← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
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Congressman Tim Burchett
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Clay Travis
Welcome in Wednesday Edition Clay Travis Buck Sexton Show. I hope all of you are having fabulous weeks so far. We are here hopefully to make that a bit better than it otherwise would be. The government is shut down. What is the impact we will discuss. Buck is not shut down, but he is in Taiwan right now and he is continuing to to travel around over there. He'll be back Monday on the program, just FYI. So you have got me as you have on Monday and Tuesday, solo. For the rest of this week we will take your calls, we will take your talk backs. We will dive into a variety of different pertinent subjects. We're going to be joined by Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett. He was listening to our discussion about why congressional stock trading is is not banned and he has some strong thoughts on that. I'm sure. We'll talk about the shutdown as well. And then at 2 o' clock our friend Tutor Dixon, I just saw her last week speaking when I was speaking up in Michigan. She will join us. She's part of the Clay and Buck Podcast network. We had a really good time hanging out up at Mackinac island where the Michigan Republican Party was having their by annual event at the Grand Hotel up there. So that was a lot of fun. And I was there last week. I think I was there last week. Everything runs together, but I guess it was two weeks ago. We will dive into a lot of topics, but off the top, the shutdown is underway. And I got to be honest with y', all, you know, and I think Buck and I have talked about this quite a bit on the program. We are not of the opinion that the shutdown is ultimately that big of a story because eventually it will get resolved and we'll just add on more debt. But I do want to give you some historical analogy of where we are. Since 1976, the US government has shut down 20 times. So if you are out there and you're thinking this just feels like the same plot over and over again, Groundhog Day. In many ways it is. There were no shutdowns between 1995 and 2013, but three have occurred in the 12 year since. The longest one was in Trump 1.0 and that lasted 34 days back in 2018. Really the essence of this shutdown, just so you know, is a battle over whether there should be an extension of COVID healthcare policies which were put in place by Democrats as part of their massive blockbuster out of control spending bills that they forced through in the COVID era. And the reason why this spending cost is up now is because they pegged it for a relatively short period of time so that it did not continue to cost money going forward. Now, this is me, and you have heard me go off on this quite a lot. The healthcare system in the United States is broken. Every single one of you listening to me right now is nodding along because it is just a broken marketplace. It makes no sense the way we have designed it. It is the most inefficient and the least effective part of, I would argue, the American economic system. It is anti capitalistic in many ways. It is profoundly broken. This spending package that the Democrats are insisting on continuing would add up over the next decade, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, to around $450 billion. And much of it is a subsidy of that is in a large extent unnecessary. And so this, let me give you a little bit of a background of exactly what's going on. Try to simplify this for you. So we begin with the foundational point that the health care system in this country is broken. And anybody who's ever had to get on the phone with their insurance provider knows exactly what I'm talking about. Studies suggest that one reason our health care system is broken, probably the primary one, is nobody has any idea what anything costs. And so you can't make a rational decision in your life about whether or not you need an MRI or whether you need a need to go to the hospital or not, because a lot of times you don't have the information as you, not a doctor as, as necessary. And what has happened is doctors wildly overprescribe because much of this is paid for by insurance. And patients to a large extent are not making choices that are rational. I'll give you an example that that happened recently in my family. I think it was a few years ago. My wife was in a car accident. She was fine. She was able to get to the hospital and make sure everything was okay without needing an ambulance. But the ambulance, the police officer told her, hey, the ambulance can take you, but it will end up costing you thousands and thousands of dollars. Or you can take yourself to the, to the hospital on your own. How many people actually make that choice? How many people actually in much of your life? And I've talked about this in my own life, when it came to having our kids, we went to go tour the hospitals. Nobody could tell me what a delivery cost. Went to all these different hospitals. They're competing to see who has the fastest wi fi. They're competing to See who has bamboo floors, who has the best flat screen televisions in the delivery area, what sort of security there is to make sure that your babies are safe. All those things are fine. They don't compete on price. I just said to each of them, hey, what's this going to cost me? None of them could tell me. I mentioned to you, I think, last week, because I think it's a really instructive analogy, that I went and took one of our kids when he had strep throat. My wife took the other one. She was on the ball, knew where our healthcare card was, knew exactly who our healthcare provider was, turned it over when we checked in. When she checked in, I didn't have any idea where the healthcare card was. Somehow I couldn't find it in my wallet. I think we had switched. And my incompetence meant that we were billed as not having health care. And we paid a fraction of what my wife paid for the exact same medical treatment because we had health insurance. It's all broken. All of it is broken. And I could get on a pedestal and talk about this forever. The fact that we run health care as someone who has owned a business and has had to pay for healthcare, the fact that healthcare is connected to employment is crazy. Uh, I have been a freelancer who was not an employee. Um, and the fact that I had to go out into the healthcare marketplace and figure out what policy was the right one for me was incredibly complicated too. Insurance is the only thing all of us have to pay for that we hope to never use. And the entire insurance industry is totally broken in conjunction with health care. We spend way more than any country in the world and we do not get the best results. And the data reflects that. You could eliminate half of all medical treatments and there wouldn't be any change in life expectancy in this country. So my general proposition is I don't want to take anything. I know Tylenol was in the news. I get made fun of. I don't want to take any drugs, I don't want to take anything. I feel fortunate. I've been pretty healthy in the grand scheme of things. And I think that they wildly overprescribe and over medicate us as a whole. And yet simultaneously, the people who actually do need health care, the people who are actually sick, the people who are in desperate