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$5,000 an ounce, gold prices have softened. What does that mean for you? It means this is a buying opportunity. Whether you haven't yet diversified your savings into gold or maybe you just want to buy more, Birch Gold Group can help you. The fundamentals are still out of whack. Surging oil prices keep inflation high, the national debt is still soaring and central banks are still buying massive quantities of gold. That's why my belief in gold hasn't changed one bit. Educate yourself. Birchgold will send you a free info kit on gold when you text my name. Buck to 9898 98. There's no obligation, only useful information including how you can own gold in a tax sheltered retirement account with an A rating with the Better Business Bureau and tens of thousands of happy customers. See if buying the dip makes sense for you right now. Text BUCK to the number 989898. Claim your free info kit and diversify your savings with gold. Text Buck to 989898 Pure Chalk used to charge $55 for unlimited high speed data, but now it's just $34.99, giving you more for less.
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Welcome to today's edition of the Clay
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Travis and Buck Sexton show podcast. Welcome, everybody. Thursday edition of Clay and Buck kicks off right now. Thanks for being being here with us. We have lots to discuss today with all of you. Right now, Donald Trump president is addressing the nation on Rolling back some Obama I'm sorry, Biden kind of like Obama, Biden era energy rules, a whole range of other things. We will bring you the highlights of that. We don't think we need to go live right to it given the subject matter, but we'll bring you any highlights that come from that. Some other big things on our radar, the indictment of Raul Castro. Castro yeah, everyone's seeing this. I think, clay the last 24 hours pretty much the same way, which is gearing up for something with Cuba. Something is going to happen here. The status quo is not going to be what happens. Trump administration is saying they're in the final stages of negotiations. We'll see. We've been in the final stages of negotiations for weeks now. We'll see what that means. The launch of the $1.7 billion anti weaponization fund. Clay fund. Clay Something I think is worth discussing a little bit of the aftermath as well of some of the elections yesterday. And some people very upset about Massie, some people on the right very upset that Massie lost his congressional seat. I think it's interesting. Clearly this is about the symbolism of the Massie fight because one seat in Congress is first of all, it's going to go to a Republican. So it's not like we're even losing a House seat really. It's just not going to be a guy who had built a lot of his reputation over the last year or so on attacking Donald Trump and the Epstein files stuff and all the rest of it worth maybe revisiting some of that, something Clay and I both noted and I am glad that he thought it was worthy of discussion as well. Today, Harvard's about to get rid of great inflation. It it seems, yes, this is part of a broader trend. I mean, I could tell you quite honestly, I can only speak from my own Experience. You tell me, Clay, if this was the deal at GW at Amherst, if you had a pulse and you didn't assault anyone during class hours, you pretty much got a B, maybe a B plus. And if you did some work, you got an A minus. And if you were like reasonably talented, you got an A. That was, that was really. Those were the only grades. Unless you got caught plagiarizing and then you failed. Those were the only. Because that happened to people that I know. Those were the only options. Harvard's now going to have a bell curve, which means there's going to be a whole bunch of people in the middle, but then there's going to be some A's and some F's.
D
Yeah, look, I, I, I think so if you go back and study and some of you are going to remember this great inflation really took off during the Vietnam War because you had to have a certain, some of you are going to remember this. You had to have a certain GPA to be able to avoid the draft. And many different professors out there didn't want to be the reason that somebody went from being in a classroom to being forced to be to be drafted in the initial days, that was a exemption you could get. And so if you go back and look great in fate, inflation started to skyrocket then. And then it really took off anew during COVID And I, I, I think it was just this idea of, well, we're not going to punish people. We don't want too much stress coming down on kids. And I've looked at this. I think it's 70% of all Harvard classes. You get an A now. 70%. I mean, that, that is crazy. Now, to be fair, some people would argue, well, if you're smart enough to get into Harvard, you are operating at a different level than your average student.
A
And also not, also not true, by the way, that's a whole other discussion.
D
There are some what I would say, if you want to adopt that mantra, there are a couple of law schools, at least two that I know of, Stanford and Yale, which just have pass fail for law school. There are no grades. Their argument to recruiters is Stanford and Yale are so elite, all we do is pass fail. Um, and that gives students the opportunity to pursue their interest. And frankly, if you're going to pass the bar exam at an incredibly high rate, which you should, if you're admitted to either of those schools, then I would get it. I actually think just going past fail is a better solution than giving everybody A's. But Harvard now is saying they're doing away with great inflation. And as Harvard goes, everywhere goes buck. We talked about this, too. There's an article, front page, I think yesterday I was reading in the Wall Street Journal, have you seen the number of kids that now get necessary medical additional time to take advanced tests? And how skewed it is for rich school districts? In other words, you get untouchable.
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Can I tell you something about this? I. I have particular. I grew up in New York at the absolute peak of SAT prep frenzy, where there were articles written. And this is in 1990, you know, 98, $99 about people making $1,000 an hour to be SAT tutors. Okay. That's how crazy it was in New York City. This was not necessarily. Probably had this a little bit in la, too. But New York, New York and Boston are always. I think the. And DC will some extent the epicenters of this. But so many. There were people I knew who. They built their whole practices, sort of like child psychology practices, on basically giving whatever parents would write them the checks. Untimed testing. And the thing about untimed testing that is so pernicious is that it's not like it says you took untimed testing because then, of course, that's not fair. So everyone thinks that you got the same score that everybody else did under the same constraints. It's a lie. It's a lie. If you need on time testing, then it should just say you had on time testing, and the school can decide whether they want to deal with that constraint or not. But, Clay, it was all over the place. I knew people went to Ivy League schools of every kind. Stanford, Duke, you name it. On time testing, just so they could juice it, by the way. They didn't need it just so they could juice up their sats. The whole thing was a scam, folks. We're all. Now now, because data is everywhere, and we can find these things. The scams, Clay. It's not just Somalis running scams. A lot of people are running scams out there.
D
Well, we saw. Was it the varsity blue case where people were buying their kids way into a different. A wide variety.
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That's a whole different thing.
D
That. That's.
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That's pretending that your kid is a. Is a crew star when.
