← Next Up with Mark Halperin
Next Up with Mark Halperin
What's really happening in Iran, Plus Buck Sexton's & Clay Travis' Predictions
01:02:48
Mark Halperin’s reported monologue breaks down his new information on how limited President Trump’s options on Iran now are. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton join with their predictions on how Trump could end the conflict and the potential fallout. Plus, they explain how AI and social media are fueling conspiracy theories. Also: Buck plays the “Next Up” version of “The Newlywed Game” to test how well he actually knows Clay. Pressure - Focus Features: Go behind the scenes of the most high-stakes weather forecast in history to discover the true story of the meteorologists who risked everything to change the course of D-Day. Chapter: For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial (262) 454-0503 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/mark *Paid Partnership*” Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizatio...
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- [00:01]
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- [00:53]
Mark Halpern
Welcome to Next Stop. I'm Mark Halpern. Welcome in everybody. I hope everyone had a good long weekend and made sure that you thought thought about the sacrifice made by so many folks in the armed services to help this country stay free. I'm glad to be back with you. I am of course your host to Everything Nextup as well as the editor in chief of the live interactive video platform Two Way. And very happy always to have Nexters convened. If the weekend was great for you, that's wonderful. I spent some time with my family and covering the story related to Iran. That's what I'm going to talk to you about as well today. A lot of confusion about how close we are to a possible deal between the United States and Iran, so we'll talk about that. We're also excited to announce that we are closing in on 100,000 YouTube subscribers. It's an important milestone, not just because it's a nice round number, but there's all sorts of benefits for YouTube people with you got a YouTube channel so we want to hit the milestone as quick as we can. We'd love to do it soon with your help. So tell all your family and friends and anyone you know to become Nexters. And if you haven't already, go to the YouTube channel and please hit subscribe so we can bump over that landmark number. Great show ahead today. Our guests for most of the hour will be our friends Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, two wonderful, thoughtful gentlemen who don't always agree on everything, but always provocative and interesting. We'll talk a bit about Iran, but also about media and about what's going on in this country, including the LA mayors race, where I think people who look at Spencer Pratt and say he's definitely going to win, I predicted he would, are, I think, going to need to brace themselves to say, what if Spencer Pratt doesn't win? What impact will his campaign have even if he does not win? Before Clan Bucker here, though, just a minute. I'm going to tell you what I've learned over the weekend and into today, reporting on the prospects of a deal between Iran and the United States. My reported monologue on that is next up. From FOCUS Features and the producers of Darkest Hour comes the new movie Pressure the untold true story of D day. In the 72 hours leading up to the largest seaborne invasion in history, General Dwight D. Eisenhower faced an impossible decision that would determine the fate of the war. As allied forces prepare to land, two massive storms converge over Normandy. Behind closed doors, with the clock ticking down, Eisenhower must make a decision, send 300,000 men into nature's unforgiving fury or delay and risk losing the war itself. There is no safe option, only consequences. One decision would change the world forever. This Friday, experience a powerful true story of courage and and sacrifice. Starring Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser. Pressure must be seen on the big screen. It's rated PG13, only in theaters this Friday. All right, next up, my reported monologue on the prospects of a peace deal between the United States and Iran. I spent the weekend trying to relax with my family and but the prospects of this deal kept me working, talking to sources all weekend and then into the work week. This is one of the most confusing stories I've ever covered. The stakes are extremely high. And those who say the president can just walk away, I don't think are right. I don't think he can walk away. He can't leave the strait controlled by Iran straight over Hormuz, and he can't let Iran continue to be a nuclear power. And he's made that clear. That leaves aside regime change. It leaves aside Iran as a sponsor of terrorism. It leaves aside their ballistic missile program. Those to me, seem to be the clear bottom lines and those don't seem to be within reach. So I've been asking people for the last three days or so in the government, outside the government, on Capitol Hill, in the Middle east and smart analysts about this stuff. What are the president's actual options? What's plausible? Very difficult to see. And it is, it is not to root for failure. It is not unpatriotic to really wonder whether this moment contains a lot of peril, not just for the present politically, although that's obviously part of the calculation here, but for the United States and for the world. Because if this conflict ends, and it'll never fully end, right. But if this ends with Iran more powerful, more powerful in the strait, more powerful in the region, that'll be a huge failure for the United States. I'll say again, I'm not rooting for failure, just the opposite. Gerard Baker in a Wall Street Journal today has a column where he says, quote, it isn't unpatriotic to express skepticism about our ability to fight and win this war. He's right just to say the President's in a very tough place and it's not clear how he succeeds. It's not unpatriotic and it's not anti Trump, it's not anti America. It's the view of many people. And here's what Baker also says. He says we should be able to debate the best way to defend ourselves from this conflict without being accused of campaigning for the enemy. If Iran emerges from all this stronger, as reasonable critics fear, then those who have so enthusiastically backed all out war should reflect on their own role rather than attacking those with reasonable doubts. I like what Baker wrote, but I tend to not want to look backwards. So much of the, of the discussions about what the President's options are now often go back to. Well, I wouldn't have done this or I wouldn't have started it in the, in the first place, or I would have had a plan to deal with the strait. All that kind of second guessing and retrospective stuff. I just don't find that useful. And so when I talk to Democrats, even privately, that's a lot of what they'll say to me. Well, you shouldn't have done it in the first place. Oh, we should have gotten more buy in from the allies. Oh, we shouldn't have listened to Netanyahu. I mean, these are all great conversation topics for history, historians and for people who want to not answer the question. But the question is where we are now, what to do. And there's the school of thought that says the only thing the President can do is, quote, unquote, finish the job and use military force. I don't think that's in the cards. From the conversations I've had and from being a student of Donald Trump, I just don't think it's in the cards. Why? First of all, the midterms are coming and the President's got to get oil prices down. If he was confident that oil prices could come down by hitting Iran again. I think he'd be open to it, but no one can give him that confidence. The data so far suggests that Iran is impervious. The leadership there is impervious to military attacks. And in fact, potentially it's counterproductive, inversely counterproductive. The more you hit them, the more they dig in. Second, there's a lot of concern in the region, and I think, understandably so, that if the president strikes Iran and breaks the seafire in a robust way, the Iranians could start to hit targets in the Middle east, could hit energy facilities in the Gulf states and Israel could hit nuclear facilities, desalination plants, could hit hotels. The Iran could activate the sleeper cells that they may have in Europe and the United States. That would be horrible for the world, also horrible for the president politically, because then you're setting back any prospect of ending this conflict well before the midterms. So I don't know that the military option is there. And then there's those who say, well, the president should just make the best deal he can. Just ignore the people in the neocon part of the, of the Republican Party who were active on Twitter this weekend, Ted Cruz and, and Lindsey Graham and others ignore them. Some of the columnists ignore them. Just go out and, and make the best deal you can and sell it, sell it, sell it. I don't think that's possible either because the Iranians don't want to make a deal. Even on the two elements the President has as his absolute bottom lines. They don't want to make a deal. They made quite clear that frees the straight up completely, where they're not charging people to go through the straight. If they don't want to call it a toll, they'll call it an environmental tax or whatever they're going to call it. And they don't want to give up their nuclear material. And that's they're saying both those things. That's before maybe they pretend to agree and then lie, cheat and steal the way they always do. So the two routes that are most often laid out for what are the President's options? Attack Iran or make as good a deal as possible. I really don't see either of those as options right now. The President talked over the weekend about, about the prospects of a deal, and he's very bullish. But since then he's backed off and said, well, maybe there'll be a deal eventually. I was watching Squawk Box and Joe Kernan, who's very smart guy and doesn't pretend to be an expert on all of this, you know, at the highest, highest levels. But I thought Joe Kernan's anguish over not knowing what, what he's even for now, what he would suggest the President do, very representative of a lot of the pundit class, but also a lot of the American people. Here's Joe Kernan on Squawk box on Tuesday morning. His S2, please.