need of health care, cannot get it. And the people who don't need it don't feel like we're getting any kind of rational health care that makes common sense. Ok, so that's where we really are. And in essence, much like our tax code, because I would say, number one broken system in America's healthcare, number two is tax code. They're both so fundamentally broken that you would actually do better if you just tore them both down and built a functional, rational health care system and tax policy. Instead, we have just continued to add layer upon layer of a broken foundation. And as a result, if you want to use sort of a building metaphor, we have constantly shifting in the winds, tall buildings with no structural stability, and they'll fall over all the time, and they make absolutely no sense. So. God. Hey, happy optimistic Wednesday, everybody. We've got two hugely broken systems that threaten the very fabric of our democratic republic because as we have an aging population, the cost that we're going to have to put out for healthcare is going to be borne increasingly by a dwindling number of young people in America. And the budget and the math just doesn't add up. So all of that is the foundational issue that is in play here. And one of the real unfortunate aspects of, of of our democratic republic is once something is created, once the government creates a project, it almost never leaves. It just goes on the ledger as a cost long into the future. And Democrats want to provide healthcare for as many people as possible, including many different illegal immigrants. And ultimately, this is paid for by all of you out there that are working hard. Every single day, they're reaching into your pocket, they're taking your money out, and they're giving it to someone very often who is not even an American citizen. But this is all part and parcel of a broken health care system. Obamacare is collapsing, by the way, because it's predicated on giving insurance companies more money. And the entire concept of insurance is they have to get tons of people who are never going to need it in order to pay for the people that actually do need it. And young, healthy people, a lot of them just say, I don't need health insurance. And as a result, the insurance companies don't get that money. And as we have an aging society, the profit margins of insurance companies going down in the future. But I just come back to that analogy. I would be paying far less for healthcare if I had no insurance at all. So would most of you. That is a broken system. And my analogy there of walking in with a kid who has strep throat one day after we got insurance for the kid who did have a strep throat, I paid. My wife knows the exact dollars because she's still fed up about it. Because my incompetence actually benefited the family because we had to pay less money, but we paid a fraction as uninsured walking into a clinic patients of what a health care insured family would pay. So it's not only that the system is broken, it's that people who are actually trying to do the right thing are getting gouged and people who have no interest whatsoever in buying in at all. They're essentially getting free health care. You pay a lot. Many people pay virtually nothing at all. Okay, so that is the essence of why we have a government shutdown. Because Democrats want to give more people who do not pay taxes free health care. And Republicans are saying, wait, that was a Covid era policy that we put in place. It should expire. Thankfully, now that Covid is over. So that is the essence of what is going on and we will see exactly how long it takes for this to be resolved. I suspect that many of you out there will be like me and there will be absolutely no impact to your life whatsoever by the fact that the government has shut down. In fact, a lot of you are saying, I wouldn't mind the government shutting down for a long time. First time I heard the stat, it didn't make a lot of sense. But when you dig into the details, unfortunately it's very true. Across our country, a home burglary happens every 30 seconds on average. 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Clay Travis
Welcome back in Clay Travis BUCK SEXTON show. We are joined now by Congressman Tim Burchett of the great state state of Tennessee. Government is shut down. We're going to get into that. But Congressman, you wanted to come on because you're as fired up as Buck and I were about the amount of stock trading that some of your colleagues are engaged in. And not just stock trading. Some of the best timing that has ever existed in the history of the world. I mean, Nancy Pelosi is Warren Buffett level investing savant. Isn't this just even if it's not actually improper, it certainly has the appearance of impropriety, which I think demeans the overall value of trust in public servants. I think you probably agree it's kind of crazy, isn't it?
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Congressman Tim Burchett
I agree 100%. And thank you so much for letting me come on with you. It's an honor. Congress is broke and it is crooked as a dog's leg, brother. There is no other explanation. When a congressman can make 600% return on their investment and you know, and it day in and day out or 300 or 200 or whatever, I mean, just go on the unusual Wells website and read the top hundred. It's unbelievable. It is unfreaking believable. And people are making a living now of just following Nancy Pelosi stock trades. Yeah, Warren Buffett needs, Warren Buffett needs to go to the, go to the front porch and sit there and play with his grandkids or something and just turn it over to Pelosi. It is unbelievable. And we can't even get the bill in committee. Neither party. They're gutless. They are gutless and it is shady as all get out. And you know, I have a, I had a $12,000 portfolio that my buddy Tommy Saller managed. Everybody needs a dad gum mutual fund, and that's what we ought to do. And I get sick and tired hearing people in Congress say, oh, I'm sacrificing so much. Well, dad Gummett, go home and let somebody else do it. That's not sacrificing so much. America's tired of this garbage. It is broke. You've called it out. We've called it out. And here's what's going to happen if we do get this bill to the floor. And Lona has represented Anaplane Alona. She's going to try to. If we don't get this bill out that everybody's been working on, which is a little too big and a little too beautiful, in my opinion. But still, she's going to take my bill, which is a clean bill, just says no stock trading of, you know, for members of Congress unless it's a mutual fund and your. And your siblings and your wife and spouse, whatever, And. And that's it. That should be it. You know, make the dad Gum sacrifice. It's crazy. I, you know, I make skateboards. It's. And I'm 61 years old and I haven't broke my neck yet. I made one for Tulsi Gabbard a couple weeks ago, and she loved it. But, yeah, I always tell people when I work on these skateboards, it's cheaper than a psychiatrist. It's good therapy for me. But people want to buy them, so I'm trying to sell them. I went to the ethics people, and I literally have to get. I'm getting a business plan together. I've had to. I've had to hire an attorney if I want to sell skateboards. But dad gamut. If I want to do insider trading, just become a member of Congress and it rains on you.
