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And don't miss the incredible deal on Signature select boneless skinless chicken breast value packs for $2.97 per pound limit. One plus medium avocados or mangoes are five for $5 member price. Fresh and delicious savings for every meal. Hurry in. These deals won't last. Visit Safeway or albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. Welcome to today's edition of the Clay, Travis and Buck Sexton show podcast. Welcome everybody to the Friday edition of the Clay, Travis and Buck Show. Clay is heading to us from the airport. He'll be joining in progress. It is me, the Buckster, leading you in this deep dive into everything you need to know. All the things happening right now all across this land of ours, all across the world. In fact, we have some things to talk about. Like new jobs report. Not good. Not a good jobs report. We'll discuss a little bit. 92,000 jobs lost. Now they're going to revise this. It could change. I get all that, but obviously any economic news that is not if it's fantastic economic news, the media doesn't want to talk about it cuz they don't want to give Trump credit. And if it's even a little negative, it's all they want to talk about when it comes to the economy. So we're going to look at that a little bit. We're going to look at that. We've also got the aftermath of the firing of Kristi Noem by Trump from dhs. It was a long time coming. It should have happened months and Months ago, quite honestly. But there's a lot of back and forth over this. We may be joined by, are we, do we still have Senator Kennedy on the DACA team is Senator Kennedy of Louisiana who was involved in that hearing. He's coming on the show, we're going to talk to him, we're going to talk to the good senator from the great state of Louisiana about the situation with well around first and foremost and dhs. But look, there's the single biggest thing happening right now is the US Israeli aerial campaign against Iran and now against regional proxies of Iran. There have been strikes in the southern suburbs of Lebanon. So that is, that is interesting. Lebanon is at a tipping point as it seeks to curb Hezbollah's influence. Countries waiting to see if the government seizes on this moment to disarm the Iranian backed armed group and how the militants will respond. So is Israeli military pounding Hezbollah on the southern edge of the Lebanese capital? This is just worth noting because we're going, they're going after, we're going after. We're with the Israelis on this. We are allies in this mission. That is the reality of the situation. So it is a we situation and we're going after Hezbollah, a primary proxy army of the mullahs in Tehran. And man, are we pounding the Iranians, Iranian regime, not Iranian civilians. But we are pounding military assets and government assets hard. This is in fact Trump speaking about this. This is cut one. You can hear it from the commander in chief. Play it. The United States military together with the wonderful Israeli partners continues to totally demolish the enemy far ahead of schedule and at levels that people have never seen before. Actually, we're destroying more of Iran's missiles and drone capability every single hour, knocking them out like nobody thought was possible. As soon as they set off a missile, within four minutes, the launcher gets hit. They don't know what's happening. And they're calling, they're saying, how do we make a deal? I said you're being a little bit late and we want to fight now more than they do. Trump has said no Iran deal now without unconditional surrender. Once again calling on all members. So what we have here is an escalation and a line in the sand. President Trump has had enough of the Iranians, the mullahs, the IRGC playing all these games, pretending like they want to negotiate when really they just want to stall. Certainly when Republicans like Trump are in office, they want to stall. Democrats will make concessions and stupid deals, but with Trump, they're trying to just play Games and play for time. He decided enough is enough. And there's no need to sit and wait for Iran to improve or expand upon its ballistic missile capability. Which, I might add, was always left out of that disastrous Obama deal. Remember, the Obama Iran deal did not cover ballistic missiles. So the Iranians were free to build up those stockpiles. And as we have seen, those stockpiles are now being dramatically reduced by the air campaign. It is incredible the efficiency, the technology, the skill, the precision with which US Planes and Israeli planes are able to. We don't just have aerial superiority. We are dominating their airspace. We are the airspace now have complete and total control over it. And it did not take very long. So you can pick any targets you want to hit. Now the big question becomes, as we have discussed, who is going to take over? Who is going to be in charge of this country or really perhaps a caretaker regime for a transition to what we would like to have democratic elections, I'm sure. And so that is. People keep asking me, like, how do I think this is going to go? I think if there was a clear plan, we would already know what the clear plan is. This is a little bit of Kentucky windage. You could say this is a little bit of just let it fly. Gotta figure this one out as we go. But Trump decided the alternative was worse. Here he is saying to all members of the security services, just put down your arms. Full amnesty. That is the way forward. Play Cut two. I'm once again calling on all members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the military and the police to lay down their arms. They're only going to be killed. And now is the time to stand up for the Iranian people and help take back your country. You're going to have a chance after all these years to take back your country. Accept immunity. We'll give you immunity. And we'll be giving you really the right side of history, because that's what it is. So you'll be perfectly