- [10:09]
Joe Kernan
The minute I start feeling like one of those Republicans more hawkish, it's like, finish this. You went this far. Do you know the 60 day concession to talk about the nuclear. Then I immediately think, oh, my God, I'm a neocon. And you know, I'm ready to just jump in and just immediately. So I don't know how to feel about it. I just, you know, it's a thorn on our side for so long and they're so annoying the way they pretend to come to the table and then talk tough. And then we don't know whether there are factions over there that realize midterms are coming up and want to wait and talk about, you know, you don't
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Buck Sexton
think they realize that? Of course they realize that.
- [10:52]
Joe Kernan
I said they do. We know that they're over there playing us and playing the whole thing. But then there may be much more moderate, perhaps reasonable people that we don't even know about that we are negotiating with that are that are saying, you can have this stuff and you can destroy it at this. If you listen to the hard, the hardliners, they aren't even discussing giving us the 900.
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- [11:17]
Joe Kernan
And in fact, they're saying lifting sanctions, war reparations, you know, all these things that were if we're even talking about getting to that point and then taking 60 days to decide to get a final answer on the nuclear material. That just seems like we're giving him way too much. But then again, like I say, I don't want to act like a warmonger that you know from neocon that all he wants to do is.
- [11:45]
Mark Halpern
Yeah, so Joe's a brilliant guy. On the one hand, you know, he doesn't know that military strikes are going to do anything. And on the other hand, he sees the Iranians who aren't making a good faith deal doesn't appear that they're making good faith deal. And I've said from a long time, from talking to folks, the sequencing matters so much here. You know what happens. Both sides want something. Iran wants financial relief and they want some control over the strait to be back open. The US Wants the straight open. They want the nuclear material. The president has been clarifying since the initial announcement of a possible deal that Iran's not getting anything. The president, his aides, Iran's not getting anything in terms of finances until they make good on the nuclear weapons. Making good on the nuclear. I just don't believe Iran will ever say they're going to give up their nuclear material. But let's say they say it. Let's say right now Iran said we're giving it up, come get it, we'll help you get it out. It's been buried underground and we don't know that all the materials in one place because Iran has cheated on all this stuff for so long. So what's going to happen? Iran is going to open the strait and get no other relief economically. No unfreezing of assets, no money from the United States in terms of reparations, no sanctions coming off by the United States for 1, 2, 3, 4 months. I just don't know that Iran will make that deal. Now. Maybe Qatar or some other country could give him some money. Qatar or some other country, but I don't think so. So what's happened in the last day and a half since the president was very bullish on a deal? One, there's been military squirmishing between Iraq and the United States. You know, is there some counterintuitive argument that that makes a peace deal more likely? Not that I know of. Second, the president introduced over the weekend this concept of having Saudi Arabia and other countries join the Abraham Accords, make peace with Israel. These countries are not interested in doing that. They weren't before. And now with so much up, up in the air about the Gaza deal and no, no Palestinian state, you know, being considered by Israel or Donald Trump. That seems far fetched. And, and most of the reporting suggests no. So introducing the Abraham Accords into this seems to not be smoothing the way towards getting Iran on board. Then you've got Israel itself. Okay, where Israel is. Bibi Netanyahu made clear over the weekend they're not giving up on dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran. That's another one of their bottom lines is there has to be no more Israeli fighting in Lebanon and Israel's not, not going to stop that. And in fact today they went back in. So the president's being pressured by Netanyahu to keep going. He's being pressured by the Gulf states sometimes to finish the job, but sometimes to not inflame Iran so they don't get attacked. Being pressured by the neocons in the United States to like Israel to finish the job. And you've got Israeli forces. They're not going to be constrained by any deal between the United States and Iran. President cut Israel out of the negotiations, so they're not going to feel constrained by a deal. I remain skeptical, I remain skeptical that there can be a deal for these reasons. Here's David Ignatius, who does know a lot about, about foreign policy on Morning Joe, and he seems to agree with me. The president would like to end this, but even if he's willing to do everything possible to end it, it's not clear to David nations, it's not clear to me and my sources how he can this. David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist on morning Joe Tuesday morning S1, please.
- [15:34]
David Ignatius
It is, as your comments suggest, a very confusing and disheartening situation. It's obvious to me that President Trump badly wants out of this war. He's looking for an exit ramp as hard as he can. He feels that another round of kinetic strikes will be difficult for the US for the US Military is unlikely to easily achieve his goals will lead inevitably to some kind of ground invasion of Iran, which is the last thing that I think he wants. And so he has come up with a peace proposal that is so far short of the war aims that he had when he started. Back then, he was talking about unconditional surrender. What he's got now is a memorandum of understanding to defer negotiation about the hardest issues involving the Iranian nuclear program to a 60 day period.