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Clay Travis
It is wild. And, you know, I was going off on this congressman because my thing is I now have resources. I've been in a position where I had nothing and actually owed a lot more money. Go to law school. It's not cheap. I owed a lot more money than I had assets for a while. But just doing what you're saying is actually really good advice. Buy S&P 500 index funds. Buy big groups of stocks. We're not even saying certainly that members of Congress can't own stocks. It's just don't trade individual stocks. Like this is having a blind trust. And just having a large basket of mutual funds or index funds is actually really smart advice for anyone out there listening to us right now. And, and it's crazy to me that, first of all, your job should be pretty busy. The idea that you should be pulling out your phone and doing individual stock trades anyway, it feels, it just feels bonkers to me that this is going on.
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Congressman Tim Burchett
Well, some of them do. Hundreds of hundreds.
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Clay Travis
I know.
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Congressman Tim Burchett
In a year. Can I give you one example that everybody can follow and could understand? During the Biden reign of terror, when he decided to give our missile defense system to Ukraine, which I don't vote for any more. Any. I haven't voted for any dollars for Ukraine. I'm sick of that. But anyway, that's another story. Well, it turns out that members of some of our military committees that had access to that information had bought stock and guess what? The missile defense companies, over just some of them, a couple of weeks prior to it. Now, why do you say, what does that mean? Well, we had to replenish ours in a no bid, multibillion dollar contract with these companies overnight. So you see, their stock prices would, Would go up dramatically. And yet that's common practice in Congress. They can watch the trends. You're in the meetings, you know, you hear about COVID you hear, I was in the meeting, you heard about COVID And I remembered I had, I had bought Denny's stock. And all the left accused me of some kind of insider trading. I left the dadgum meeting because the Democrats wouldn't let any of the. They had all their staff members in the seats and we couldn't get any seats. But anyway, I have, I've just come to the conclusion that, that we've got too much information. And generally the vast majority of the people up there probably aren't doing something incredibly shady. But we know that this time in and time out, when they just seem to just defy all logic, every odd. The odds of trading, and every month they turn in these huge gains. And it's just baffling to me that we allow that to go on and we can sit here and tell the American public that nothing's going on.
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Clay Travis
How does this shutdown end up ending, Congressman? Like, where does it go from here?
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Congressman Tim Burchett
When Schumer sees his polling numbers declining, I think what's really behind it, and this is my theory, I've put it on people and they, they've agreed with me. Schumer is looking in his rearview mirror right now, and all he sees is AOC and that big grin of hers bearing down on him. He knows that she can raise millions of dollars overnight. Just. That was me snapping my fingers overnight. Hollywood, all the elitist. They'll be throwing the money at her. And all he's doing is watching that New York mayor's race, where literally a Marxist Communist will win, probably unless something less. God shines favor upon the poor folks in New York who don't know any.
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Clay Travis
Better, by the way. God shining favor on the poor folks of New York actually means Andrew Cuomo should win. That's how bad of a situation they're in.
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Congressman Tim Burchett
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's. That's. You're very accurate. You're very accurate. But the truth is, is that Schumer is watching his rearview mirror. He knows his polling numbers, and the reality is he needs to go back to flipping raw cheeseburgers on his grill and playing with his grandkids, if he has any, and get out of this thing he has left. You know, he was a. He wasn't a moderate, but he was just an old classic liberal. And now he's just turned far left as you can get. And all it is, is about staying in power. And that's what Washington, D.C. is truly about in leadership. They love the suburbans. They love the, you know, four deep with security. They love the spotlight. They love never standing in line. They love the security. They love the access and, yes, the access to the inside information. And. And when they're out of leadership, it's gone. It's gone. All that is gone. And they can't stand it. And his time has come and gone, like a whole lot of them that need to be out of there. But he is. That is why he's going to wreck this country, is just to keep himself in power. And Hakeem, you know, he's out there talking about something. Nobody's paying any attention to him. He's saying how the House Republicans are shutting government down. We voted to keep the dadgum government open. Only one Democrat voted with us. And, you know, the whole thing is just. It's so obvious. And as soon as his polling data flips on him, he'll be at the table with Trump, but he won't be till then.
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Clay Travis
We're talking to Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee. How did you get into skateboarding and making skateboards?
