media for over 2 million families. The whole process is super easy. You just go to legacybox.com slash buck. They'll send you a shipping box and you'll put everything you want transferred inside. You'll get it back afterwards along with brand new files on the cloud, ready to watch and share from anywhere. This makes an excellent gift, too. It's like giving the gift of a time capsule. Shop Legacy Box's sale today at Legacybox.com slash buck. They've always got one great deal or another for you. Find it today. Legacybox.com slash BucK. Pre-Sacier Pals. Clay and Buck. On the Eye Heart app. You know what? Let's hop into this. Welcome back to Clay and Buck. So my friend John Lefebvre.

who's on X. He's pretty active on X. He was, some of you may recall, if you're an OG Twitter user, he was the Goldman Sachs elevator account. Do you remember that, Clay? Oh, yeah. That was him. That's John. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and he wrote a book about it. I've had him on podcast before. He shared this, and I think this is really interesting. And we're, it's, it's a talker, as they say. So let's, let's talk about this little bit. He wrote this, if you have kids under 13. I do. Again, this is John writing. They'll never drive a car except occasionally for fun. The first car at 16 right of passage is dead. They'll just get a self-driving Tesla. You set the speed limit, cap the acceleration, lock the safety features, enforce curfew, and get pinged the second they break the rules. Safest car on the road and one of the most affordable. and since most cars spend ninety percent of their life parked this one will make money pay for itself as a robo taxi when not being used it's also an entrepreneurial financial literacy tool every kid will become a small business owner also That's point one, which we'll talk about. This is a separate point, but I'll just put this out there. Where or if they go to college won't matter either. Our job as parents now is to instill intellectual curiosity, happiness, and give them foundational support via hard assets and diversified cash flow. The future is going to be wild, unknown unknowns. Clay? I we should talk about it. I co-sign both of those fully. What's a one I told my 11 year old recently as I was riding along in the Tesla which we bought and some people out there say I you Tesla is super is $50,000 which for cars these days brand new the car that we have was $50,000 and Tesla gives you 1% interest for the next seven years I believe So 1% interest, the inflation rate is roughly 3%, right? 2.8, whatever the heck it is. So less than inflation and you have seven years to pay it off. All right. So this is not me sitting around saying everybody should go buy a... I don't know, like a BMW SUV or I think BMW has SUVs or a Ranger Rover or something like that that everybody knows is super expensive. This is a very affordable car for the masses that I bought for my teenage son because teenage boys are morons and they often take way too many risks when they're driving. And I think self-driving cars are safer for teenage boys.

on in general than said been driving themselves so i didn't i didn't have this uh in my life because i grew up in new york city where kids were just taking the subway or taxis if it was you know at night or whatever to get around or walking obviously but people didn't have car i'm a lot of my friends didn't get drivers licenses until they were basically in college yeah i got one at 16 but a lot of people waited until they were a little bit older but i when i went to college I had a lot of friends from all over the country, and they all would tell me that there was a very common thing of the high school tragedy of one kid in their high school class. It was a pretty big school, usually in the suburbs somewhere, died in a car accident. That was a common thing that I heard from a lot of my friends, which I mean, you're talking about like a 16-year-old kid, maybe had a friend or two in the car. I went to the funeral, actually, of a 16-year-old who I knew. who wasn't living in New York at the time, but died, you know, her boyfriend ran a stop sign. They, you know, they got teaboned by, so that was a horrible thing. I think that is effectively going to be gone here along with a lot of other changes. But I think that people haven't really, like this isn't one of these, oh, they're going to be like robo-taxies everywhere in the sky thing. That's a little further off for a bunch of reasons because the sky's already very crowded, by the way. It's a big problem. Clay, this is here. Yeah. This is here now. I think it is akin to, and I don't know what the exact year would have been, but in 1926, let's say, there would have been somebody out there. I don't know when the radio officially took off, but there might have been a guy on the radio 100 years ago telling you, hey, everybody out there who spent their whole lives riding horses, this car is going to be a big deal. And all of the knowledge that you have about horses, it's basically going to be worthless in a few years. I am here to tell you. And think about that. In 1910, almost everyone in the country in the entire United States would have known how to take care of a horse, immense amount of knowledge. How do you feed a horse? How do you put down a horse? How do you make sure the horses feed are okay? Like all of this would have been very standard. I'm going to teach every young person, everybody who's 30, 40 years old, everybody who's certainly older than that. Everybody would have had immense knowledge about horses. Now most of you, unless you are tended to be extremely wealthy or a cowboy, you're not on horses very much, right? I'm telling you that that point about driving cars, buck, 40,000 people a year die in car accidents. 40,000. To your point, 16-year-olds, really young people, everybody listening to us right now, almost, I bet, can tell you a story, awful one about a teenage boy or girl they know who died early on driving. And by the way, people have lost moms, dads, you know, going to the grocery store. This will become a story that your grandkids will look around and say it's crazy. I'm telling you the tech is there. It's going to change overwhelmingly, and it's going to happen fast.