safe with total immunity, or you'll face all absolutely guaranteed death. And I don't want to see that. It's true. One of the components of this that is different from even what we were dealing with 20 years ago, the intelligence apparatus that we and the Israelis can bring to bear on Iran from the sky, electronically and otherwise and on the ground is such that we can take anybody out. Trump is just taking anybody out that he chooses to. That gives you a lot of leverage. One of the challenges of air campaigns in the past has been you always needed people with guns to go door to door house to house, and pull the other guy out of his. Out of his fighting position, out of his foxhole, so to speak. I mean, that. That's part of this. But if we are so capable that we can take out anybody we want, any member of the leadership, I mean, here you go. Israel just says this is an update. The Israeli military destroyed a bunker used by Iran's supreme leader in a new onslaught. They're just taking apart the entire military infrastructure of Iran right now, and there's nothing the Iranians can do about it. There's nothing the mullahs can do. There is no, you know, secret superweapon option that they have. And I wonder how long this continues before it's clear that they're not really in charge of their own country. If you can't control your airspace and you can't keep any leadership alive without the say so of the United States and Israel, are you really in control? So we are entering a new phase. Remember, this brings together drones. It brings together surveillance technology that's even beyond people that ask me like, well, what do you think they have? Guys, I've been out. I haven't had a clearance in over a decade now. So there's all kinds of new whiz bangs that I read about, just like you. But the technology and the mapping capability and the human terrain assessments that they can do are way beyond what you could have done in the early 2000s when we went into Iraq. Far greater precision. The munitions are much more targeted and precise as well. Our ability to shoot things out of the sky that they try to fire at us is far better. I mean, you are seeing a dominant military performance on display right now. We haven't seen anything really like it since Persian Gulf War one. Nothing that comes at this level. And that was. That was quite different in its own way. So I think that the Trump administration feels like this is going so far to plan, and I think that they are having to do some improvisation as they move along to figure out who's going to be in charge. People talk about the Kurds. The Kurds are great in Kurdish areas. I'm very pro. Everyone I know who was US Military in Iraq, everyone I know who is intel in Iraq was tended to be very pro Kurdish. They fight. They. They are reliable in their own areas, but they have limitations because you take them out of Kurdish areas and there are problems. All of a sudden, all these old ethnic conflicts come together. So you got that help in Iran in some capacity. You got to figure out what you're going to do with the Persian? Who's going to be the figurehead of the Persian majority? I don't know. People are saying some descendant of the Shah. That could be complicated. I don't know. If the administration was certain, I think they would have already started to lay out that plan for us. But I also believe that there's some wisdom in this approach of. Let's. Just as Rubio said and I said, if you defang the snake, let's remove their capability to hit us or any of our friends and say, when do you want to talk? Let us know when you want to talk. Mullis, your missiles are disappearing. Your. Your stockpiles are getting blown up or entombed by our bunker busters. How much longer do you want this to go on for? We did try it the nice way. We tried it the nice way for a long time, and I would argue the Obama administration tried it the far too nice way. Bending the knees, sending them pallets of cash, you know, whatever. We tried that for a long time. They weren't willing to play ball. They were playing games so that they could get to a nuke. It's very obvious there's no reason for them to have caused all these problems if they weren't planning to get nuclear weapons. And then they wouldn't be in this position because there would be red lines. And I think we might have. If Iran had nukes and we were doing to them what we've already done in the early days here, would they have fired them? Yes. People have been saying to me, buck, do you think Iran would have fired nukes? I don't know as a first strike. But what we're doing now, yes, I think the mullahs probably would say, we're going to take a shot at Tel Aviv. Let's see if we can hit it. Or Jerusalem or where we'll probably Tel Aviv. But, yes, I think the mullahs would do that. Now they can't. Now they can't. So we're entering a different phase. Things in Venezuela are already starting to move in a more positive direction. Look, we have to understand Trump is remaking the world in an image of stability and safety in a way that a lot of people, including Trump voters, didn't. Didn't anticipate. I didn't know he was going to do all this stuff. He didn't say he was going to do all this stuff. So far, it's working. We should all pray that it does work because it could be so enormously beneficial to all these different regions. Whether it's Venezuela, slash Cuba and what that would do for Latin America, for the Caribbean basin, what we see with Iran and the Middle east and the removal of these proxies and everything else. You know, these places don't have to be dysfunctional, problematic for the global community, hellholes. It doesn't have to be that way. There are plenty of places that we don't sit around spending a lot of time worrying about plenty of countries. And this is, this is bold stuff from the administration. There's no two ways about it. So I am just very hopeful that this will continue as it has been and that we'll start to see a coalescing of anti regime forces coming