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Congressman Tim Burchett
Well, I didn't smoke pot and I didn't drink. Although, since I've become a member of Congress, I've seriously considered taking on crack cocaine just to take off the edges. But. But no, I just always liked it. I like. I like the physics of it. And. And I'm an inventor. I always just make stuff. And I had a Little piece of plywood and some old skates and I put it on there and, and I would just. And that's. That those are death traps, you know. And, and I never. And you know, my dad would challenge me if you can get to the end, see if you get to the end of the driveway or something. And you know, eventually I would. And then. And so I, and I'm just. I've always been fascinated by bamboo. It's poor man's carbon fiber. I read an article on it in 1980 in a national Geographic and so I started just. I've always done stuff and tinkered and now that I've got some equipment to do it in. My major was technological adult education. Certified to teach shop. Basically. I can weld and build engines and I can burn your house down if you want me to wire it. I'm not very good at that, but I can do all those things. I can do casting and, and just all the stuff around the machine shop, but I just like it. And then I'm a capitalist at heart. And I read somewhere that there's a. I think it's a five billion dollar industry in this country. Now, I don't want all five billion of it, but I wouldn't mind shaving a little off the edge. And so, you know, I make it out of recycled stuff, mainly because I'm cheap. I guess I'm fiscally smart. But you know, I use old pallets and, and I've been using banana fibers off of banana plants that I've grown and I'm just, just all over about it. I just. And, and, and skateboards, something you can make small and you can transport easily and, and kids dig it. When you see a 61 year old out there with his vans on, skateboarding on a board that he built himself. It's kind of cool and it's good to bring up conversation and you know, and I like it. And again, as I say, it's cheaper than a psychiatrist.
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Clay Travis
We're talking to Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee. All right, I got the ultimate controversial question for you here to close up the interview, Congressman. All right, better decision. Who made the better decision? Who made the worst decision? I know you are a big University of Tennessee football fan. Nico going to ucla, transferring from Tennessee, going to ucla. UCLA is now lost every game. His head coach has been fired, his offensive coordinator has been fired. Sorry. UCLA fans out there catching a stray. You didn't expect this. Okay, Nico to ucla. That choice or Kamala Harris picking Tim Walls as her vice President, who made the worst decision, who made the better decision. You're on the floor.
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Congressman Tim Burchett
I'm going to say Kamala because she was a train wreck anyway, and she just picked a bigger train wreck. I almost, you know, they. They always pick somebody who. I always feel like somebody that's not going to overshadow them a lot of times. And. But I. But J.D. vance, as we say in East Tennessee, he kicks some ass. I like JD he's strong, and he's a kind of a buddy of mine, I guess. But, yeah, that Gum. Well, they call him Tampon Tim or something. I don't like saying it, but he is just a. He's a knucklehead, man. He just can't get out of his own way. I don't know who he was running against to get elected governor out there, but dad Gum must have been a convicted felon getting ready to go the electric chair or something. I'm not sure the Republicans put up against him, but, yeah, Nico. I mean, he just took some bad advice, but he's. He'll get a little bit of a paycheck, and if he's. He can just get all his groupies and family away from him, he might be okay. He might be able to salvage something in the Canadian Football League, but, yeah, that's where I'm at before I get myself in any more trouble.
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Clay Travis
Well, I'm already thinking the headline for the New York Times is going to be, tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett praises Nico for his move to ucla. Hey, this is. This is a lot of fun. And I would argue, I love the Tim Walls. You may have seen the meme Congressman where it shows Barack Obama and he says, I need someone dumber than me as VP Joe Biden. Joe Biden says, I need someone dumber than me as VP Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris says, I need someone dumber than me, and it's Tim Walls. There's a lot of truth to that. We have seen a rapid descent in intelligence across the board. There's. We appreciate the time. If people want to get the skateboard, by the way, where do they go?
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Congressman Tim Burchett
Well, nowhere yet. I've got a business plan. I got to put it on ethics and. And. And so they can approve it or not.
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Clay Travis
Hey, if Hunter can sell paintings for $500,000, I would think you could probably sell a skateboard for a couple of hundred bucks. But what do I know?
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Congressman Tim Burchett
Well, the Biden family couldn't spell ethics, so I just want to be the man my little girl thinks I am. So I'm going to try to follow the rules here. I get my lawyers involved and we'll get it all worked out eventually at the end of the year, hopefully in time for Christmas.
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Clay Travis
That's the goal. Just in time for Christmas. Hey, we appreciate the time. Go big Orange and we'll talk to you again soon.
- [30:52]
Congressman Tim Burchett
Thank you, brother. Appreciate y'. All.