It's absolutely the case. By the way, where I live, I am friends with a few neighbors, in neighbor families who have kids who are your kids age, Clay, you know, 16-year-old, 17-year-old around there. they're all getting Teslas. Yes. The parents are getting that. And people say, oh, but it's so, no, actually for new car prices and especially when you look at the least prices. 50K is 1% interest. We're not paid by Tesla. We probably should be. They should be a support presenting sponsor. But I'm telling you, I just bought a brand new Tesla this spring. It was $50,000 all in. And, uh, and they have one percent interest. So this is not some. Super rich person. Oh, my goodness. When you look at what new cars cost. And you've got one that was probably pretty souped up with some extras. I mean, you can get it even more scaled down. They have like a $100,000 version. I didn't get that for my kids. But for $50,000. By the way, you can also buy them used for $25.30K. Like they hold their value, I think, decently. You can get a standard model three. Not really sorry. We're doing a free Tesla commercial here. Did you ever get your Tesla drive, by the way? Weren't you supposed to get to do a test drive? I'm a little upset about that they kept canceling on me because I was being lazy and having them. They were supposed to come to me, but that's a whole other conversation. The Model 3. standard starts at 36 grand right now. I got a model three with a few belt, thousand whistles. That is not expensive. That's not an expensive new car. I know that sounds crazy because you used to be able to get like a brand spanking new BMW for 36 grand 15 years ago. But yeah, that's it for new car price. It's not that expensive. Here's the thing, though, that does concern me. We haven't even gotten to the college conversation yet, which is also something from John's tweet that I thought was really interesting. But... I did have this experience of getting into the autonomous driving, what do you call them? The Google cars, the, you know what I mean? Waymos, thank you. I got into the Waymo. I love the Waymo. I love, it's not like Trump. I love the Waymo. Some people are saying it's beautiful, very nice in the Waymo. It's fantastic. It's terrific, the Waymo. But I got into a Waymo. and I don't I when I'm driving around Miami Beach proper if I'm not getting on a highway no one goes more you can't go more than 20 because there's traffic and stuff so I'm going 20 miles an hour I didn't put my seatbelt on I got a I got a naughty a naughty boy email from Waymo Google being like if we see you not using your seatbelt again we're going to ban you Now, this reminds me of when Uber did the whole mask thing, and I got threatened with being banned from Uber during the pandemic because I kept taking my mask off in the Uber car, and they were like, you know, if you do this again, we're going to have been. Now, of course, that was, by the way, Uber, you were wrong. That was completely pointless and stupid, and Uber should be ashamed of themselves. They're not, but they should be ashamed Uber corporate for that decision because it was preposterous. But the.

future of cars that have software and pro this there is a there is a freedom issue that i can see or other element that is fair to discuss this is going to be you know by the way they're going to be able to the same way they can pull your cell phone data right now which they can law enforcement can easily do that know everywhere you've been they do this now for florida new york tax stuff They think you're in New York too much. They'll pull your cell phone data. Easy for them to do, and they'll know exactly where you are. They'll be able to do this with cars. Now, I think that's also true of some cars that have a GPS in them, but they're going to clay. They're going to know how fast you went. They're going to know if you went through any red lights. They're going to know everything. And now our insurance companies going to just say, you know what? You know how we're going to gauge your insurance costs? We're going to just pull all the data from your car. And we're going to, so there's a little part of this that is, by the way, can you go over the speed limit anymore now? Are they going to start saying, you know what? We're just going to pass a law that they have to set that you never go over the speed limit with your autonomous driving. So everyone's going to be going 35 when they should be going 50? Yeah, it's going to be fascinating. There are going to be a lot of questions to ask. One of my favorite economic lessons that I got back in school, and I don't know how many of you have heard this example, but. Everything in life is about analyzing risk, and obviously this was a huge part of the discussion surrounding COVID. If we made the speed limits 15 or 20 miles an hour in this country, no one basically would die in cars ever, right? I guess you could still drive off the side of a mountain. You could still drive into water really slowly and find yourself dying in that method. But basically we have said, hey, we think it's important to be able to drive 70 miles an hour. And as a result, we're willing to accept 40,000 deaths a year. I do think the economic analysis of how we set speed limits and everything else, self-driving cars, buck, should be so much better at handling traffic and so much better at keeping us safe that. What I hope doesn't happen is what I'm already seeing happen, which is if a self-driving vehicle is involved in an accident, it's front page news. Oh, my goodness. But if 20 people die in my home state of Tennessee every day, which may or may not be roughly the math of how many people die every day, most of them never make the news. Self-driving cars are going to have to have a proven record that starts to be like the airlines, where now if a plane crashes, it is incredibly rare for an American, you know, I'm not trying to jinx anything here, but it's incredibly rare for an American carrier to have a fatal crash these days. We go years, years without an airline fatality. I think that they're going to be able to get to the place where.