D
But. But I think what you're seeing is the systems are being exploited in many different ways. And the stat was that 40% of Stanford's class got special accommodations on testing. And you know what's funny about this is in 2020, they suddenly said it's racist to standardized test, you remember. So everybody went standardized test optional for those of you who have forgotten many of the different crazy things that happened in 2020 and then what do you think happened? They found out that they were admitting people who didn't have the ability to do the bare minimum and stay eligible in the schools that the standardized testing was, was a rough approximation of your ability to complete high level schoolwork. And so they have all now slowly trickled back in to requiring the SAT or the ACT as a way. Because this goes to the great inflation thing, Buck. Everybody's getting great inflated. So if Everybody has a 4O, who's a decent student at so many different schools, how do you tell the difference between a four? Oh well, you have to have a standardized test that is evenly applied across everyone.
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And if people want to understand how this arms race comes about and why there are a whole lot of schools that are, I would consider middle tier private schools right now. Also I'm going to note a lot of people say just go to state school. A lot of state schools are really hard to get into. So put that aside for a second.
D
Crazy hard.
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Where you are, you have this idea that state school now is what it, yeah, is what it was in the 80s. It is not okay. These schools are crazy hard to get into.
D
Florida and Florida State are insanely difficult to get in. Both of them are now because the overall quality of school grad in Florida has skyrocketed and they give really great in state scholarships. So you can go to UF and you can go to FSU for a fraction of what some of these high level schools are going to cost.
A
So but the reason also all this stuff has mattered to people in the past so much is that there was a perception that a certain level of elite school, even an undergraduate program was entree into high earning, high status, high influence. So the whole thing here was we don't have enough black students at Harvard, we don't have enough Latino students at Harvard unless we rig the system. And it's not okay for them to go to a school that's actually more fitting of their academic skills and level at that point. Because the point of Harvard and all these other so called elite schools is not to educate people, it is to give them a credential that they can then monetize. That's the point. The problem they've run into is that because they have distributed that monetizable credential in a way that inherently undermines, you know, because the thing was, oh I got. I went to Harvard. Oh, well, I get to go to the top law firm or. Oh, I get to go to the top whatever. Top grad school, top program, you name, whatever job you want. Engineering. Now it's okay. Well, you went to an Ivy League school. Why'd you get in? That's a fair question to ask every time. And by the way, and I'm going to admit, also legacies athletes, it's not just. It's not just the preferred minority groups. Legacies athletes, too, also factor into this. My point here, Clay, is that this whole system is. We, you and I, really, our generation went through the absolute thick of this madness. And I think maybe the, you know, the people 10, 15 years younger than us, it's changing now. It is really turning back. And these. A lot of these schools that think they're going to be charging, you know, 70, 80, $90,000 a year, I know that they have now scholarships and things for people that have, like, less than 150 grand in household income. I don't know how they're going to sustain themselves.
D
A lot of them are going to shut down. I think you're going to see a lot of mergers. I think we have way too many colleges relative to the value that many of them create. And that's going to be sad, because some of you went to schools that you liked. You're already seeing it, particularly where you went to school. Buck, in the Northeast, there are so many small liberal arts schools. I think what you're going to see, and this is my. You know, I think this is a big thesis in general, is success. So the elite of the elite are going to continue to do really, really well. The ones that are very affordable, I think will have a way to succeed. But that middle tier, I think a lot of the middle tier schools are going to vanish. Yeah.
A
No offense to any Bucknell grads out there, but your kids might not. They might want to look at some. At some other options. I don't know why I just took a shot at Bucknell, but I did poor.
D
I was like, out of all the
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places, that's the one that came to mind. I was like, man, I'll say this, Clay, as well. If you want to really understand how much of this is branding versus education, those are two different things, right? Education is what you learn, your skills, improving your or, you know, expanding your mindset, your understanding of the world around you, etcetera, Versus I put this on a resume, I get the following things because of it. Yale University's name for A slave trader. They will never change the name. You can have kids lying down in the street at Yale, demanding. And by the way, they wouldn't do it either, because they. They actually know this as well. Yale University is named for a slave trader. Not even a guy who just, like, owned a slave or two. A guy who built his fortune trading slaves. They will never change their name to the University of, you know, East New Haven or something.
D
Yeah.
A
Because it's not about the education. It's about the. Oh, you went there. So this whole university industrial complex is going through a reckoning right now because of the federally backed student loans, which meant they could just jack up the prices everywhere because of taking all these international students. So then they could have the international students pay, you know, these exorbitant tuitions so they could lard up the payroll with all of these administrators who don't do anything other than lecture people about DEI and, you know, pronouns. This is our whole higher education hierarchy, really, in this country is in the. In right now. A dramatic shift. And clay, that is why Harvard University is like, we got to actually give people real grades.
D
Yeah.
A
Because people are realizing that going to Harvard doesn't mean anything anymore. Well, I really mean anything. I mean, to some people it does, but to a lot of people, it's like, okay, well, you know, you're. You're a student who went to Harvard, but, you know, you're from Kenya. Was that a big help in you getting in? Like, as an international student of color? Was that. Was that something that was taken into account or, you know, you're from wherever.
D
The point is, I'm looking at the data more and more. The number. If we believe that the value of super high education is an incredible asset in the United States, a conversation we should be having way more is, why are we admitting so many foreign students at the most elite American schools?
A
It's a betrayal. It's a betrayal of our military technology and intelligence apparatus. It's a betrayal. None of these schools. But notice how they all say, we're private, but we need those federal dollars. Yeah, we need federal backing.
D
If you give up your federal dollars, take in whoever you want, they would say, well, they're paying full freight. That's why we need it. I just. I think we. And I'm doing a deep dive on this in sports because people have shined my light on. I shined a light on it for me. Do you know what percentage of full scholarships now are being given in Olympic sports to kids that are not American, that. That are going to elite schools that
A
have tennis has a huge, all a lot of these big tennis programs, which
D
I know tweeting about this recently. That bro, really, I didn't even see that.
A
Yeah, they're just bringing in all these, these basically semi pros from Slovenia. That's who's playing for like Texas A and M on the tennis team these days. Like really?
D
Yeah, yeah. John McEnroe tweeted out and I think it is a window into what the schools are doing in general sometimes overall. But he Tweeted, I think 4 of the 24 of the top tennis competitors were actually American born. So we have 20 foreign tennis players that are getting full rides at American institutions. It makes no sense.