- [30:54]
Clay Travis
Man, he is great. Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee, let me give you a good news. Gold's up 40% this year. Now the downside is that's because people are like, I don't know if I have a lot of faith in the US Dollar right now because government's spending so much money, inflation has skyrocketed and still it's kind of lingering around out there. And a lot of people have decided, as has been the case for centuries, that gold is a safe repository for your money because it's always going to have value. And if you've never done it before, Birch Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or a 401k into a tax sheltered IRA. In gold, you don't pay a dime out of pocket. This is just your opportunity to invest in gold, physical, tangible asset that has held value for centuries. The best indicator of the future is the past and gold has always been a safe haven. If you want to learn more about whether gold can make sense for you, text CLAY to 989898 right now to claim your free info kit on gold. That's clay to 9898 98. Protect your future today with Birch Gold. Want to be in the know when you're on the go the Team 47 podcast. Drop highlights from the week, Sundays at noon Eastern in the Clay and Buck podcast feed. Find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back in Clay Travis. Buck Sexton show a lot of reaction rolling in to Tim Burett who was awesome congressman from Tennessee. And I put up a poll question that for those of you who are big college football fans and also big interested in politics people, which I, I think is a, I know actually is a huge, huge number of you. Which was the worst decision. Nico to ucla, sorry to the UCLA fans out there or Kamala Harris picking Tim Walls. It is up on my Twitter page at Clay Travis. You can go vote there. Also want to thank you guys here as we start off hour number two. The numbers on the YouTube page were through the roof. Now partly this is because we're finally starting to get somewhat treated fairly. We got banned from YouTube all the time we've talked about the fact that they took down our interview with, with Rand Paul, with President Trump. President Trump just settled for $24.6 million, I think over YouTube banning him. He's going to use the money to build the, the new dining room that he's building off the, the patio there at the, at the White House, which is, is very funny and good for him. But we got a digital summary and we added a lot of YouTube. This is just in September I saw this. Our total views on YouTube basically tripled in the month of September. So that's a credit to you guys. Again, I don't think it's coincidental. The algorithm is. I got so many thoughts on algorithms in general. The algorithm gives you whatever you want the algorithm to give you. So YouTube could decide, hey, Clay and Buck videos are the most popular thing on the planet and it would feed those videos to you over and over and over again. Or they can say, hey, Clay and Buck are the worst people on the planet and you would never be able to find us. So when people say, well, the algorithm. Yeah, a person programs the algorithm, you can create an algorithm to do anything. This is my fear in many ways, by the way, about AI. Everybody says, well, the AI is doing. The AI is going to be a reflection of whatever is put in and whatever guardrails are put in place. So what I suspect we'll end up seeing, this is my AI prediction is it looks like Xai, which is Elon Musk's AI company, is going to be the Fox News of AI and then everybody else is going to be left wing AI. So I suspect that like many other things in life, you will end up choosing the AI that most you believe reflects your worldview. And that will actually lead the AI to becoming even more polarized because that will be the business model. That's my general thought. Now I got to be honest, I didn't watch a lot of news. I'm a sports guy. I didn't watch a lot of news on television. I've always been a reader and I never trust video. I always have known that because I'm in television that I love doing sports television, for instance. But I've always known that it's hard to get great in depth knowledge from television on anything. This is the reality television is a sound bite era. And I always thought it was funny because I've always done radio too. And people say, okay, what's the difference between writing, which is where I started, and by the way, please go buy my new Book balls. I'm going to talk about this a little bit more later in the week, but it's up pre ordered. I want this thing to be everywhere. I think it's important. But people say, what's the difference between writing radio and tv? Writing for me is just me in front of a computer screen. Every word is mine and there's nobody else helping. So for better or worse, I have complete control of every argument that I make on, in a, in a written article. And that is why in many ways, writing is still my favorite discipline. Because it's just me sitting in front of a computer screen and there's no one else to help. And, and for better or worse, it's on me to make an argument or to write a column or to write a book that hopefully is entertaining and helps to make people think on a deeper level. Radio. We have the luxury of time. So I can sit with you for three hours every day, but can sit with you for three hours every day. Over time, we become in some ways a family because you have 15 hours a week to spend with us and we love all of you that spend that much time. But you're going to learn about our families, you're going to learn about the things that we like, the serious things, the not serious things. We hang out. It's basically just one long form conversation. First time I did television, I did television, I came out in a studio and they were like, that was amazing. How was that so good? That was so great. I was like, it's three minutes. I wish my wife had that standard.
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Congressman Tim Burchett
There you go.
- [38:08]
Clay Travis
But I'm, but it's three minutes. Like you go on television and you give a couple of takes and then you're gone. And there is not a great deal of nuance or complexity or depth that television can convey. And so I was always a little bit skeptical of television in general when it comes to complicated issues. And so I didn't watch, I didn't watch a lot of cnn. I've never watched msnbc, but I didn't really pay much attention to Fox News. I now think, think it's funny. Fox News is the most. I now pay a lot more attention to news. You have to be crazy to watch msnbc. I'm not like, I watch msnbc. I read the New York Times, the Washington Post. So to kind of have some sense of what's going on. They live in a crazy world. People say, oh, Fox News, it's super right wing. Fox News is just normal. And this is what they did to me and this is what they try to do to anybody like me. I've talked about this before. They try to always label me controversial. If you read any article about me or somebody's talking about me, within 30 seconds they will say, clay Travis, the controversial, sometimes firebrand, right wing, conservative political commentator. I don't think I'm controversial at all. I, I, I, I say this, I've been saying this for 15 years now as people have constantly labeled me controversial. There's nothing wrong with controversy, but I don't think most of my comments or opinions are remotely controversial. They labeled me super controversial for saying men shouldn't play in women's sports. And again, I have nothing wrong with controversy. But when you are on the side of 80 