- [16:35]
Mark Halpern
This is why I find this to be such a puzzle, because so many of the people I ask, well, what's the president going to do? He doesn't just have a political problem with high gas prices in the midterms. He has a national security problem. He went into this to deal with Iran's nuclear capabilities and now he's got a potential world economic crisis. It's already started because of the closure of, of the strait. He's got a question about his own competence and credibility and that of the United States. So he's got to end this. But I, and so, you know, there's a school of thought from a lot of neocons and others that say you just got to, you just got to bite the bullet and do the best you can militarily. Say to the Pentagon, you've got to go in in a way that limits Iran's ability to strike back and hit Israel in the Gulf states and hit American assets. I just, I just, I don't talk to anybody who's convincing on that score, whether you think no matter how much of Iran's military capability you think they still have, I don't talk to too many people who think that that's possible. So, and, and, and again, the President is not going to put in ground troops, ground forces, and he doesn't want a war that goes on for the next five months. So even though that's the most common thing I hear from folks about, well, how does he get out of this? Just go, quote, unquote, finish the job. I don't think that's possible. And then, and then those who say, well, make the best deal you can. I just don't see a deal with Iran that the President can sell with a straight face to people in the United States that says Iran won't acknowledge that they're giving up their nuclear program. Iran's going to continue to control the strait. Iran's expecting money down the road. I don't know how the President sells that deal. I don't know how he sells it. It's so incompatible with what he went into. Now, there is an argument to be made they say doesn't matter what the deal is. Iran's capabilities across the board have been degraded. The Iranian government's on notice. The Iranian people might still rise up. Their economy is still going to be hurt. But this is where opening the strait seems like such a big deal. The administration over the weekend cast opening the strait where the US Would drop its blockade. Iran would allow free passage through. They cast that as giving some breathing room to the world economy. And there's no doubt that it would be in the interest of the world economy to open the strait. But a couple things about that. First of all, Iran's at least, unless they back down, they've made it clear they're not really reopening the strait back to where it was before the war started. They'll say, well, traffic can go through, but we're going to make money off of it. And then second, this removes the one main piece of pressure that the Trump administration said they had on Iran. They can't sell oil on the world market, so that's a huge part of their revenue. And they're running out of capacity to store the oil, which means they have to shut down their oil production facilities. And once you shut them down, it's very expensive and difficult to start them back up. So that Iran was going to be under pressure of having its oil production capacity permanently damaged. That pressure comes off if the strait opens. Not to mention the fact that still going to be hard to get the Strait back up and running because you got to still get the ships insured. You still got to get the captains to feel comfortable going through. You still could have the Iranians doing monkey business and going after ships that they don't like. This whole thing relies on a deal, right, between the United States and Iran. That's what's going to take. What do deals require? Trust. There's the old expression from the Cold War, from the Reagan era, trust but verify. Here's the problem with trust but verify. There is no trust, and there's no reason for the United States to trust Iran. And it's impossible to verify. How do you verify what's actually going on in the street we've seen over the last few months, Very difficult to know what's going on there. And then how do you verify whatever Iran says about its nuclear program, they've lied in the past. And then you have people saying, well, the US should just go in and take the nuclear material. That is a dangerous mission. That has been a mission that's been considered by many presidents and there's a reason no one's done it. And this president who has told his supporters and the whole country, I'm not in the business of massive American casualties or taking huge risks on the ground in other countries. I just don't see it. So when people say to me, how's this going to end? I don't know. But I feel strongly right now, it's not going to end with a bad deal with Iran. And a bad deal would not include. Would include Iran still controlling the Strait and Iran not handing over its nuclear weapons in a credible way. And it's not going to end with the President engaged in massive military action, which means what does my reporting say? No effing idea. No idea how this ends. No idea how the President's going to get out of this. But he is impatient, as David Ignatius said, he's impatient to end this, understandably. So. It's not great. The status quo is not great. And he's out of looking for lucky breaks, I think, because time's running out on him politically in terms of the midterms, and time's running out in terms of the credibility of the United States of America. So I'll continue to ask my sources how they think this is going to end. But I can tell you, based on my reporting so far, as of now, I do not see how this ends. All right, there you have it. That's my thoughts based on my reporting. Stalemate. Unfortunate stalemate. Let me know what you think? Do you think military action is the way the President has to go or making the best deal possible? Or have you come up with some third option that my sources seem to see? Send me an email@nextup halpernmail.com that's nextuphalperinmail.com and let me know what you think. If you're watching this here on YouTube but you've not subscribed to our YouTube channel, I need you to fix that. We're trying to hit 100,000 subscribers, so please go to the YouTube channel and subscribe. That way you help us out. You also help yourself out by getting all our bonus content you won't find anywhere else. Again, go to YouTube.com if you are a nexter and you haven't subscribed, you are being delinquent and we need your help. If you're listening to us as a podcast, hit follow wherever you get your podcasts and also turn on the download so each episode comes to you automatically without you having to do a thing the moment it goes live. You don't have to search or scroll or fear that you will not get every episode. Thank you for being Nexters and thank you for helping us grow the program. All right, a quick break now, and then next up, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton are here. They're the hosts of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show, which airs every Weekday, noon to 3 on iHeartradio. They'll be here in a moment. Clay and Buck are next up. If you're 64 years old or older, here's advice I'd give to a friend. Check your Medicare plan, especially if you have a Medicare supplement. Here's why. Identical supplement plans can have precisely the same coverage and wildly different prices. That's how crazy the Medicare system is. Depending upon what you happen to see or what you miss, you can be dramatically overpaying for literally the exact same coverage benefits everything that someone else has, and you are none the wiser. Unless you go looking Chapter does the looking for you. They're the only Medicare advisors that compare every plan nationwide. That's every carrier, every rate. Their advisors aren't paid to push one plan over another. So if you're already on the best rate, they'll let you know that, and if not, they'll help you switch the best plan for you. They've helped many folks in this audience save thousands on their premiums alone. It's real money. So if you're turning 65 or already on Medicare, give my friends over a chapter a call. They are a free resource for this audience and can review your options in under 20 minutes. Give them a call now. 262-454-0503. That's 262-454-0503.
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- [25:36]
Mark Halpern
All right, next up and joining me now, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Of course they are the hosts of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show. Airs live Monday through Friday from noon to 3 Eastern time. Catch them live on your local iHeartMedia News talk radio station or the iHeart app or on your famous favorite streaming platforms. Guys, I don't really need to promote your show. Your show's a juggernaut. What, what good, what good did that do? Was wasted a few times. But grateful to you for being here.
- [26:04]
Buck Sexton
Thank you for having us. We'll always take more listeners. It's never enough.
- [26:08]
Mark Halpern
Yeah. Who's, who's, who's the best oiled machine in our business right now? Who's got the besides you guys and of course my show. Who's got the best oiled machine for just just turning up turning out listeners. Viewers.
- [26:21]
Buck Sexton
I mean you're going to say also beside Megan I assume because like that
- [26:26]
Mark Halpern
you could go with Megan. Megan's a good answer.
- [26:27]
Clay Travis
I think you also have to factor in Buck and I talk about this a little bit not craz. There's some well oiled machines that are putting out what I would say is a lot of craziness on a day to day basis.
- [26:39]
Mark Halpern
Yeah.
- [26:40]
Buck Sexton
I well oiled machines, snake oil. They are selling.
- [26:44]
Mark Halpern
Yes. What I want to do and I just haven't had time to do it and it'd be A little controversial. I want to do focus groups of the core listeners of those crazy snake oil shows. I just want to ask them, like, what do you like about it? What do your relatives think of it? What's your connection to reality? I feel like those would be good focus groups.