autonomous driving caused fatal now that's a different thing because some people are going to T-bone an autonomous car because they're maniacs and they're driving improperly or something that's right so but but the software causing the fatality I think is going to be at such a it's going to be so much safer than what human beings are capable of by the numbers that it will start to be seen as Clearly unsafe to drive versus autonomous. I mean, the number is already indicate that, but perception is going to show that, I think, very soon. Yeah, and look, here's where things can change rapidly. Imagine what your car insurance bill would be if suddenly traffic accidents dropped by half. Imagine what your health insurance would be if suddenly the number of people being severely injured in automobile accidents collapsed as well. The benefits of this being able to be done safely really start to scale on a way that I don't think. Here's another one, Buck. Think about how much fewer, because these vehicles are going to be able to constantly circle, they'll drop you off, and then they'll be able to go back to a house or they'll be able to go to a holding pin somewhere. Think about the amount of space that we waste on parking lots. Probably the most inefficient thing in America is the amount of parking lot space that we have to have. Think about the way more housing that we could build way more affordably in really desirable areas if you didn't need 400 yards of parking for all of the places we go, the grocery stores, the malls, the shopping areas. It's transformative on a level that I don't think a lot of people have really thought through yet. And just to be clear, this is in progress, what we're talking about. This is not pie in the sky or one day. Some people are far more aware of it in their day-to-day lives than other. Like I have Waymo's driving outside my house all the time now. I mean, this is just going on. I've gotten in them. But with Teslas, now my garage is full of Teslas with Tesla chargers in them, the garage where I live. You're you where you live in your house. I plug in a buck. I plug my car in like it's my cell phone. It's just a wall charger. Like I just put, I mean, any moron, I am a moron on tech. I can easily plug it in. And you can charge it anywhere. And by the way, we should also, the future should be nuclear. So you don't have to rely on fossil fuels. Not because I'm worried about climate change, but just because it's far more efficient, you can have way better nuclear power plants, which means the more electric you go at all. we're going to be living in the Jetsons here pretty soon. Maybe not quite with the air taxi stuff, but there's going to be some pretty, the robot, are you going to do the robot order for the fall? You know, there's the robot that holds your laundry. I'm not a big, I'm not a big robot guy. That makes me a little bit more nervous. I don't know. We get a robot that we put in a Valls jersey and it says nice things about SEC football. And all of a sudden, I think Jeeves, the robot is going to be like, yes, Clay Travis, we will watch the game. Like, I could see this happening. I got kids to watch games with. I'm going to be slow on the robot uptake. Fair enough. There's no time like the president to put together a protection plan for your home. When you make that plan, include a Sabre Home Defense Launcher. Clay and I both have these at home, and they're easy to use, and they provide peace of mind in the event of a break-in. Saber Home Defense Launcher delivers seven powerful impactor pepper projectiles, which is two more than the major competitors out there. When fear hits and you have to defend yourself, having extra stopping power can change everything.