or 90% of people, what's controversial is the other side. But that is an emblematic of how they took over the culture is they label anyone, anyone at all who is just not left wing. You're considered to be right wing and they try to label you as controversial. And it has an impact. I give tremendous credit to iHeart for hosting this show, but the most left wing industry in the country is advertising. This show's audience is massive across all 555 stations right now. There are millions of you that will listen to me today on this program. Y' all ever think about the fact that we've never had a car advertisement on this program? Flip on msnbc. Every car brand in America advertises on msnbc. We've never had a restaurant on this program. Flip on cnn. Every restaurant in America advertises on those brands. And I'm thinking about this a lot because I'm going to be potentially starting a new media company. And when you rely on media companies being founded and funded and existing or even having success based on advertising dollars, the left has been brilliant in going after anybody who advertises on anything other than far left wing and labeling them controversial to try to create the idea that brands can't be associated with people like me or people like Buck or frankly, people like you. Think about that. Never a car, never a restaurant in the entire history of us being on this program. It's crazy, right? Well, I think it ties in with this story that I want to talk about this morning. I'm reading an American Eagle headline. American Eagle gained customers after their Sydney Sweeney ads. Stock price price has also skyrocketed. It's nearly doubled since they debuted this ad. So if you had just said, hey, that's a pretty girl in jeans, that's probably going to work and you went and bought American Eagle stock. You've doubled your money just in the last few months nearly over this. But I thought this was interesting. This is again from the Wall Street Journal. They said that they have added nearly a million customers since they debuted the Sydney Sweeney ads. And not only that, they have immediately sold out. And I don't even know what these things are. I'm not exactly the hippest person on the planet when it comes to clothes. As many of you know, the Sweeney cinched waist, denim jacket, sold out in one day. And the Sydney jean. And I'm reading from the Wall Street Journal, this is not my description. An ultra wide leg with a butterfly on the back back pocket sold out in a week. They added a million customers and they immediately sold out of everything that she was wearing in the ads. Okay, here's something else. The owner, CEO Jay Schottenstein, big Ohio State guy, by the way. Ohio State buckeye. He is 71 years old and he said he is also an Orthodox Jew. And he said, quote, according to the the Wall Street Journal, he was perplexed at the criticism of Sydney. Jeannie has, Sydney Sweeney has good genesis because remember they said that was, oh, this is a Nazi ad. This is about eugenics. This guy, an Orthodox Jew actually said his mother in law grew up in Nazi Germany and watched as the synagogue across the street from her home was burned to the ground. Quote, I'm very conscious of that term. He said he felt that the team had felt the campaign was offensive in any way. We never would have done it. Orthodox Jew whose mother in law lived through actual Nazi Germany said, hey, this is a crazy idea that you would try to brand this a Nazi advertising campaign because we put a pretty girl in denim and the denim immediately sold out. Do you know why? Because pretty girls sell products. Sexy products sell. I was laughing about this the other day. Victoria's Secret has a new CEO. She's having a lot of success. Do you know the new Victoria's Secret CEOs plan? Make lingerie sexy again. It turns out putting unattractive models in panties and Brasil doesn't make anyone want to buy more panties and bras. I'm fat. They don't want to put me in a male underwear campaign. It will be the least successful underwear on the planet. Nobody's going to see me in underwear and be like, I want to look like that guy. I want to look like that 46 year old dad of three. They need a super ripped guy who's at least going to make you think hey, maybe I'll be more attractive if I wear this underwear. This is. People want to look better than they actually are. They want the fantasy of, hey, I'm going to put this on and I'm going to look like a supermodel. This is not, you know, they don't sell athletic shoes by putting fat guys in, in in sneakers and saying, hey, look at this guy's 18 inch vertical. They have a guy who could jump over the moon in the tennis shoes. And they make you think you're going to jump over the moon too. I should start an advertising agency. I've actually thought about this. I would sell everything better than what these morons at these advertising agencies do. But I want to give credit because American Eagle said basically, screw you to all their critics. Stock price has nearly doubled. They're selling out like crazy. They've got a million extra customers and all they did was go back to the old adage of sex sells. Put a pretty girl in denim instead of some ridiculous androgynous, you know, miss, I don't even know what the uni gender. I don't even know what these terms are. Pansexual, whatever the heck it is that nobody wants to be. They just put a pretty girl in jeans and they immediately sold out. Maybe America is going to be fine. And speaking of selling out, Cozy Earth is selling out of their products on a level that you could not believe because they got a crazy idea. Hey, we just want to have awesome products available for everybody. And my wife is one reason they're selling out. Because when they came on as an advertiser, they said, hey, Laura Travis, you can go on the website and you can order what you want. What was the number, Ali? Ten boxes of stuff. They were like, we've never actually. We always. 17 boxes. My wife bought 17 boxes of their stuff. They always say this like, hey, new advertiser, you can go on the website, just tell us what you want. They may stop doing this now because my wife went on and she was like, I'll get 17 boxes of stuff. That's how much she loves this product. They got everything, bamboo sheets, amazing comforters. Basically, if you are out there in the marketplace to have better products in your home, you need to be on the Cozy Earthquake website. They will give you a hundred day, 100 night sleep trial to see if the Cozy Earth sheets are right for you. Use my name clay. You get 20% off everything. Please go to this website because I think I almost bankrupted the company by letting my wife go and buy whatever she wanted. So we've got to make sure the company doesn't go bankrupt because Laura Travis went on the website and took advantage of it on a level I don't know we've ever had it. So I need this company to actually make some money here to make up for what my wife took from them. Cozyearth.com My name Clay that's cozyearth.com My name clay and let them know Clay and Buck sent you if you get a post. Post by survey. Home isn't just where you live, it's how you feel. We've got these products all throughout the house, as you know, because my wife bought 17 boxes and by bought I mean she went on and they sent us 17 boxes of their stuff. She loved it all. Your wife will love it. You will love it. Check it out. Cozyearth.com code clay that's C O Z Y earth.com, cozyearth.com, code clay 20% off. Check it out. Today you don't know what you don't know, right? But you could on the Sunday Hang with Clay and Buck podcast, there's nothing.