- [27:03]
Buck Sexton
So I wrote a fabulous book by the way, called Manufacturing Delusion, which I highly recommend to all of your.
- [27:10]
Mark Halpern
I'm glad it's within easy reach.
- [27:12]
Buck Sexton
Oh, I've learned I keep it right there for all. It's like don't leave home without. At the old Amex. I always have a copy of my book around. But no, really, the book deals with essentially, well, obviously mass delusions and delusion formation. But I also get into cults and the psychology of attachment to falsehood or the attachment to ideas that are. That should be self refuting or obviously incorrect. And the deeper into it you can get somebody, the harder it is to get them out. A lot of the time you have to remember that. Right. It makes sense when you think about it. But if somebody has been believing for months and months that the huge reveal is going to come that all truth will be, all truth will emerge finally after the months of promises they don't want to be told. Actually you've just been taken on a ride so you just can keep pushing it out.
- [28:00]
Mark Halpern
Do you think that the preponderance of the listeners to the snake oil salespersons are. Are out of touch with reality or they just do it for kicks? Like do you think that audience is gone forever as sane people or. No,
- [28:15]
Clay Travis
we talk a lot about this on our show. I think that so many conspiracies have been proven true during COVID that there is a conspiratorial mindset that a certain segment of the population, not insubstantial. A quarter of news consumers, let's say, want to believe that there is somebody with grand designs who is pulling the strings at all points and that they're trying to tie it all together. And by the way, I think this is true on, on the left and on the right. And I think this is. I think this has always existed and. But I think Covid has accelerated it. The other part of this is whatever you believe, there's a video that makes it look like it should be true. And I think that's a little bit dangerous. I think what we're seeing, heck, I mean, I'll put myself in this can. AI is getting so advanced that determining truth and falsehood, determining what's real is actually becoming a challenge. And so I Think the conspiratorial mindset, in conjunction with the ability to create videos that surround conspiratorial mindsets to make people think things are real is going to be something that. That is. That is with us for some time. What Buck and I like to think is that over time, if you keep telling people things that prove to not be true over time, that there's going to be a cost with that. But on his delusion scale there, a lot of people don't want to know that they were taken advantage of. I think it's the same reason you never hear anybody brag now that they got 16 different Covid shots, right? Some people did. They kept going and said, I got to get the new booster. This is going to protect me. Otherwise I'm going to die. When's the last time you heard. How often do you hear people back in the day when they would test positive for Covid, they would say beforehand, you know, even though I got 10 shots, I'm still boosted and everything else. So I think that there's unfortunately, a conspiratorial mindset that is now being fueled by the rise of the ability to provide video evidence, even if it's not real, that suggests that those conspiracies are true.
- [30:22]
Buck Sexton
Go ahead, Mark. I was gonna say, I think that we're in an era now where people. It's much easier actually to hold people to account if. If you want to. Right. I mean, you can ignore anything for as long as you want as well, but if you wanted to hold someone to account. We now have betting on politics, which we didn't have before. It is looking, Mark, and I'll admit this because I am. I am a man who is willing to revel in humility. It's looking like I'm going to have to buy Clay Travis an outrageously expensive stake because in a fit of hubris, I said, Kamala Harris did so poorly. This was right after the last election. She did so poorly that she will not run again. She will become the provost of a second tier UC school making a million dollars a year to go to cocktail parties. She will still end up with that job, but it is looking like she is going to run. And my hubristic, you know, call on the air, I'm now going to have to eat humble pie or in this case, eat some delicious steak that I will have to pay for. But I do think that people can be held to account because of the ability now to recall what people have said on. On their shows and the kind of analysis that they have offered. You can even bet now. People can, you know, there's all these, which is a whole other thing. But betting on politics is a very new phenomenon. And I think that the era of people making endless incorrect predictions about politics and being considered experts, the Karl Roisms, if you will, I think that that is over because I think that the younger generation is going to look at this or the, you know, the up and coming generation that has more of a digital feel is going to say, well, you've been wrong about everything, so why am I going to listen to you this time?
- [32:05]
Mark Halpern
Yeah, Lots to respond to. First of all, can you guys see the mask here? Can you see the line?
- [32:10]
Clay Travis
Yeah.
- [32:11]
Mark Halpern
Just want to make sure. I'm so interested in what you guys think about everything. So I'm moving on. Even though we could talk about this for the whole time. Iran. Clay, what are Donald Trump's current options? Just bullet point. What is current options for Iran?
- [32:28]
Clay Travis
Well, we're live, so I haven't seen the last 30 minutes of what might have happened on Twitter. So if there's some.
- [32:37]
Mark Halpern
Nothing huge. Nothing, nothing huge new in the last 30.
- [32:40]
Clay Travis
So look, I mean, Buck and I obviously talk a lot about this. To me, Trump wants a grand cinematic coup de grace that he can say this thing is complete. And I have thought for some time that it is seizing the so called nuclear dust in some way. Either sending our troops in and having that kind of crazy movie scene where you have the nerds going in and grabbing the nuclear dust and blowing it up and all of that to refute, to prove, hey, this is not Iraq, I'm not George W. Bush, I get things done. There were actually weapons of mass destruction here. Is that a viable conclusion that can occur before the midterms and allow people to kind of move on from Iran and oil and gas prices to come back? I think that's the challenge at this point. I think the most likely outcome is that Trump declares some sort of victory. Iran claims that they won, gas prices come back, people move on to whatever the newest thing is. And then Buck has used the mow the grass analogy, which I think is a good one. Trump, after the midterms, could go back in and do more mowing the grass, so to speak, to try to make sure that Iran doesn't end up with a nuclear weapon.
- [33:56]
Mark Halpern
All right, but I appreciated all that. What are his current options? Just list them off. You seem to suggest one option is going in and taking the stuff by force. I think there's zero chance they do that. I don't think.
- [34:08]
Clay Travis
I think. I think that is what Trump wants to do. I think what he's going to do is they're going to open the straight of four moves. Oil and gas prices are going to come back down. It wasn't very long ago that everybody said, oh, Minneapolis is going to be the linchpin for what happens in the midterms. I do think that we can get some form of resolution where the Iranians stop trying to threaten terrorism and where oil and gas starts to flow through the strait. Again, one thing, and I shared this before. Buck is the expert on this because he worked in the CIA on this. I will say what no one talks about. I shared a picture of this earlier today from last night. I guess I did. We've made more money on the rise of oil and gas prices collectively as a country than any country in the world. We've made $50 billion. I don't think most people realize the economic pressure is not necessarily on the United States. We changed the script. Compared to the early 90s. The economic pressure is entirely on the Middle east and Asia.
- [35:06]
Mark Halpern
Buck, what are the President's options? Can. Can he do a deal? Can he bomb again? What are the options?