A
It's out. That's outrageous. Why are we, why are your parents paying taxes in all these states and paying federal taxes so that foreign kids can, you know, I feel very strongly, by the way, totally disagree with Trump on this. We do not need 500,000 Chinese students. Completely disagree with the President. I don't know why he said it, but we can revisit that another time. Business insurance is just the cost of doing business for most companies. But how many different brokers does it take to be insured? Too many, right? Super sure is the first company we know of that makes sense of all the business insurance policies that owners like you must maintain to operate their business wisely. Business owners complain of multiple policies, multiple applications, different brokers, no clear view of how it all fits together. And when questions come up, it's not easy to get the clarity you need. Super sure changes that one broker for all your business insurance, backed by a team, works with you year round, not just at renewal. If you've ever stared at a policy wondering what it covers, super sure has a fine print fax tool that translates the legal jargon into plain English so you know what's covered and what's not. Go online to super sure.com buck. Get a full report on your current policies with no obligation. Find out if you're overinsured, underinsured or somewhere in between. Go to super sure.com buck one powerful platform, all your policies in one place. That's super sure.com buck paid for by Super Sure Insurance Agency LLC, a licensed insurance agency.
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with Code free meat@truenaturemeats.com after reaching over $5,000 an ounce, gold prices have softened. What does that mean for you? It means this is a buying opportunity. Whether you haven't yet diversified your savings into gold or maybe you just want to buy more, Birch Gold Group can help you. The fundamentals are still out of whack. Surging oil prices keep inflation high, the national debt is still soaring, and central banks are still buying massive quantities of gold. That's why my belief in gold hasn't changed one bit. Educate yourself. Birchgold will send you a free info kit on gold when you text my name. Buck to 9,898 98. There's no obligation, only useful information including how you can own gold in a tax sheltered retirement account with an A rating with the Better Business Bureau and tens of thousands of happy customers. See if buying the dip makes sense for you right now. Text buck to the number 9898. 98. Claim your free info kit and diversify your savings with gold. Text Buck to 9,898. 98.
D
We're about to be joined by our buddy Ryan Gardusky, who's a part of the Clay and Buck podcast network. But breaking news and it is ongoing. At this moment in Minneapolis, the Department of justice has announced 15 new indictments in the Minnesota fraud federal investigation saying they have uncovered $90 million in fraud, severance, different state managed Medicaid programs. I'm reading from Bill Malugian's Twitter feed as they were being used, quote, as personal piggy banks by the fraudsters. It's shocking to see the DOJ says Dr. Oz talking right now. I don't think it stuns any of you that many of these blue states have huge amounts of wasted dollars when it comes to fraud. And we will get into that. We'll get into a little bit of the other, I would say story that is ongoing. The DNC has released its 2024 autopsy and Ryan Garduski with us now. Ryan, I want to hit you with some of these numbers. This is from the DNC autopsy and many of you are going to remember this. In 2009, Democrats had 60 Senate seats, 256 congressional seats. They had 28 governorships, 4,082 state legislature members and 17 states where they had a trifecta, meaning they controlled all of it. Now, now when you look at it, senators, 13 in favor of Republicans, 41 different congressional seats moved in Republican direction. Governors moved in five more than 832 new Republican state legislatures, 13 states more that are now the Republican trifecta. That's a lot of data. Does it surprise you? Have Democrats learned anything? What did you take from this overall autopsy of the defeat in 2024?
E
Well, I thought the autopsy missed a lot of things. Like they didn't mention Biden's age at all in the entire autopsy. It's over 150 pages long. So I didn't read the entire thing. I skimmed a bit of it. I thought they were missing quite a bit. I think that they did nail the fact that they thought that Kamala Harris was out of touch and that the fact that she, her immigrant. Transgender. Immigrant. Transgender ad was devastating towards, towards Kamala's campaign that Trump made. That was the ad that Alex Pfeiffer made. I believe the numbers go when it comes to A level of support. Actually, that's a pretty rosy image for Democrats because if they would have done it from 2009 until 2016, those numbers would have looked actually far worse for Democrats. What we saw through most of that time, especially the Biden administration, was the realignment where states that had local Democrat control completely abolished. Remember, Mississippi in 2009 had three Democratic congressmen and was majority Democratic legislatures. So was Alabama, so was. So was Louisiana. Texas was one seat away from flipping from majority Republican to majority Democrat in 2009. That's how much the south still held on from like the 1950s and 40s of local Democratic control. And Obama just devastated that. That's really an indictment of more of Obama than it is even Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and really how, you know, how toxic Obama's presidency were to Democrats in whole regions of the country.
A
Ryan, thanks for being here with us. I know you've done some looking into the it looks like there's an age divide specifically on Iran right now and support for it and how it's all going. Can you walk us through a couple things on this one? First of all, the gop, it seems, is very united behind Trump. I'm talking now, of course, just Republican voters very united behind Trump, overall united behind him on Iran, but also kind of not happy in some percentage with how Iran is going. Like, can you help us make sense? Is this a big deal? Is this going to affect the midterms? Is everything okay? Am I being too pessimistic? Am I not being pessimistic enough? Like, explain this.
E
Well, I've never heard you not be pessimistic enough. So there's this.
F
Wow.
E
But.
D
Wow, they're salty.
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Salty. Graduski, go ahead.
E
But, but I think that Republicans and large are in very favor of the, of Trump and of the Iran war. That number is slipping, and it's especially slipping with voters under the age of 49. If you think of the entire lineage of the Iraq war, Afghanistan war, the war on terror, people before 1980 have borne much of the sacrifice of every one of those conflicts. So people born after 1980 are very, very, very pessimistic when it comes to foreign policy. They do not want nation building. They do not want wars overseas. And they've also had a part around the subject of Israel. When the New York Times looked at just Republican voters under between the ages of 18 to 49, 75% of voters over 45, largely those who get their news from the cable news, they were in favor of the War voters between the ages of 18 to 44. Other not 49, 44. 53% opposed the war to 39 who supported. And by a 2 to 1 margin, Republicans under 45 say it is not worth the cost of going to war with Iran. They're also the ones trying to pay for their mortgage and their kids tuition and all the gas prices and everything like that. What's most shocking really of all the data is the question of Israel. When they asked about what you want from a Republican presidential candidate in 2028, 70% of Republicans under the age of 45 want the Republican presidential candidate to take a different approach to Israel than Trump. Among voters over 45, it was only 20% want a different opinion than than Trump does. So it is a complete split. But we're not going to see that electorally for at least another decade because baby boomers and elder Gen Xers are by far the majority of Republican primary voters. It's going to take a little while to see that actually change out and bear out in elections, but we're probably a decade away from seeing a gigantic shift on foreign policy with the within the side of the Republican Party.