- [49:15]
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- [50:14]
Clay Travis
People ask us all the time how we can save the next generation. We've got our show and the info is an antidote. But we also have a couple books coming out. Clay. That's right. And you can pre order both of them right now and be book nerds just like us. You'll laugh, you'll nod, and you'll get smarter too. Mine's called How Trump Young Men and Sports saved America and mine is manufacturing delusion. How the left uses brainwashing, indoctrination and propaganda against you. Both are great reads. One might even say they would make fabulous gifts. Indeed. So do us a solid and pre order yours on Amazon today. Welcome back in Clay Travis Buck Sexton show this. I got a couple of clips that are fun for you. First of all, I thought, and I'm going to be just have to out myself here, I thought that after covering for Joe Biden and his clear cognitive decline for years that on MSNBC they would have to say, you know what, we're not going to try to rerun Trump 1.0 when we argued all the time for the 25th amendment and then Joe Biden was cognitively and mentally and physically incapable of being president. And instead, so, so we ignored all that. So we can't go back to the same Trump's not able to be president. I was wrong. Rachel Maddow, Lawrence o' Donnell bashed Trump over his issues and they say Trump is not intellectually capable basically of being president. He's got cognitive decline. This is what they really are selling their audience after not saying anything about Biden for years. Cut 24.
- [52:01]
MSNBC Commentator
We are watching publicly a very dramatic mental decline in Donald Trump. This is a sharp cliff that he's just fallen, fallen off within the last fortnight, especially over this particular weekend of social media posting.
- [52:15]
Clay Travis
And it's not just like transgressive or offensive or bad. It's also just weird. Yes, really weird stuff. Like there's something, there's something weird going on up there. Yeah.
- [52:25]
MSNBC Commentator
It's inexplicable and it is absolutely worthy of a family intervention. There's no other family in America that would let a 79 year old do things like this publicly. They would absolutely intervene. It would be the only thing every family member wanted to do. They would do it urgently.
- [52:43]
Clay Travis
You got to share that clip from the Clay and Buck account team. You could, if you're watching on video, you could see my jaw drop. Trump does all day long, basically rolling press conferences. Well, he. Where he will answer any question under the sun. Biden couldn't even be out after dark because his cognitive decline was so real. They never talked about it on msnbc. Now they're suddenly saying, oh, Trump, his behavior is unacceptable in public. No one would ever let a 79 year old behave in this way. Biden was 81. Right. I think I'm correct. And they let him do all sorts of things, clearly demonstrating that his brain didn't work And MSNBC didn't say anything. And now Trump, who has basically a rolling press conference all day long every day. Oh, wow. Look what's going on here. Uh, let me play a couple of cuts for you as well. This interview that I did with Paul Feinbaum has gone everywhere. And I. Some people say, I've talked about how, to me, the goal of talking about current events, politics should be persuading people that you're right. Because I believe that there are a lot of people out there who will change their opinions on things if you make the argument in a way that they can understand it. And there are lots different ways to make those arguments. But basically, politics is the art of communication and decision making. And a huge part of any political decision is the decision. What are you going to do? But you also have to explain why you're doing it and why it matters. And Paul Feinbaum talked with me about the fact that he was raised in New York City by a family from New York City. Jewish family. They moved to Memphis. They were dyed in the wool liberals. And what happened in 1994 when he called his mom for the first time and said, I voted Republican, mom, listen to this. What do you think the reaction was to this process will be like for you, Clay?
- [54:58]
Congressman Tim Burchett
There.
- [54:58]
Paul Feinbaum
There might be some surprise, but because I don't think anybody knows what I am. Clay. I grew up the son of two liberal New York Jews.
- [55:08]
Congressman Tim Burchett
Yeah.
- [55:09]
Clay Travis
Who came down South.
- [55:10]
Paul Feinbaum
Yeah. My sister was born in New York in. Not long before my. My mother died in 1994. I called her on election day and she said, well, who did you vote for? And I said, I voted for. This was an off year election.
- [55:28]
Clay Travis
Yeah. The 94 was the Republican red wave.
- [55:30]
Paul Feinbaum
I told her I'd voted for the Republican. And my mother, who I love dearly, one of the most important people, maybe the most important person in my life because my dad died at 15. She hung up the phone. I have one of my best friends I grew up with. I told a number of years ago I was going to be on Fox News. There was a story in Birmingham, you may remember, Natalie Holloway.
- [55:54]
Clay Travis
Oh, yeah.
- [55:54]
Paul Feinbaum
So I called him and I said, I'm going to be on Greta's show tonight on fox. He said, I refuse to watch it. So, I mean, I grew up around a lot of this. My mother hanging up on me still stings. And she might hang up if she.
- [56:07]
Clay Travis
Knew you were going to run for the Senate in Alabama, but that's okay.
- [56:10]
Paul Feinbaum
I mean, you. You come from a. I mean, Donald Trump was a Democrat, too.
- [56:14]
Clay Travis
Yeah, I was a Democrat.
- [56:15]
Paul Feinbaum
I'm not running away from that.
- [56:16]
Congressman Tim Burchett
Yeah, I understand.
- [56:18]
Paul Feinbaum
When you're. When you're a journal, there's a perception, but there's also such a thing as growing up and maturing and moving past the ideals that you were taught as a young person and believed in as a teenager. And I've evolved. My wife is a Republican.
- [56:39]
Congressman Tim Burchett
Yeah.