- [35:11]
Buck Sexton
The options are. And just. This is important, I think, context for this. Clay has been on the show and very publicly, as a result, more optimistic about the trajectory of this whole thing than I have been. Yeah. And I've. I've said to everybody, there may be some. Some saltiness in my view of all this because I worked on the CIA's Iraq desk for five years, so I have some recall of what it's like to try to get people in the Middle east to do things that you think are in everyone's interest. Rational. Makes sense. Everybody wins. And they think, time to strap on a suicide vest and a Lahu Akbar all over the place.
- [35:50]
Joe Kernan
So.
- [35:50]
Mark Halpern
Makes. Makes you saltier than a Philly pretzel.
- [35:53]
Buck Sexton
Yeah. So. So that's something that I remember very well. And I remember trying to get the.
- [35:59]
Mark Halpern
When.
- [36:00]
Buck Sexton
When military was trying to get the various insurgent groups to stop fighting because we would, like, pay for everything, turn on all the electricity, build their sewage systems. Sewage systems. And they're like, no, we're still gonna. We're still gonna kill each other. So there's a. There's a lot to unpack. When you're talking midi stuff on Iran specifically. Trump is going to take a deal here soon to make a deal. Meaning the deal will be, we have agreed in part to the things that are theoretical and we agree that we will finalize the things that are final later on with some checks and balances and some steps in the process. This is because the. We're going to bring them to their knees and it's all over for them. Is not true. This is because the revolution from the inside and the overthrow of their government is imminent. Is not true.
- [36:50]
Mark Halpern
And.
- [36:50]
Buck Sexton
And the problem that we're going to run into is that I think we're going to be soon exchanging. So again, that my base, you're asking the pathway a deal to finalize a deal. It's going to be a phased thing. I've said, I've been saying this, by the way, for. And Clay can confirm weeks, if not months at this point. Like, they're going to do something where they say, okay, we finally got them. They've made all the concessions, but it's going to take the next, you know, 12 to 18 months to really work out what that looks like. And the Iranians love this, by the way. The Iranian leadership clearly wants this more than anything because it's not, you know, you hear about things like snapback sanctions in the past. They're never snapback. You hear about, oh, well, we're going to do more military strikes. Really? What are we going to strike this time? Their leadership's not all going to have some big meeting where they hang out together and say, go ahead and bomb us and take out, you know, 50 for the price of one. They're hardening all of their leadership bunkers and security practices to make it harder to get at them. And in terms of their actual military, yeah, we've destroyed their air force, We've destroyed their Navy. Their Navy and their air force sucked anyway. That's not really the problem. The problem is that they have a half a million people under arms who are still loyal to the irgc, which means they're loyal to the previous regime. And unless you get rid of them, you don't control the country. So I love this idea that we're going to just do stuff from the sky and force reality on the ground. And that has never been true the way we have wanted it to be true. It wasn't true in Libya the way we wanted it to be. It certainly wasn't true in Iraq with the no Fly zone. You know, this is. This is a. I, unfortunately, I think this is. Now the mow the grass analogy becomes really important because they're not going to give up the nuclear dust, whatever we call it, the enrichment. That's not going to happen places Maybe they go, maybe we go in and take it. I think that's a low probability, but that would at least be a serious. The idea that they're going to willingly give this stuff to us. Not going to happen. So, you know, I think that it's true. I think a lot of what Clay says is right. I think gas prices will start to come down because the deal will cool people's concerns over this. But anyone who thinks that this is going to end with Iran is never able to get a nuclear weapon and we have a regime that we can negotiate with, unfortunately, I think has been sold a bill of good. I don't think that's going to be accurate. And if I'm wrong, maybe I'll have to buy someone a steak. Although I'm not making that bet because I still owe a steak.
- [39:09]
Mark Halpern
Yeah, and steak's very expensive right now. All right, we're going to have to wrap it around this stuff because we're short of time. And I want to get to you guys on a bunch of things. If Spencer Pratt loses in la, and he's more likely than not to lose, even though I predicted he'd win, what good will come out of his candidacy? Buck, what good will come out of this if he loses?
- [39:27]
Buck Sexton
I'll go quick because I know Clay gets super fired up by this. First of all, the hummingbirds thing is amazing. Second of all, it's just awesome to see this guy creating a brand using AI, using all these tools with no political help, really, and creating a narrative that, at a minimum, has highlighted for the whole country, I think, how dysfunctional Los Angeles. Los Angeles should be. Clay and I always agree on this. California as a state is the most blessed state in the whole country, I think, by weather, geography, the natural abundance, the coastline, all of these things, right? Incredible farmland, incredible mountains, incredible coast. California's got everything. Communists can ruin anything, though. And I think that Spencer Pratt has highlighted, as a guy who lost his house, it burned down because of the imbeciles in charge, including a leftist, by the way, who set the fire in the first place, which I don't think gets enough attention. I think that he has highlighted for the country the difference between red and blue state governance or red and blue city governance. And that alone is a win. And we'll see what happens.
- [40:29]
Mark Halpern
Clay.
- [40:31]
Clay Travis
I think it's going to encourage a lot of insurgent campaigns in general because the cost structure to go viral and capture Everybody's attention on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter with his AI videos. I was reading I was actually interacting with the guy who's made those videos. He spent 30 minutes making them. Spencer Pratt to my knowledge has yet to buy a single ad on LA television and he's going to be in the runoff. So I think a lot of people are going to look at what Spencer Pratt did in the wake of Donald Trump and I think a lot of non professional politicians are going to move more into the political process. It used to be you had to be super wealthy to do that. I think AI is going to level the playing field and make a campaign more attractive to many people. I think the other thing is it's going to make live events. This is my big take on AI. The debate is what put Spencer Pratt into the talking points in a significant way. He dominated. I think debates, big public events are going to matter more and more. In an AI sort of slop filled world where it's hard to tell what's real. People are going to be tuning in for the big events more than they ever have.
- [41:41]
Mark Halpern
I'm all for life is woke dead guys Is the influence of woke that what's. What do you. What do you. Would you point to?
- [41:51]
Buck Sexton
Woke is a zombie ideology and, and we could get into the roots of it. I think it goes very deep into the psychology of the people who are seized by it. But if you were to look back at what is wokeness. Wokeness is just weaponized political correctness or it's political correctness that achieved enough institutional and political power to go to the logical ends of its own belief system, its own ideology. Right. Political correctness used to be more like whiny PCU for its time.
- [42:18]
Clay Travis
Claire and I both love.