together on the ground. We saw the protest movements, but this stuff is very hard. You know, it's. Think about it this way, okay, you think that a new, you think that a new government is possible in Iran. You hate the mullahs. When is it safe for you to go outside and start talking to people about this? When are you willing to join that march and think that you're not going to get mowed down by IRGC or besiege elements with PKMs, you and your whole family? This is tricky. This is tricky. So I think that's part of why Trump is saying put down your guns now. Because I can tell you this, if they start going after civilians, I think Trump is going to hit military elements even harder. And we're talking about blowing up barracks or whatever he's got to do. So we shall see. Wondering what you think about all of this? Definitely. Give us a call, 800-282-2882. We'll continue to analyze it, make sense of it and dive into it together. Here in Miami, new homeowners quickly learn about three things. Air conditioning systems, hurricane proof windows, and what condition is the roof in that last question that's often most important. 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That's E r I e home.com buck this discount is maximized at $1200 valid on new roofing installation only. Minimum purchase required and restrictions apply. C rep for warranty or promotional details. Post people do not wait for the perfect time. They learn between shifts and family dinners. At Post University, Online education is built for busy schedules so you can keep moving forward without putting life on hold. And Post makes it personal with support from real people who care about your goals. Become a Post person. Learn more at Post Edu Clay, I am told, is in the building in D.C. so he'll be on air with us shortly and he'll be talking about some big sports stuff going on the sports ball conversation. We are here talking about the Iran. This is a war. You can call it an air war, but it is a war. I know people maybe are shying away from that term because it has a lot of implications. But this is, you know, if there's such a thing as submarine warfare, for example, remember, unrestricted submarine warfare was a big deal in the second World War. If there's submarine warfare, there's aerial warfare, and we are definitely doing that. So and just, just a note on the terminology of this. This is not a. A kinetic ongoing contingency operation for. No, no, this is. This is us destroying the Iranian military. By the way, I noted the team brought this up to my attention. Here's former General Petraeus, the former five star or four star. Five star. Sorry, four star. Four star. There's no right. I don't know whatever. The team will correct me on that one. Sorry, here he is, this cut five. I'm just trying to get this in play it in this case, I actually see the military missions being accomplished fairly steadily here. The trajectory is very good. You know, first and foremost, of course they went after the air and ballistic missile defenses took those down. Whatever had been reconstituted after the Israelis took them apart in the early days of the 12 Day Air Campaign. And that's crucial because we don't want to be restricted to just the F35 stealth fighter bombers and the B2 stealth bombers. We want to bring in the big ones, the B52s, the B1 bombers, and they are flying now almost at will. I would argue that we have actually achieved air supremacy. Not just air superiority but but again I think people are cautious in making that declaration. I said dominance. Same idea. By the way. Four star. Sorry. There is a five star rank for general of the whole army but he was not that. I just trying to remember. I'm speaking fast today. I got to cover a lot of ground. He was a four star general. All right, we have Clay joining us shortly and we got to talk. Tunnel Towers here. Born on America's Darkest Day of 911 Tunnel Towers foundation has been helping American heroes ever since. Like Detective Victor Vaughn Vargas. He dedicated his life to service. He was a United States Air Force veteran. Became an NYPD detective after 9 11. Victor joined the search and recovery efforts at ground zero. But it was a selfless act that would cost him his life. Later on, on the 25th anniversary of 911 we continue to see the toll that had taken on heroes and their families. Victor fought pancreatic cancer with courage, leaving behind his wife Adriana and their four children. Tunnel the Towers honored Victor by paying off the Vargas family's mortgage. You can help families like the Vargas's with Tunnel to Towers. Help bring home and hope and security to them. Join us in donating $11 a month and amplify your impact with a car land donation. Go to t2t.org that's t2t.org. The combination of our ingenuity, the skill, the professionalism, the discipline and then the sheer weight of the capabilities of the US Military. What you're going to see may look routine. It may start to be like, oh, another boat. Oh, another launcher. Oh, another drone facility. What it takes to do this with the precision that we do is world class. No one else can do it. And it's world class Americans like the ones I saw here, like the ones that are coming home, that we're going to greet home that are the engine of what makes our country great. And so I'm so grateful for folks like those here at centcom at Central Command. There's our Secretary of War Pete Hegseth laying out that it is absolutely the case. Nobody can even begin to do what our pilots, our airmen and women are doing in this campaign against Iran. We are now joined by Clay Travis, co host of the Clay and Buck show, who is with us. Mr. Clay, we've been talking Iran stuff. Not a whole lot of, well, more targets getting blown up, more losses for the Iranians or for the Iranian regime. Hezbollah taking some hits on the outskirts of Beirut. Now the Israelis are doing some cleanup operations there too. It looks like the plan is to get everything done from the sky and then figure out the ground as we go.