Sabre, the website is Sabre, the website is saberprotect.com. That's SABRE, Sabre, SabreProtect.com. Right now, save up to 15% on select saber bundles. Visit saberprotect.com or call 844-824-safe. When safety matters, America chooses Sabre, the number one brand trusted by police and millions worldwide. SabreProtect.com or call 844-824, Safe. Keeping it real, keeping it right. Clay and Buck. Find them on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcast. A promotion usually comes down to one thing on your resume that the other candidates don't have. Codecademy gets you there. Build skills in AI, data, cybersecurity, or programming through lessons you complete right in your browser. No lecture halls or long tutorials. Start building the skill that sets you apart with Codecademy. Visit codecademy.com. That's C-O-D-E-C-A-D-E-M-Y dot com. Welcome in, Clay and Buck, joined now by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. We appreciate him taking the time to hang out with us. And we'll dive right into this because Buck has a one-year-old that he has signed up for Trump accounts. For people out there that have not done this, that have young children, what can the impact over time over 20 years mean for these young kids? And why should they be signing up? I'll let you make a pitch. Good, gentlemen, good to be with you. And so everyone, children age 18 to newborns should be signing up for newborns who are born during President Trump's term. They're going to get a $1,000 seed investment from the U.S. Treasury. That's going to be put into a low-cost index option. And that could compound at historical rates. Just that $1,000 could be between $3,000 at age 18. Parents, employers. Family members, friends can put up to $5,000 a year tax-free into the accounts. And if that maximum is made over the years, then you could have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. We've got some of our nation's great philanthropists like Susan Michael Dell are putting up $6.25 billion for children who are not in the top 25% of zip codes by income level. And that'll go to the children across the age groups. Harold Hamm, for instance, another great philanthropist has doing the same thing in Oklahoma. So these things could really be stacked, and it's a very good way for families to start saving for their children. And at age 18.

becomes the child's property, they become an adult, and they can either use it for, they can use it for anything, but school, car purchase, home down payment, or it could be rolled into a classic IRA, which at age 60, 65 could be in the hundreds of thousands. Secretary Scott Bessent, appreciate you being with us. We're talking a lot these days about how the American people feel about the economy. And with the midterm election looming, it's obviously something that isn't just a matter of public sentiment, but will soon be public vote about how things are going. What's your overview? your sense of how things are going. What's going really well? What's the administration focused on putting more attention on? And what can we expect from now until the end of this year in terms of action, either from your office or from the administration more broadly? So, let me just look back. And I'll tell you what we're not going to do. We're not going to do what the Biden administration did and said that, like, anyone with economic anxiety, that they don't know what they're talking about. It's a vibe session. We understand that there was this, the torrid inflation during the Biden years, 21.5 percent statistical inflation, probably higher for working families, probably in the mid-30s. And thus far, The underlying economy is quite strong. Core inflation has been coming down. And we've got this temporary price spike mainly in gasoline and energy, energy crude derivatives because of the conflict in Iran. We will get to the other side of this. We had prices are well off the high. We had a brief respite respite for a few weeks. the conflict has the kinetic portion of the conflict has resumed again, but we'll get to the other side of this. The other thing that we are seeing are the benefits of, you can either call it the one big beautiful bill or the working family's tax cuts. I'm also the IRS commissioner acting, I would add, and that we saw. 44% of filers took one of the president's signature policies, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, reduced Social Security taxes for a great seniors or deductibility of interest on American-made cars. And the average 97% of the people who took those deductions make less than $200,000. We've got the enhanced child tax credit that there are a lot of things in this bill. We're talking to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. I know one thing you've been focused on, you just mentioned oil and gas prices. There's talk that there may be new pipelines being built that could potentially take down the percentage of oil and gas that has to travel through the Strait of Hormuz, which would lessen some of the Iranian leadership's power. But you have been tracking, working on all of the funds that are being hidden that have been in the Ayatollah's control.