- [42:19]
Buck Sexton
It was a brilliant movie. You know pcu. Mark, have you seen this one? Yeah, yeah it really but. But the thing about that was that there was some mockery of the fact that the people that were making these crazy demands, they were annoying and they were to be placated, but they weren't what we saw during the Obama era and then I think heightened actually in many ways during the COVID era was those people actually calling all the shots. And that's really what wokeness is. It's just political correctness with. With political power attached to it. So has it receded right now because they are out of power? Yes. Is there a cultural pushback that is powerful. That is the first time that we've really seen that. That they're not used to. Yes. I think Elon's purchase of X Others have said this too but I just. I co sign I agree. Elon's purchase of X, formerly Twitter, is one of the most important things, not just for free speech, but for American politics to have occurred in our lifetime because there was so much platform dominance of the leftist Silicon Valley enabled ideology out there. So that's. That's really powerful. But as soon as I've been warning our audience about this on radio, Mark, as soon as they are in a position to, they're going to be saying, men can have vaginas. They don't have an advantage over women in sports. That's all some lie that you thought you knew your whole life. Climate change is an existential threat. Black people are constantly being murdered for no reason whatsoever by racist white cops. Just. They're just going to go back to all the same woke delusions that. That they have engaged in now for. For years.
- [43:50]
Mark Halpern
All right, Clay's gonna have to go in a second. Buck and I are going to come back and talk about AI Clay, before you go, what's the top price that will be for an NBA Finals Madison Square Garden ticket? It's a top. What will it top out at?
- [44:03]
Clay Travis
Oh, I mean, people will. Bucky, you should actually ask Buck about this because he's a Knicks fan. Growing up. He used to watch him back in the 90s. Look, it's been 27 years. Two things quickly on the woke thing, if it were going to be dead, there would have been an acknowledgment that that was the reason they lost in 2024. There wasn't. I think Kamala is going to be the nominee in 2028. It's going to take, I think, another ass kicking to look inward and say it wasn't a failure of our messaging. It was, in fact, the message itself. People heard it and rejected it. I think that would require identity politics to collapse. There will be guys that will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Somebody will spend $300,000 for a floor seated next game in the finals.
- [44:50]
Mark Halpern
It's going to be, well, more than that, I think, but 300 is a good place to put the bar. All right, you got to go. Thank you for being here.
- [44:58]
Clay Travis
Good work. Buckle. Close up shop here for us. And look, I like to think we're the Santa I know we're the smartest show out there on a daily basis for three hours every day. So come hang with us. Keep up the good work yourself.
- [45:10]
Mark Halpern
Come back soon. Come soon, we'll merge the show. Thank you, man. All right, quick, quick break. Next up, more with Buck. We're going to talk about the AI and its PR problems. That's next up. Ask yourself now are you being lied to? They tell you to defer paying your taxes by saving in a 401k or an IRA because you'll retire in a lower tax bracket. But if that were true, ask yourself this why are so many retirees in the highest tax bridge bracket of their lives? It's time to get the truth and discover a better way to grow and protect your money. Bank on yourself is the proven retirement plan alternative that big banks and Wall street desperately hope you never hear about. What does it give you? Guaranteed predictable growth that doesn't go backward when the market drops and it can provide tax free retirement income under current tax law, putting you in control of your future tax return rate. You also have control of your money. Access it when you need to with no government penalties or restrictions and your money keeps growing even when you use it. Right now get a free report that reveals how you can bank on yourself and enjoy tax free retirement income, guaranteed growth and control of your money. Just go to bankonyourself.com mark and get your free report. That's bankonyourself.com mark again go to bankonyourself.
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- [47:25]
Mark Halpern
all right, next up, more with Buck Sexton. Buck, I thought that Israelis and American Jews were the prototypes of people who are really smart with a lot of money who nonetheless developed a bad PR problem. But they've been replaced by the AI industry. They have unlimited money. They have huge aspirations. They know having a PR problem is a big problem. What should they be doing to change the perception that a lot of people in the country have that I know you don't share that they're going to doom the United States. What, what should they be spending their money on? What should their message be?
- [47:57]
Buck Sexton
So just how can the AI industry change the feeling that it's going to turn into Skynet and create like nuclear
- [48:05]
Mark Halpern
holocaust for the whole world, destroy every job, just eventually kill all people, not be, not be good for the environment? Like what, what can they do because they have unlimited money?
- [48:18]
Buck Sexton
Very few things worry me in the long term sense. So I, I tend to come at this even though on the Clay and Buck show I tend to be a little bit more of the, of the, the pessimistic voice on some policy things. I would say this about AI. If you look at history, technology is always adopted and over time it becomes more of a net benefit than a drawback. I think across the board there's always the, oh my gosh, what's going to happen now? And people remember when we were all supposed to think that with Y2K the computers were all going to, you know, shut down, be unusable, the world a total, a total zero. Nothing really happened there. Obviously we've been told that climate change for decades is going to put Florida underwater. And meanwhile Florida real estate prices in the south here have never been higher than they are. And so I think on AI, there's a couple things, you know who Naval Ravikant is, really interesting guy, you know, device I can't him on the show. Super, super smart guy. I like to give him credit for this because I think it's such an important paradigm, it's just such an important way to think about it. There's status and there's wealth and those are different things. And if you look at historically, anyone alive today living a basic, you know, standard American lifestyle is wealthier than any American really would have been on a whole range of factors. Call it 100 years ago, maybe even 50 years ago. You know, you, you pick your timeline, right?
- [49:50]
Mark Halpern
Yeah.
- [49:50]
Buck Sexton
You have better food, better health care, better longevity, press prospects, you drive a better car than, you know, a millionaire in the 1950s. Your cheapest Hyundai you can think of is like a spaceship. And in terms of safety and speed and comfort, that's wealth. Meaning that humanity and capitalism is I think, the best example of this overall, that the world, the number of people who have been brought out of poverty because of capitalist systems in the last hundred 150 years is greater than all the people in all of history before that who were pulled out of poverty. Okay, so the world can get a lot Wealthier and is getting a lot wealthier. And I'm a big believer in that humanity. By that I mean we just have more stuff better. A perfect example is food. Food is now a problem of overabundance, overwhelmingly. Even if you were to look at people that say, are on supplemental nutritional assistance, formerly food stamps, Mark, their biggest problem is obesity. Too many calories. Obesity is fundamentally an issue of too many calories. If you look at the thermodynamics, we don't have mass starvation anymore unless it is man made and in a certain place, right. People can use starvation as a weapon of war, but we don't have famine where just, oh, well, there's no, you know, my people are Irish. Oh, there's no potatoes. What are we, what are we going to eat now? It doesn't exist anymore. Humanity can get wealthier. Status is a different thing. How am I relative to my neighbors? How am I relative to the other people in my village or my city or whatever it may be? And people fight often over status. You know, I'm actually reading a, right now, I'm pretty early in it, about 100 pages into this book that's about, in the 1960s, a researcher, an anthropologist. If I'm weaving too much, by the way, Mark, you can pull me back
- [51:35]
Mark Halpern
in, but I think I'm right. I'm right on your lap. I'm treating you like four lives I'm enjoying.