D
I'm glad you brought this up, Ryan. My middle son is 15 and he had a bunch of his friends over there playing basketball in the backyard. And these are kids that are predisposed the, the school that my kids go to, 75% Trump voters in. You know, they pull the kids in the school 75, 25, it was 80, 20, something like that. The kids voted for, for Trump. And let me give you a little bit more. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, basically the whole school wore jackets and ties to school the next day in honor of Charlie Kirk. So they are hyper online. They were very big Charlie Kirk fans. This past about 10 days ago, they sat down with me, they had a couple of questions about politics and they all wanted to know why AIPAC was so influential. Now this blew my mind because when I was 15 years old, maybe you knew the NRA. I, I didn't know any interest groups. They are seeing videos that are telling them all day long. And this is significant. I think Israel is making all the decisions in the United States. AIPAC runs our entire political organization. These are kids who were previously watching Charlie Kirk videos. Now they're watching anti Israel, anti AIPAC videos. It's showing up on all their feeds. They're asking me about it. I think it's one of the most successful anti Israel campaigns that I have ever seen. And the younger you are, the more you're seeing it, and it sounds like you're seeing it reflected now in the polls. I've seen it reflected in my own household. What's going on here?
E
Yeah. You know, I live half my life in Louisiana. It's red state, red county, America. And I, I, from personal experience, almost every person I know cannot stand Israel from now down. This is a place that there will be more Zionists in Louisiana than there would be in Isra 20 years ago. I think there is a real shift in mentality where voters feel like they got. They asked for one thing and got another. And voters feel in large part that they have very little control. So it is easy to prop up other entities and say they must have the control, because I feel like I have no control. And that's why a lot of conspiracies have flourished in the last couple of years, especially online. I think that. I think that Bibi Netanyahu, for all, I don't, I obviously don't know the man, but for all is good and bad, he has done a terrible job with PR when it comes to America and Americans and leaning so heavily into an older generation, a cable news generation, and a generation with living memory of the Holocaust, which is a big divide of it. We are talking about a generation that not only obviously didn't live through the World War II, but doesn't know anybody or has never even seen a living person who went through the Holocaust. When I was a kid, we had Holocaust survivors who would come to schools and stuff like that. That doesn't exist anymore. So as all those things escape living memory, relationships change and we do not. And also change within the, within communities that are not uber evangelical. Why do we. Why are we so loyal to this nation? Why does Israel have a nation specifically created by an identity? Why don't we have that? There's a lot of anger and, or frustration or worry or concern or, or questions about that. And so that is really the divide is. I think a big part of it is living memory with anyone who ever existed from the Holocaust, living memory of any of these things. And it exposes people to a lot of questions that I think that supporters of Israel really haven't thought of how to answer and talk about.
A
Speaking of friend Ryan Gardusky, his podcast is. It's a numbers game. And speaking of the numbers, Brian, congrats on doing great numbers on the podcast recently. Growing, growing month, month, month after month. And I just wanted to. Because I want to take us into a somewhat, somewhat happy. Well, yeah, I'm Gonna take us into a happy direction, I hope. I think. Is the redistricting situation looking like it might be the X factor that allows Republicans to keep the House in your mind, is that, is that, is it powerful enough that it could do that or is that giving it too much credit or what?
E
It's powerful enough to keep Republicans where I think that if they lose the House, they lose us by 10 seats at most. Right now, where it's a 10 seat majority in either which way, I think that the ceiling for Democrats is lower than it ever has been. I don't think that there's a way really for them to get to 230 seats or, you know, maybe 228 at most is what we're looking at. 230 be a stretch, maybe a few seats flip here or there's. But Republicans need to do a little bit better on polling. Gas prices need to come down. The economy needs to get better for people. If that happens, then yes, Republicans can keep the House. It is that significant. But as long as gas prices are high, I still think Democrats have the favor, but they would have like a 90% chance now. They probably have like a 65% chance of keeping, of winning the house.
D
Let's talk AI for a minute. There's been a lot of talk about the UnitedHealthcare CEO's assassination. What are you seeing as it pertains to AI? And I know you've got a discussion surrounding the danger. I know a lot of these AI guys and gals, unfortunately they have huge security teams that are following them around now because they're starting to be a demonized. Demonization, I think of a significant level of big tech associated with it. What do you see?
E
So I did a whole every episode this week on a numbers game podcast on. My podcast for the Clam Buck network is about AI. It's about data centers. I bring on journalists and experts to really just go through what is nonsense, what is the truth, and what's really in the middle that we could talk about. The numbers against AI are so aggressive now, shift so aggressively. And what I predict in my, in this episode that's coming out tomorrow is I think over the next three years, a serious assassination against a tech executive is not impossible. You know, the Luigi Mangine own the. How he is treated by the far left and how he is worshiped and glorified and almost treated as a saint is something to behold in the sense that they weren't repulsed by a murderer. And in the last, you know, couple months, we've had two assassination attempts against Sam Altman. They were both unsuccessful, but they got a Molotov cocktail through his window of his house or in front of his house. It is not. As long as you go outside, you are absolutely under risk if you are high profile enough. I don't know if there's a security team in the world that could change that. I think that the people like Kevin o' Leary who have been going to BAT and saying data centers are good and whatnot, I think they have a lot of the wrong messengers. And as for every time that you have someone say something smart like Jeff Bezos was on cnbc, had a really, really strong interview why AI was good. You also have Dario Modi from Blank Anthropic. He's going on and saying 50% unemployment and a complete apocalypse of new jobs. They've created very bad PR for themselves. And they've had. And having, you know, billionaires that look like the bad guy from a superhero movie, making the case for them is not really the best option. Lex Luthor would not be selling the best option for them. I think it's really coming to a boiling point. I think that there's a lot of anger and it's getting worse as the generations are getting younger and anxiety is overwhelmingly of can I find a job or is AI going to take my job from me?