- [56:40]
Paul Feinbaum
Her family are Republicans, and so am I. But it's not something I talk about. And a lot of my friends wouldn't probably even know that, because I have until this moment, I've never discussed it.
- [56:53]
Clay Travis
So people change their minds. How do people change their minds? You convince them that the things that they used to believe are no longer true. There are tons of you out there right now with friends and family that still think this is Bill Clinton's Democrat Party. They still think this is Jimmy Carter's Democrat Party. They don't pay attention to what Democrats actually say. They picked a team and they turned their brain off. And they've continued to hit that button because they haven't really paid attention to the fact that the Democrat party of the 70s and the 80s and the 90s and even the early 2000s, all of the people that believed what those guys believe would be Republicans. Now, you'll go back and look. Bill Clinton, 92, Bill Clinton, 96. Heck, look at the clips of Chuck Schumer back then. Look at the clips of Joe Biden back then. They're saying everything Donald Trump is saying now. A lot of us, and I would put myself in this camp, haven't moved very much on issues. It's just the Democrat Party's gone insane, and we weren't willing to hop on the train to crazy town. And so I believe there are tens of millions of people, a lot of them, you guys are listening to me right now. That in 1990s, may not have listened to Rush Limbaugh. In the early 2000s, may not have listened to Rush Limbaugh. But over time, and Covid was, for many people, I think that push point, where it radicalized a lot of us and where it demonstrated how lost the Democrat Party has become in many ways. I mean, I've made this argument for a long time. I think it's the best argument you can make other than the fact that clearly it's not true. But when somebody says, Trump's a fascist, Trump wants to be a dictator, we all know that's a laughable argument. But you can actually push back with this simple question that they won't have an answer to if that were actually true, why didn't Trump take over everything during the early days of COVID in 2020, Trump could have said, under my national authority, I'm mandating all. What did Trump do then? A lot of you are upset with the choices Trump made in the early days of COVID but most of it was just deferring to local state politicians. He led every state and every mayor make their own determinations about what the best decisions were for their communities. Democrats were begging to be regulated then. They were begging to be dictated to. They were demanding that a guy on a paddleboard on the ocean be arrested. They were demanding that kids on hiking trails be handcuffed. They were begging for federal authority, for big government to come in and weigh down its heavy hand. Never in most of our lives, with the possible exception of the immediate aftermath of 9 11, has a president had a time when he could have taken more power and more authority than right. In the immediate aftermath of COVID in the spring and summer of 2020, what did Trump do when he had that opportunity to take almost complete and total power in the United States? He deferred to state and local authorities. In fact, to such an extent that I think you can criticize him not for being a dictator, but for being too committed to the principles of federalism, such that he did not take over all of the power that was waiting to be grabbed there. You know who did? Joe Biden. So anybody out there who says, oh, Trump's gonna be a dictator, just ask, well, why didn't he dictate when for basically the time in American history when a president could have taken more power than almost ever before in the history of this republic, Trump actually deferred and said, let's let local governments and local leaders make decisions instead of federalizing his leadership. It's a tough one to respond to. We got to cut government shutdowns going on. This is what happens. This is what you hear. Press Secretary Caroline Levitt has recorded a message. They can't answer the phones. Federal workers can't do their jobs because of the Chuck Schumer shut down. This is what it sounds like if you call the White House.
- [61:25]
White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt
Thank you for calling the White House.
- [61:26]
Congressman Tim Burchett
Commentary.
- [61:27]
White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt
Hello, America. This is White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt. Democrats in Congress have shut down the federal government because they care more about funding health care for illegal immigrants than they care about serving you, the American people. Until Democrats vote for the clean Republican backed continuing resolution to reopen the government, the White House is unable to answer your call. Or respond to your questions. We look forward to hearing from you again very soon. And in the meantime, please know President Trump will never stop fighting for you. Thank you and God bless you.
- [62:04]
Clay Travis
That's Caroline Levitt. That's what you get when you call the White House comment line. Boy, can you imagine some of the comments that line gets? Probably even crazier than some of the comments we get. We come back, we'll have some fun. We'll close up shop on the Wednesday edition of the program. But I want to tell you Last weekend in New York City, the Tunnel of the Towers foundation had their annual tunnel to towers 5k run and walk, held each year on the last Sunday of September. What began with 1500 people in 2002 is now one of the top 5K runs in the country, drawing 40,000 people. It retraces firefighter Stephen Siller's final footsteps that day, and after abandoning his car, he ran with 60 pounds of gear from the foot of the Battery Tunnel to the Twin Towers. He never made it out. The 5K pays homage to the 343 FDNY firefighters, law enforcement officers and thousands of civilians who lost their lives on 9 11. Proceeds from the event support the foundation's programs, including those benefiting first responders and catastrophically injured service members, Producer Ali and Cash Patel, among others, and have done this event and said it's one of the most powerful and moving 5Ks they've ever seen. When you come out of the tunnel, there are firefighters service members lining the road holding photos of all those we lost. You can support the great work Tunnel the Towers does by going to t2t.org and donating $11 a month. Again, that's t2t.orgt the number 2t keep up with the biggest political comeback in world history. On the Team 47 podcast, Clay and Buck highlight Trump replays from the week, Sundays at noon Eastern. Find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [63:54]
Congressman Tim Burchett
This is an I Heart podcast.