- [51:40]
Buck Sexton
So, okay, great. Because this guy, he was an anthropologist and he went to the border of Brazil and Venezuela where there was this uncontacted tribe called the Yana Momo. Yana Mamo. The Yana Mamo. And he spent 17 months living with them. And these are, this is a tribe had no contact whatsoever. The outside world spoke no language other than their own. Obviously no written language, no electricity, all that sort of stuff. And he came back with some pretty interesting observations that of course the anthropology community, which is about as left wing as any academic discipline, it's like sociology. I mean, it's just like left wing Marxists who, who want to pretend that they're being scientific. He said, you know, you know what? They fight a lot, meaning war. They have a lot of warfare between these different little tribes, different factions of the tribe. And they fight over women a lot. And that was, it wasn't that they were starving to death. It was that they were actually, they would, you know, get the spears and they would go stab each other and fight and kill each other in the jungle over women. So my point here is that that's A status issue, right? That's a, I want this thing or a person in this case, pardon me, but I want this person because I want more wives or I want, you know, access to the, the most desirable female partner. It's not, I'm starving to death. Wealth and status are by the way, this scandal that scandalized the anthropology community because they're always led to believe that the only reason anyone goes to war is because of like outside influences, you know, capitalism, white Europeans arriving, all that stuff. So the problem we're going to have with AI to bring this all full circle is that there's going to be extreme winners. Extreme winners. And you're already starting to see this. I mean I, I think the whole Sam Altman thing, switching a non profit to a for profit company, it's absurd. This is absurd. Like honest. I'm totally with Elon on this. This on its face is preposterous. This guy's now a multi billionaire. I'm also going to say this. He says he doesn't care about money. Mark, a guy who drives a $3 million car cares about money. And he drives a $3 million sports car, which is just a bizarre, which I'm sure he never goes above 60 miles an hour in. So Sam Altman I have no faith in whatsoever. I do not trust this guy. I think I'm very sketched out by his whole thing. So there's going to be some people that become incredibly rich and have a lot of influence and that is again on the status side of things, going to create I think, problems. They're going to have so much influence in society, so much money, they're going to make the robber barons look very second tier. On the upside though, the amount of prosperity that I think is coming from AI and the time that you will get back to do more of what you want and the overall increases in wealth and this is a naval point, we can get wealthy enough as a society where all material needs are met for everybody. And that's actually not crazy. I think that's actually a mathematical reality now certainly, I mean it already kind of is in America, but I think globally that could be a reality because of the productivity gains of AI So that's what my, I view it in that way. Like people like everyone, humanity is going to get richer, there will be some job losses, there will be some jobs created. It's a tool. But net, net is going to make everybody a lot. There's going to create so much, it will create so much more abundance that people are going to have to find something to worry about other than not having enough stuff. That's my.
- [55:03]
Mark Halpern
Yeah. Would it be better for our society if people agreed with you now? Or it doesn't matter. And eventually they'll experience the upsides and it won't matter. Because I feel like the AI industry is pushing a boulder up a hill more than they have to. Because most of the public doesn't agree with your optimism on this.
- [55:20]
Buck Sexton
Yeah, well, people fear change, and people are also attracted to narratives of catastrophe. Michael Crichton was my favorite. Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy. I joined the CIA because of Tom Clancy. So that's, you know, give. You want to talk about having an influence on a young man's life. But Michael Crichton was the first author I ever really read who made me love just reading books for fun. But he had this. It was actually a sit down with Charlie Rose, if I remember correctly. Maybe, you know, 20 something years ago.
- [55:46]
Mark Halpern
Yeah.
- [55:46]
Buck Sexton
He talked about how, when you're an author, when you're talking about things, you know, if you tell people that things are terrible or that things are going to be terrible, everybody listens to you and nobody holds you accountable when it's not terrible. Because, hey, it all worked out. Catastrophism sells is really the point, right? Catastrophism whether you're. But in fact, if you tell people things are going to be good, it's not that they won't listen, they get mad at you. And I've experienced this even on radio when I tell people I said this the first year of the Trump administration, you know, 2.0. So, guys, this is about as good as it gets. Our team has kicked the other team's ass. The economy's great. We're not at war. You know, the border is secure. Like, enjoy this because things are actually really good. There are still problems, but things are really good. People get mad at me. People get mad at me. I can go on the air and say, we're all going to die. We're all going to die. Which, by the way, is obviously a true statement. We are all going to die. I just don't think we're all going to die tomorrow. And people will say, really? Tell me more, tell me why. And this goes to maybe is it the amygdala, like the. The lizard brain, right. The fear center where people automatically, I think, are bioengineered to tune in to messages that are scary sounding. So on AI, if you want people to listen to you, you talk about how bad and scary it is. Now to be fair, I know people like Elon, who. Elon's way smarter than I am and way more important to the world than I am. So when he says that he's worried about where AI is going, I listen. But I think that's more of a caution and less of a. Less of a catastrophism. Yeah, because you want. It's coming no matter what. So you want to manage this properly and have the public's expectations in line with what the reality will be. You know that. So that's. I don't. I'm not worried. I think it's going to be fantastic. Think about the disease cure possibilities of AI alone and the ability to go through hundreds of thousands of pages of clinical data and come up with things that would have taken a team of researchers a year. They can do that in two minutes.
- [57:49]
Mark Halpern
What would be great is if they actually get one of those soon. Right. Everybody talks about that and it seems theoretically that's what's going to happen. But I'd love for them to come up with some cure soon.
- [57:58]
Buck Sexton
Well, that's my, that's my. You know, you're asking how AI can. AI enabled research gives sight back to the blind, which I know there are things like they're looking at now, for example, Elon's Neuralink company. But AI enabled technology giving people, you know, curing Alzheimer's or cancer, anything like that.
- [58:19]
Mark Halpern
Anyone, Any one of those.
- [58:20]
Buck Sexton
Anything like that. And all of a sudden people go, oh, yeah, there is something really amazing going on here.
- [58:26]
Mark Halpern
I just hope there's one sooner rather than later. Are you interested at all? I'm switching topics now. Are you interested in all in the Marco Mentum? The, the. This incredible boom of interest in Marco Rubio? Does that interest you?
- [58:36]
Nespresso Advertiser
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- [58:37]
Buck Sexton
I mean, I like you, I make a living talking about politics, and I feel blessed every day, as I'm sure you do, that we get paid to do this, you know, because I didn't always do this. I've done other jobs and this job is incredible. Like, this is so much fun because this is what I would be doing anyway, just trying to pretend that I was doing the work I was supposed to do while talking about politics.