A
But what about the dog robot that we're all going to have that will bark and will never leave us and maybe can go fetch things for you? There's going to be upside here too, Ryan. Don't forget that.
E
Did you see the robot that was going to.
A
It was.
E
The guy wanted a beer from. And he's sitting on the couch and the robot lifted the refrigerator and brought it to. Brought it to the guy.
F
And I.
E
And I was like, why didn't they just take the beer out of the refrigerator? Why they left the entire refrigerator.
D
Did you see the robot that was trying to Michael Jackson dance? That did not go well. That. That also went viral. I might be the only person who's optimistic about AI on the planet, by the way.
A
No, I'm. I'm actually optimistic about it. I think. I think people are. Yeah. I think this is like a lot of Chicken Little stuff personally.
F
But they are.
A
But.
E
But the AI companies are creating their own bad pr.
D
That is to a large extent true.
E
And, and the fact that they will not allow. They don't want any regulations on the industry at all. And what I said in the podcast, was this AI supposed to do all this great Stuff on health. Right. They're supposed to be able to scan our bodies and get results. That's great. That's wonderful. I'm totally for that. Who owns those scans, though? Does the AI company. And then can they sell them? Or does the doctor. Is there any HIPAA require regulation?
A
Those are real questions, fair questions, real answer.
E
And the. And. And AI companies screaming it's you're going to. You want China to win is not the appropriate answer if you want to have an adult conversation. Because if what happened? This is my big fear. If they mythos did not get released their newest mythos because they were afraid of hacking. Let's say they do break an AI system.
A
30 seconds. Ryan, we got to go. Go ahead.
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If we have a cataclysmic attack or cataclysmic event because of AI, we will have stupid people making regulations. We should have smart people ahead of time. That's what you want and that's why we should have this conversation now.
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Oh, smart people. Smart people making regulations. Good luck with that one. Ryan Garduski, everybody. Go check out. It's a numbers game. He's great. He's brilliant. You'll love it. Go check it out. Um, look, there are burglaries in places all over America. There are home invasions. Bad stuff happens. Uh, there was a really nasty home invasion here in Miami beach some months back that really shook up some friends of mine who actually lived in the building. So it can just happen anywhere. And you want to be prepared. You need to be able to protect yourself. This is where sabre comes in. Sabre is spelled sabre and the website is sabre protect.com. sabre has been manufacturing great non lethal self protection tools for decades. They're very effective, like the Sabre home defense launcher. Carrie and I have this here at home. Sabre home defense launcher is easy to use. Delivers seven powerful pepper impact projectiles to more than most competitors. Right now you can save up to 15% on select bundles. When safety matters, America chooses Sabre, number one brand trusted by police and millions worldwide. Don't wait for a close call. Get protection now@sabreprotect.com that's s a b r e protect.com or call 844-824-SAFE. We got a couple things right off the bat here. Cuba. Looking at this as a, well, a moment in time where it seems increasingly clear to everybody that something's gonna happen here, something's gonna get. Something's gonna change. And we will look at that with you momentarily. We've also got Sunny Hostin stepping into Clay's sports Analysis Thunderdome, which I definitely want to hear his take on that one. But in the meantime, this is actually over at Fox News. They had a breaking news on this one. The great Harris Faulkner here reading the breaking news. I just want to let you hear it. This is about what just happened in Minnesota. Listen to this play.
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32 breaking news. A Minnesota judge has just sentenced the mastermind behind defeating our future fraud scheme, Amy Bach. She just got more than 41 years in prison. The prosecution is asking for a 50 year sentence and her defense about three years. So that's somewhere in the middle that they got that. But closer to what obviously the prosecution wanted. The scheme involved theft of nearly $250 million in Covid funding. That money was meant to feed hungry children.
A
So there's. I got a lot here on this, Clay, because people are paying attention to this fraud thing. Now, first of all, you know you have Mamdani clapping back, if you will, at Jeff Bezos saying, I know a bunch of teachers who disagree and they think if your taxes, meaning Bezos, were higher, they'd be in better shape. That's wrong. Mamdani is an economic illiterate, but all communists are economic illiterates. They just have a religion of power and taking from other people. And that's all that really matters. But Clay, I gotta say, people when they see things like a 250, $50 million fraud, and this person is just now, what is this? Years later, six years later, having justice catch up with her, but that you could steal $250 million so easily and such a large sum of money. And this isn't a one off, this is. Lots of people are stealing millions and millions and millions of dollars from the government. And Democrats want to talk about raising our taxes. Democrats say that we're not paying our fair share. If you're a high earner, I, it just goes to like, what are we even doing here, folks? $250 million claim, by the way, 40 years in prison. I think Madoff got 150. But 40 years in prison for a fraud, for a nonviolent crime is a long prison sentence.