- [22:09]
B
Yeah. And Iran may have gotten smart enough not to announce any new leaders. Did you see that? The reports are that Iran has recognized that if they announce new leaders, they're going to get killed. I don't know about you, but I don't know. It's like, like we said a little while ago, you don't want to be Al Qaeda number two, because Al Qaeda number two didn't last very long. They were always quickly tracked down. I think we have established that whomever Iran puts in charge, we can take out. And that's why I think the primary story as it pertains to this current attack plan that's going on is at what point does Iran say, okay, here's our guy. Are you okay with these guys? Do they go, I mean, is it a little bit like the draft? Are they going to President Trump? And they're like, hey, here are the four guys we're thinking about naming as the next head of Iran. Uh, which of these four Are any of these four acceptable? Trump has said he wants to basically pick the leader. You've been involved in this. I mean, and by the way, this is kind of a challenge. I mean, I'm kind of jokingly saying it's like the NFL draft, but you're trying to project how someone will be as a leader who has never been a leader before. So you got all sorts of promises probably being made, but what really matters is what's the relationship like, who is the Del C. Rodriguez, where everything seems to be going very well with Venezuela right now. Is there that person inside of Iran that the CIA? I mean, if you were still in the CIA, this is probably one of the things that, that they have huge teams of people doing right now. I would imagine, as all the leadership is getting wiped out, they're trying to do deep dives on whomever the candidates are to potentially take over and try to figure out who can they have a relationship with, who is trustworthy at all in real time. I would imagine that's to a large extent what the data analysis is consisting of.
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A
This is what Benjamin hall is saying. He's getting messages. This is Benjamin hall of Fox, Right, Fox News, Fox News. Is Benjamin hall saying that he's getting messages from the people of Iran that they will rise up. This is cut seven. Play it. The primary objective is to remove the threat. It's to remove the missiles that hit nuclear programs, and it's to make sure. They can't rebuild those programs as well. That's the primary goal. And that I believe will happen in a few weeks. The question is regime change. How long does that take afterwards? And I was getting messages very, very rare from people inside Tehran who support action and who were saying just today, you reduce that hierarchy, you get rid of the leaders, and we will rise up. President Trump has said it as well. The people of Iran have to do this. So if you can tear apart the regime, you can tear apart their weapons program. The people of Iran should do it. We hope so. This is, this is the huge question, and this has been a question for decades now. Will this ever happen? Will there be a, I guess a Persian spring instead of an Arab Spring, where the dictator is thrown out by a popular uprising on the streets? We'll see. I don't know.
- [25:10]
B
You worked on this back in the day because it's been a story that has emerged before. I was reading this morning, getting ready for the show. You actually have a lot of expertise on this, I would think, although I don't know how much it's changed in the last 20 some odd years. What's the Kurdish situation? How many people do they have? How armed are they, to what extent? Everybody's talking now about them potentially uprising. There's different reports about whether or not it's going to happen. But I haven't seen anybody say, hey, they have 10,000 people with guns, they have 20,000. Do we have any sense for how many people they could mobilize as part of any sort of invading force? Any. Because I know this was talked about back in the days of Iraq. I mean, how viable of a uprising, in your mind, is it likely to be able to produce? Or is this just kind of a harebrained scheme? That's unlikely to go very far.
- [26:00]
A
I can tell you in the case of Iraq. I actually talked about this a little bit at the very start today. In the case of Iraq, it was the Kurds were very reliable at securing the areas of Iraq that were historically Kurdish. The prob. One of the big problems was that there are cities, notably Mosul was one of them. And then places like Diala and, and there was Kirkuk. There were a number of cities in Iraq that there was like a Kurdish part and a non Kurdish part. And then it's who does security? I mean, the Tigris river cut Mosul in half. I was in Mosul and remember this issue. And the northern part of the river was essentially largely Kurdish. Provided this is going back to 2006, 2007, 2008, largely Kurdish. The southern part of the city or the southern half of the city was, like, Sunni Arab hellscape. Suicide bombings going off all the time. It was craziness. So I think in Iran, where You have roughly 15 to 20% of the population is Kurdish, it's actually pretty similar to what it is in Iraq, by the way. You can use the Kurds for stability operations where they are, which is helpful, but, you know, you can't. You can't just, like, have Kurdish columns.