- [58:55]
Mark Halpern
So let me, let me ask you about this Rubio thing I experienced last week. I speak to 100 Canadians. Now, you probably think of Canadians as like to the left of Barack Obama. But this was a mixed room. There were some conservatives in the room, some very liberals, and I said, show of hands. If you were voting in a Republican presidential Primary in the United States, and the two people in the ballot were Vance and Rubio. Who would you vote for? 100 people. What do you think the breakdown was?
- [59:18]
Buck Sexton
Rubio. Oh, sorry. Of the. Of the hundred. Yeah, certainly majority Rubio. I would say 80, 20. Rubio to events.
- [59:25]
Mark Halpern
Yeah. 99 to 1 for. For Rubio. So, again, it's a. It's a weird thing because they're Canadians, but as I said, they weren't all liberals. What do you think accounts for that? Why would 99 out of 100 Canadians, a very smart, sophisticated group, why would they be so pro Rubio and not so high on JD Vance?
- [59:43]
Buck Sexton
It's really interesting. I don't have a great answer and that. I actually like that. I like being asked questions where I don't just have the, like. I know. I know what this is because it forces me to.
- [59:54]
Mark Halpern
I agree. I like. I like this, too. And the reason I'm bringing it up is because I agree with you. It's not really clear to me what they're keying off of. So speculate away.
- [60:02]
Buck Sexton
Yeah. I think that anyone that has a sort of ready, snappy answer probably hasn't thought about this hard enough because. Okay, let's just sort of line them up. What is it? And I don't, you know, if Clay were here, he would tell of the tape. Right. Isn't that what it is in boxing, where you do the, like, reach and the height and all this stuff?
- [60:16]
Mark Halpern
Yeah.
- [60:17]
Buck Sexton
You know, Rubio's obviously very smart guy and a very good communicator. So is J.D. vance.
- [60:22]
Mark Halpern
Exactly.
- [60:23]
Buck Sexton
IQ, very good communicator. So there's really no difference presentationally. You know, I think they're both really good on their feet. I think they're both really capable and competent in what they do. I would say maybe a difference here is that as. As vp, there's less ability to get wins that are attributed to you. And I think being Trump's VP is also a really hard place to be because you're really there in case of which, as we know, you know, we want Trump to last many decades hence, but we need to have a vice president. There's a reason why that role exists. I mean, there's very good reason for it, unfortunately. We have to be prepared. And I. I think that it's tough. You know, it goes all the way back to that old John Adams thing. Right.
- [61:13]
Clay Travis
Of.
- [61:13]
Buck Sexton
Didn't he say, like, being the vice president's, like, the most worthless crap job? I mean, I'm paraphrasing, obviously, but Being vice president sucks. And I think that. J.D. i mean, I think that Rubio, first of all, has been on the political scene longer, is better known, and has been able to put himself forward as Secretary of State, slash all these other jobs. He is. I've never seen someone who has as broad a portfolio that seems as essential to an administration as what Rubio has enabled. And then, of course, there's the means, and people love memes. That's like every. The perception is that there's Trump, and then all this other stuff is being done by Rubio and all these other agencies. So that's my. My best version of an answer. But it's not a. It's not like a slam dunk thing. I'm. I'm a little surprised. Quite honestly, I'm a little surprised by it, because I hold J.D. i don't know him. I don't know either of them personally.
- [62:07]
Mark Halpern
Yeah, That's.
- [62:07]
Buck Sexton
Obviously interviewed them many times, but I hold them both in high regard in terms of capability. But the Rubio brand has just been. And fuego.
- [62:17]
Mark Halpern
Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's close off with a little bit of a version of the Newlywed Game. Take advantage of Clay's absence. He's not in a soundproof booth, but he's not here. So I'm gonna ask you five questions about Clay, and you give me your best answer, and then we'll see how many you get right out of the five.
- [62:32]
Buck Sexton
Knowledge about.
- [62:33]
Mark Halpern
Oh, God, here we go.
- [62:34]
Clay Travis
Brutal.
- [62:35]
Mark Halpern
Here we go. Favorite Nashville restaurant.
- [62:38]
Buck Sexton
Favorite Nashville restaurant?
- [62:40]
Mark Halpern
Yeah. Of Clay's, not of yours. What's Clay's favorite Nashville restaurant?
- [62:43]
Buck Sexton
Do you know the answers to these? Like, do you have.
- [62:45]
Mark Halpern
I don't know the answers to any of them, but he's going to. He's going to answer them later, and we'll see how you do.
- [62:50]
Buck Sexton
Bourbon Steak.
- [62:51]
Mark Halpern
Bourbon Steak. That's the name of an actual restaurant.
- [62:54]
Buck Sexton
Bourbon Steak.
- [62:55]
Mark Halpern
Okay. Favorite European city.
- [63:02]
Buck Sexton
I would. He's gonna go. He's gonna go Rome on that one.
- [63:09]
Mark Halpern
Rome on that one. Okay. Favorite beer?
- [63:12]
Buck Sexton
Oh, God. You know, I can't even drink beer. I have celiac disease. I know nothing about beer. I would say a Pilsner.
- [63:21]
Mark Halpern
Pilsner. All right. Favorite nb.
- [63:28]
Buck Sexton
I think he has one, but he's gonna. He'll have to come up with something. Favorite NBA. I'm gonna go New York Knicks. I'm gonna say Clay is a Knicks fan.
- [63:35]
Mark Halpern
Nicely. Nick said. Okay. And then finally, his biggest fear.
- [63:41]
Buck Sexton
Biggest fear being wrong about Kamala Harris and having to buy me a steak. And then having me just victory dance for like three months on the radio show that I was right this time.
- [63:53]
Mark Halpern
All right, we'll post those and then we'll get him to weigh in and we'll see how you do it with 0 to 5, see how you did and then we'll reverse it next time and he'll do for you. Grateful to you for being on. Buck, thanks for coming.
- [64:02]
Buck Sexton
Thanks so much, man. Always great to see you.
- [64:04]
Mark Halpern
Love having you both on. Thank you to Buck, thank you to Clay. If you liked what they had to say as much as I do, always make sure you check out their program, the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show. It airs live every Monday through Friday, noon to 3 Eastern time. You can listen live on your local iHeartMedia radio show radio station or the iHeart app or on your favorite streaming platform. Again, thanks to both Clay and Buck for being here. Fellas. Thank you. That's it for today's program. We're back on Thursday with a brand new episode. We're gonna talk about the midterms, politics and polling. Director of Emerson College's polling Spencer Kimball will be here. He'll break down their new polling he's got coming out on the California primary races coming up. Plus professional sports and politics Handicapper Steve Malteeps will be here. Known as the Philly Godfather, he'll reveal and talk about how prediction markets are seeing things differently in many cases from traditional polling. You won't want to miss that. So we'll see you Thursday. Subscribe to NextUp on YouTube wherever you get your podcast. So you always know what's coming next up.
- [65:11]
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Buck Sexton
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Mark Halpern
Police are on the way.
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