D
Make it more. I mean, I, this is, this is really the key. And I give credit to Senator Ron Johnson, who has just hammered this. And it is so important and it probably is something that should be said every day, every hour of every day. We have a. You were talking about this off air. $40 trillion budget deficit now. And every year we're adding one and a half trillion, $2 trillion to that budget deficit. And when the Tea Party got fired up and started. It was when we were approaching $10 trillion in national debt. So just a little bit of a math for you. From the founding of the country and the signing of the Constitution and federal government being able to borrow money all the way up to 2010, we had run up a $10 trillion national debt since 2010. So what is that? 16 years? In the last 16 years, we have added $30 trillion in national debt. Let me repeat that. The whole history of the United states up to 2010, we ran up a 10 trillion dollar national debt. We have added 30 trillion dollars in national debt in the last 16 years. Both parties have done it, everybody's guilty, and there's just a magical era as if there is no consequence. And it would be one thing if a lot of us sat around and said, you know what? The government's really good at things. But I thought, Jeff Bezos, maybe we can pull it back again. I encourage you to go watch the whole Jeff Bezos interview that he did with cnbc. He pointed out that New York City, Buck, spends an average of $44,000 a year per public school student. $44,000 a year, and they get awful results. If New York City had unbelievable outcomes, maybe we would sit back and say, hey, you know what? They actually don't test well. The performance of the average New York City public school kid is not great. And it's way more even than kids get spent in Chicago. And Jeff Bezos, we can grab that ran through all the math. We're not only spending money like drunken sailors, we're getting awful results. And Buck, much of it is stolen. So it would be better if we just cut half of all government spending. I don't think there would be a negative result if our budget just got cut in half. And what is our budget now? 7 trillion? I think if we went to 3 and a half trillion and we just said, hey, we're cutting half of everything, I think that most people out there would have almost no significant impact. It wouldn't change average education. It wouldn't change average health care. And by the way, don't even get me started on Social Security. And the way that we're applying it and the fact that it's not going to be there for me and Buck, who are putting a lot of money into Social Security. If you're in your 40s, if you're certainly, if you're in your 30s, Social Security is not going to exist for you. So you're putting all this money in there and it's just a broken system and it's not going to work for you and they're giving you inflation era returns and that's only if you live long enough to get it. It's the fact that nobody goes after Social Security. To me, in terms of the brokenness of the program and the fact that it's an awful deal for most sane, reasonable, responsible Americans. It's crazy to me that we, that we have just accepted that Social Security as if it's a great program for a lot of people. It's a disaster really. You're just rolling the dice and hoping that you live a long time. If you die beforehand, you get nothing.
A
That's me on the soapbox at some point. No, that was good. When you're fired up, it's good. Speaking of fired up, we're going to get that sunny hostin clip about that go. But we're almost at 40 trillion in debt everybody. And the reality is that when it's clear that there's a real crisis because of the debt and a lot of it is just confidence, confidence that investors have confidence that the rest of the world has, including China for example, which buys a lot of our Treasuries and some of these other countries buy U.S. treasuries. A loss of investor confidence could trigger a major recession. And if you have a, you know, if treasury auctions all of a sudden don't give us the kind of financial wizardry that we've gotten used to our whole standard of living and the way that America operates, it all changes very rapidly. And if you're asking me what is the biggest other than internal divisions from endless wide open illegal and too much legal immigration. Another conversation for another time. But a too rapidly changing American population from outsiders and the left becoming so insane that you start to get, you start to wonder how far we are from like separatist movements and things like that forming. That's one, that's a real threat that I see in this country. I don't see it tomorrow, but I see it over the next 20 to 30 years. I think also the debt is a real threat to our standard of. I'm not saying that the debt is going to in the middle of the night show up like the boogeyman and capture you and you know, take you down into like the netherworld or something. But that would be kind of a bad horror movie. Like the national debt comes for you now, you know, but, but it's like
D
Stranger Things except debt.
A
It kind of is it kind of like the national debt Kind of is a giant smoke monster, except it's going after America, not a bunch of little kids. Wait, is it a smoke monster?
F
No, that's lost.
A
Whatever. I get these things.
D
Smoke monster is great from loss. No, it's the Demogorgons, primarily. There you go.
F
Nerd.
D
Nerd alert in Stranger Things.
A
And I'm just saying that we have shown no willingness to look at this seriously, and I think it's one of the biggest problems that we have. But why are we talking about this? Also because of the fraud situation. What does it tell people who are busting their asses and who are calling in and saying, hey, I work a 9 to 5 or maybe a 9 to 7 or. Or a 5am to noon shift or whatever you're doing, all of you, and you're saying, you know, buck, I'm. I pay my bills. I don't run up big debts. But, man, is it getting tight on the monthly budget. Man of the gas price plus the food price, plus the, you know, the cost of a mortgage, the cost of money, the amount of money I had to have to put into this house, all these things. And then you hear there are people that just get magic money from the government, hundreds of billions of dollars for pretending that they're feeding children. I mean, that's what just happened here. $250 million. If it were $250,000 of fraud, I would say, you know, ugh, no one's really paying attention. $250 million. It just feels like we have an unserious government when it comes to our finances, to our money, and to the treasury. It feels like no one pays attention. No one cares. The whole thing is a scam. Meanwhile, you know, I get audited by New York State every second that I spend in New York City. You know, it's just. It's like if you play by the rules, the rules are everywhere and constantly just, you know, just. Just chipping away at you and all these crazy. Or you can just get $200 million for pretending to feed starving kids, and no one seems to figure this out.
D
What did I see? If you can, Producer Ali Fine. I. I don't remember my audit. I believe that I owed $35. The IRS came after me, and I think it was like, $35.75 that I had underpaid my taxes. So. And by the way, that is a tiny percentage of the tax dollars that I had paid. They told me. I think I settled. They were like, hey, you underpaid your taxes? Accountants. God knows what I paid in accountant fees to do my audit.
A
You thought you were going to get away with half of a Chick Fil a order on Uncle Sam's dime.
D
Clay, imagine how much money was spent for the government to collect $35.75 back from me. And by the way, I'm sure that I didn't actually owe it, but I think I wrote it for, you know, 36 bucks, rounded up just to help out, right? And meanwhile all these people out here are running hundred million dollar, billion dollar fraud and we can't catch it. The government can catch me, they think not paying $35 that I owe. And they can't catch people not paying, stealing 35 million. I just think it's about, it's about who you want to focus on. And they told me as soon as we took this show buck, they said get ready to get audited every year. And I get audited every year. By the way, here's Bezos. Especially when Joe Biden was in office. Here's Bezos talking about what would happen using the New York City school budget as an example, cut 34. The New York City school system, right? They spend $44,000 per student. 44,000. That's 30% more per student than other big cities like Chicago, Louisiana and Boston. And it's three times as more than Miami and Houston. And by the way, New York City doesn't get better outcomes. So what this, Listen, let me, let me just say if, if, if we ran Amazon the way New York City runs their school system, right, Your packages would take six weeks to arrive. We'd have to charge you a hundred dollar delivery fee. And then when the package did finally arrive, it have the wrong item in it anyway.
A
Yeah, yeah.