What have you found by being able to track those dollars and how much is this kleptocracy, which we don't talk about a lot, the actual theft that's occurring from the Iranian people on behalf of their leadership? What have you found? Well, we found billions of dollars. that we're tracking it across the globe. We have some of it in blocked accounts. We have frozen crypto wallets. We believe that we have found the trust company that controls the new Ayatollah's property portfolio across the globe, several hundred million dollar properties. We hope to be able to publish photos and addresses of those properties. And most importantly, we are husbanding these assets for the Iranian people. It belongs to them. This is a kleptocracy masking as a religious organization on the Ayatollah side. And then the IRGC, the Iranian Republican Guard, we think that they... maybe skim a third of the oil revenues. So we have been tracking both individual guard members and clamping down on their economy. The first six weeks, the kinetic portion of the war, which our military executed brilliantly, destroyed their Air Force, destroyed their Navy. I believe we destroyed 85 or 90% of their missile production capability destroyed a large amount of their existing missile stockpile and drones. And then we moved on. So that was epic fury. We moved on to what we call economic fury. And that includes the blockade, which I believe shocked the Iranians that they were having. oil, they were having to take down their oil production. We gave them a chance. We took the blockade down, took the sanctions off for a few days, and they did not perform. So we are constricting and tightening the noose again. Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent with us now. Mr. Secretary, I just wanted you to react to this headline and then give us whatever details you can because we know that anti-fraud efforts for this administration have become a major focus. And the Post reported this morning, New York Post, Treasury stopped nearly $100 million in taxpayer money from going to dead people? What's going on here? Well, it gives new meaning to dead beat. But what we've been able to do, thanks to President Trump's leadership, we've been able to use, there's a government-wide program called the do-not-pay, but we were not able to access that. The systems don't talk to each other, and there's a good privacy side to that, but there's an inefficient side to that for Treasury, for Social Security.

or tax payments. So we've been able to merge those two, and we think that we've stopped almost $100 million in payments last year, and we think it's going to total almost $350 million for people. I would assume if it's either fraud from people who created the accounts or taken them over or relatives who just didn't want to admit that they weren't supposed to get the checks anymore. I know you're from South Carolina, and I know this is probably the last question. We'll have time for... How well did you know Lindsey Graham? What do you think about his sister succeeding him? Did you consider at all? I know you have a very serious job right now in the cabinet. Did you consider at all the possibility of potentially running for the Senate? I knew Senator Graham very well. He was a great American, a great patriot. He loved his state. He loved his country. And all I'll say is it was unfortunate. He was busy taking care of the American people and didn't take very good care of himself. I think Darlene's a fantastic person. There are some other great candidates, too, is that the... I had a house in the Myrtle Beach area, Russell Fry, the congressman from there, seventh district. I think that seventh district voted 81% for President Trump. So Myrtle Beach is Trump country, and he threw his hat in the ring this morning. So there's some great choices. It's going to be a very... fulsome republican primary and look i i think i have the best job in dc and it's an honor to help president trump and i think this is the best way to do it i i have one boss who doesn't ever sleep and i prefer that than having 5.5 million great south carolinaans That's outstanding. How often does he call you in the middle of the night, by the way? I know I said final question, but how often does President Trump call you in the middle of the night? What's that like? Well, it always begins with the question. Scott, I didn't wake you, did I? No, sir. I am always awake at 152 on a Tuesday. There you go. Secretary Scott Bessent, thanks for coming on, and please come back soon. Appreciate you, sir. Okay, thank you. Let me tell you about rapid radios for a moment. It can make a tremendous difference when it comes to helping your family stay in touch in times of catastrophe. We talked about when Buck's sister-in-law was in eastern North Carolina. Western North Carolina and Hurricane Helene hit and all the impact that happened there. We told you about when you had the ice storm here in the Nashville area. So many people lost all of their power.

A lot of you all throughout the South who listened to us were able to stay in touch thanks to Rapid Radio's and them being on top of that communication world. We also use it. For our 11-year-old, he doesn't have a cell phone yet. We use this to stay in touch with him. If you have elderly family members, maybe you're going on a road trip and you want to be able to stay in touch nationwide with everybody. Rapid Radio's is fantastic. It has all the fun. and ease of use of a walkie-talkie, except they're equipped with technology that lets you talk on them nationwide. Instant push-to-talk capabilities. They operate on a nationwide LTE network, giving you unlimited range across the U.S. You could be a mile away from one another, or you could be a thousand miles apart. Rapid Radio's works with a clear signal, no contracts to sign zero monthly fees, and right now, when you buy... two radios, you get one completely free. Have a big family. Buy four, get two free. You can also keep going up and get six and get three free. Every bundle includes a full year of service and free shipping. Just go to rapid radios.com slash bundle to get hooked up today. That's rapid radios.com slash bundle. up your brain and balance out your day with the right amount of information and entertainment. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton on the IHartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. A promotion usually comes down to one thing on your resume that the other candidates don't have. Codecademy gets you there. Build skills in AI, data, cybersecurity, or programming through lessons you complete right in your browser. No lecture halls or long tutorials. Start building the skill that sets you apart with Codecademy. Visit codecademy.com. That's C-O-D-E-C-A-D-E-M-Y.com.