D
I mean, I just think the math here we need, and I give credit to Bezos, I want more super smart guys who are good at math looking at the way that our government spends money and calling it out like this. Because Bezos had to. Whatever you think about Bezos, I don't even know what Bezos's current politics are. He had to make a profit, right? He has to run a business to make a profit. How many of our elected officials do you think have ever run a business that had to make a profit in their lives?
A
I'll make it easier for you. How many elected officials who are Democrats have done that? Because I can actually think of Republicans who have, who come from business. You got a lot of Democrats who just come from running for office, basically running for.
D
They come from the public sector. Government. Public sector. They've never actually had to sit down and make a profit ever. And there used to be Democrats that had some business backing. Now there are none.
A
Yeah, this reminds me of the discussion in Ghostbusters when Columbia University kicks them out and Venkman is telling everybody that it's going to be ok, but then Ray is like, I've worked in the private sector. They expect results. You remember that? Oh, yeah, yeah. It's real. By the way, Ghostbusters, very pro capitalism movie, very anti regulation. Who are the bad guys? The epa. The epa.
D
They're trying to keep the ghosts out of the, out of the atmosphere and the EPA comes, shuts them down.
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Steve Eubanks joins us now. Sports journalist, author of God Ball first book to seriously examine the modern surgeon of public Christian faith in American sports. Going to get to that in a moment. But first, you have six kids and 14 grandkids. Steve, I don't know how you had time to write a book.
F
Well, geometric progressions work, clay. I mean once you've had six kids, the next step gets it's a lot bigger.
D
That is awesome. Well, congratulations on that. Now I feel like a lot of people that are listening to us right now have grown accustomed to the amount of athletes that mention their religion that thank God in a post game interview. Sometimes in a pregame interview, athletes are some of the most religious public figures anywhere in the country by far. But it doesn't really get talked about that much. Where did the inspiration, where did the idea to write this book come from?
F
Well, I think it came from what you just talked about. Like you, I watch a lot of sports and you couldn't watch a pregame press conference or a post game interview without seeing people speak about their faith. And I was thinking to myself, surely I'm not the only person who is seeing this. And as I began to do some research and look into it, we'd always had it. I mean, going all the way back to Roger Staubach. We had athletes who would, who would say they wanted to thank their Lord and Savior after a round or after a game. But it became something that grew exponentially and really over the course of the last six years or so, it exploded. And you, you can't again watch an event now without seeing the first thing out of a player's mouth being speaking about their religion and their faith.
D
We were just talking about the Southeastern Conference and the fact that Sunny Hostin wants there to be a boycott. I wrote a book inside of the University of Tennessee's football se season and the amount of prayer before and after games really stood out to me. I don't know that your average fan notices it that much, but whether you can have a pregame prayer has turned into a big debate, unfortunately. Fortunately, the results have actually Been very positive. What can you tell us about that? I. I know as a high school coach out on the west coast, if I remember, that they got fired over this. Yeah.
F
And I'm going to tell you, two things happened and you guys talked about it in the first hour. The radicalization of these athletes around Covid cannot be understated because they realized that everything that they had worked for, their entire lives could be taken away from them. And as a result of that, they felt like they, they really owed it to their fans and to themselves to go out and talk about the things that are important. And for many of them, the things that they realize are deeply important is their faith. And so they were going to use their platforms to talk about that. That coincided with the Supreme Court decision that you're just talking about. Kennedy vs. Bremerton Board of Education. It was out in Washington. High school coach, he goes to midfield to pray. Some students see him, they join him at midfield. The school system fires him for doing this. He takes that case all the way to the supreme court. It takes 10 years and he wins. And as a result of winning, the. The rules for all of that sort of thing in terms of prayer in public settings like a football game, have changed. And I think those two things coalesced to bring about the confidence that these athletes have now to go out and
D
speak about this, you interviewed a bunch of high profile athletes, among them Scotty Scheffler, Kirk Cousins, Jonathan Isaac, coaches Dabo Sweeney, somebody I know pretty well works with me at Outkick, Riley Gaines. What did those athletes tell you about the importance of religion?
F
It's the most important thing. What they have realized is, especially when you have worked as hard as they have to reach the pinnacle, you win the trophy, you win the championship, you get the ring. The hollowness that comes immediately after that, where you're asking yourself, really, is this it? I've worked my entire life and I got this euphoria and it was momentary, but what's next? What's after this? And a lot of them have realized that what's after this is far more important than what has come before it. And so that's why they feel like they are the messengers now to go out and preach the gospel.
D
People, some maybe even listening to us right now, will say mixing God in sports feels frivolous. Because why in the world does God tell care in any way about a sporting event? How would you respond?
F
God cares about his people. And the athletes today are driving the culture. I mean, look, take anybody under the age of 30, maybe under the age of 40, and ask them to name five prominent religious figures. You're going to get zero. I mean, there's a zero percent chance they can do that. They may name one. You ask them to name five prominent athletes, they can do it in a second. They might be able to name 50. So athletes are driving the culture. And as a result of that, they're the people that, that they recognize that. And they're using their platforms to spread a far more important message than who won the game last night.
D
Tim Tebow. We were talking about SEC football. I know he played in the NFL, but everybody who's a college football fan knows Tim Tebow. I would submit that he may be the best of the modern era, almost in the entirety of the 21st century. In terms of using the sports to help spread his faith. I think he's done a pretty phenomenal job of it. Does he jump out to you as one that may be at the absolute apex of what you're talking about?
F
He was, he was really one of the original drivers of this. Prior to him, there were a lot of Christian athletes, but they didn't feel comfortable going public. They were, they were afraid they were going to be called Bible beaters. It was kind of a slur that was used against these athletes that tried to go out and make these public professions. Tebow was one of them. And if you will recall, there was a lot of controversy and derision when he would go out and kneel, what became known as t bowing. Now, you can't watch an event where that doesn't happen. I mean, just go down the list. Trayvon henderson, Aaron Judge, C.J. stroud, Fernando Mendoza, Bucs favorite running back, Saquon Barkley. I mean, these guys are all. These guys are all out there speaking about their faith openly. So you can't watch an event now where that doesn't happen. And I think Tebow was one of the original drivers.
D
He was the og when you think about this in the book, I encourage people to check it out. I want to make sure I get it right. God ball. Steve Eubanks, when you, you mentioned Tebow, all of these other things. I think one reason that athletes are outspoken is it's hard to be on the public stage. I like the example you gave where you win a Super bowl, you win the national championship, whatever the apex of your capability is, there can be a hollowness that follows that pursuit if there isn't a foundation under girding it. And I, I feel like, particularly in the social media, age where we are suffused, all of us, oftentimes in negativity. And if it's not negativity, it's envy. That the ability to have a strong foundation that is your base matters now maybe more than it ever has before.
F
You know, you were talking to Ryan in the last hour about a lot of the anxiety that young people are feeling right now, and they are. That can go. And because of that, that is led by a collapse in institutional trust. Now, that can go one of two ways. You can either be radicalized by that on a bad side, as we talked about with the assassinations, and at least talks of that, or you can go the other way toward faith. And I think the athletes are attempting to move people in that positive direction because it's the one institution over two millennia that continues to be strong.
D
Last question for you. Young men seem to have more of a religious bent of late than young women. Did you find that to be true some in the world of athletics? And you've got six kids and I believe it was 14 grandkids. Might have been 16 grandkids. You got a bunch. I'm curious if you're seeing that in any of your own family. And do you think women are coming to this later, or do you think women maybe are grappling with this new societal norm of what it means to be a woman, maybe even as much or more than men are?
F
I think it is men that are driving this at the moment. Now, again, I say that there were you mentioned Riley Gaines, who has become a good friend and was tremendous in helping me with this book. I talked to a number of LPGA players who are very strong in their faith and very outspoken. So they are out there. But the numbers are overwhelming on the men's side. And I think it's because they recognize their role as leaders. And that goes back to Christian foundations as well. Men are supposed to lead in the church and in the family. And as a result of that, these guys are stepping forward and doing that, but doing so in the love that was preached in the gospel.
D
Outstanding stuff. I hope you have a good long Memorial Day weekend with all those kids and grandkids. And I would encourage everybody out there that father of six, grandfather of 14, author of God Ball, Steve Eubanks. I'm assuming people can find it everywhere. Amazon's always an easy place to go. What will people find if they read this book?
F
They're going to find out how this revival started, why athletes and why now.
D
That is a good tease. We appreciate the time thank you, sir.
F
Nice life.
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In this episode, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton dissect major stories in news, politics, and culture with their signature blend of sharp analysis and humor. Key topics include the conservative realignment post-2024, higher education’s reckoning with grade inflation and admissions policies, the shifting stance on foreign policy among young Republicans, a deep dive into government spending and fraud, and the growing role of public faith in American sports. Special guests offer insight into political trends and cultural shifts.
(02:50 – 05:28)
“The status quo is not going to be what happens. Trump administration is saying they’re in the final stages of negotiations… We’ll see.” — Buck (03:34)
(05:29 – 16:29)
Harvard is moving away from grade inflation, signaling a larger change in US higher education.
Standardized tests briefly went optional during 2020 (“it’s racist to standardized test!”) but are returning due to “admitting people who didn’t have the ability to do the bare minimum.”
The “elite school credential” has been commodified, and with increasing access and grade inflation, its real value is declining.
Rising international enrollment and legacy admits further dilute educational meritocracy.
Prediction: Many mid-tier colleges will shut down or merge due to lack of value versus cost.
(22:16 – 50:00)
DOJ announces 15 new indictments in Minnesota for a $90M Medicaid fraud scheme, using “state-managed Medicaid programs as personal piggy banks.”
Annual U.S. national debt growth is unsustainable, now around $40 trillion—tripled since 2010.
Critique of government spending and inefficiency. Jeff Bezos cited as a critic: NYC spends $44,000/pupil with poor education outcomes.
The IRS is relentless with taxpayers but misses massive fraud:
Guest: Ryan Girdusky (23:10 – 38:15)
DNC’s 2024 autopsy: Democrats' loss of ground since 2009’s “supermajority”—data breakdown provided.
GOP voters, especially under age 45, are less hawkish and less supportive of the Iran war and traditional US-Israel alliances.
Social media feeds and anti-Israel content increasingly influence conservative youth mainstream.
Guest: Steve Eubanks, Author of “God Ball” (58:26 – 68:29)
Surge in public Christian faith among American athletes—ESPN moments, postgame interviews, etc.
Tim Tebow cited as a cultural trailblazer, making public faith mainstream in sports.
The deeper rationale: athletes are culture drivers, and faith provides existential fulfillment missing from material success.
Male athletes in particular are leading the return to religious expression: “It is men that are driving this at the moment…numbers are overwhelming on the men’s side. And I think it’s because they recognize their role as leaders.” — Eubanks (67:20)
| Timestamps | Segment / Topic | |:-------------- |:-----------------------------------------------------------| | 02:50–05:28 | Trump’s Energy Policy Address, Cuba/Trump Admin, Massie loss| | 05:28–16:29 | Harvard grade inflation; state of US higher education | | 16:29–18:00 | Closing thoughts on higher ed; foreign admissions, athlete scholarships | | 22:16–24:29 | Breaking: Minnesota $90M Medicaid fraud | | 24:30–33:51 | Guest: Ryan Girdusky (Democrats’ decline; GOP realignment; generational splits) | | 33:51–38:15 | Dangers/Perceptions of AI and Tech Executive Security | | 40:13–46:19 | MN fraud sentencing; US debt debate; government waste | | 46:19–53:14 | IRS-targeting of individuals vs. real fraud/waste; Jeff Bezos on education spending | | 58:26–68:29 | Steve Eubanks on “God Ball”: Faith in sports and cultural visible resurgence |
This episode is a lively, critical, but sometimes surprisingly hopeful deep dive into how political demographics, culture wars, institutional rot, and faith are evolving in America. You’ll come away better informed on why college admissions and grading is about to radically shift, why fraud and waste feel so pervasive in national discourse, how foreign policy divides are brewing inside the Republican base, and why there’s a new surge of public Christian expression—especially from male athletes—in American sports culture.
Listeners can jump to the following segments for particular interests:
Clay and Buck remain focused on piercing the day’s headlines with wit, skepticism, and hard data—often leaving mainstream narratives in the dust.