- [27:20]
B
The idea of them as invading into
- [27:22]
A
Tehran, and be like, we're in charge now. That's not going to happen.
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B
Yeah. And again, this comes back to. You worked on this. I know we talked about it earlier this week, but I wonder if at some point they're going to start talking about dividing up Iran like they talked about back in the day dividing up Iraq. I don't know that that's a viable option, but I was given a Kurdistan T shirt.
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A
I don't have it anymore. But it was, like, with, like, its own flag and the whole thing. And they're like, yeah, we love you up here. I'm like, you guys are kind of declaring your own country. That's a whole other thing.
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B
Well, I mean, this may or may not surprise a lot of people out there, but one of the largest populations of Kurdish people in America is Nashville. I mean, it's unprecedented. So I went to school with a ton of Kurdish kids.
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A
You're a man who knows your Kurds. I did not know.
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B
I actually am somewhat knowledgeable about the idea.
- [28:10]
A
You know, they're considered one of the largest stateless ethnic groups in the world. And this is why there's such a. There's something like 15 to 20 million Kurds, I think, worldwide is the estimate. So it's a pretty big population. Most of it is dispersed across southeastern Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. That's really the Kurdish Crescent. The Kurds were promised, I think it was, by the League of Nations, maybe Woodrow Wilson. There was talk of giving the Kurds a state in the Middle east, and they kind of got screwed out of that. And there's been some, let's just say, frustration over that for a long time. And this is evidenced by my favorite Kurdish saying is the Kurds have only one friend, the mountains. Because they've had to just go up into the mountains and fight and defend themselves over and over and over again. So, yeah, and the Turks called them Mountain Turks.
- [29:02]
B
Unexpected buck. But I looked it up to confirm. Nashville actually has the largest Kurdish Population in the United States the largest. And there is an area of Nashville called Little Kurdistan because so many people relocated after the Gulf War and ended up in Nashville. So I went to school with a bunch of kids that were Kurdish. And so I remember being steeped in hearing about all of this. And so the question is obviously, is there any viable alternative? It seems like a lot of people are putting faith in this.
- [29:34]
A
I'm sure we have some US military listening who work with the Kurds in Iraq. If you guys want to weigh in on this, you know a heck of a lot more about it than even I do. I was, I was only there for a few months at a time and, and really not. I was really just trying to help the task force target bad guys. I wasn't really deep in with it with the Kurds, embedded with them, training them. I know some of you were, you know, in base with, on a base with them probably for 10, 12 to 15 months at a time. So if you have some thoughts on this, anybody who are, who was working with them, part of the training operations, Special Forces. I mean I remember going to, I went to Special Forces compounds clay where it was just SF guys and then some Kurds running security for them. I mean that was the level of trust that, that people would have in them. The Kurds at different times in the Iraq war were really the only, really the only group that U.S. mill and, and the agencies, various agencies could trust to stand and fight when, when, when the bullets started to fly. And they had far less problems with infiltrators, you know, people that were actually Al Qaeda in Iraq or whatever. So look, there's a lot I'm, I've, I always have sort of a soft spot for the Kurds. So much so that actually I get a little aggravated with Turkey, with Turkey sometimes over it. I've always been very pro Kurdish. I think a lot of us Miller pro Kurdish because of their experience with them. But in the Iran context for what we're looking at now, useful to a point, useful to probably secure some areas that will be, we won't have to worry about. But you're going to, you're going to need the Persian majority, the Farsi speaking Persian majority to coalesce into some sort of process here. And the biggest thing is going to be getting the security services. I mentioned this before. When people can walk out in Tehran on the street and, and chant and whatever and have no fear of any security service opening up on them, then we will have turned a corner. I think there is still, that very much that fear right now. So we'll see.
- [31:40]
B
Yeah, for sure.
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A
Um, that's really. By the way, I did not know that about Nashville. I mean, I know there are some ethnic enclaves of. Of immigrants. And, you know, there's a huge Ethiopian population in the D.C. area. For example, a lot of Ethiopian friends who lived in D.C. you know, there's a lot of El Salvadorians in the, like, Maryland and Northern Virginia area. Like, you get these groups that I did not know the Kurds are. That's actually a nice choice for them, I gotta say. Well done, Kurds. Nashville, pretty close to the mountains.
- [32:06]
B
Remember how exactly it happened? But. But yeah, it's a huge population. And if you remember back in the day when they had the first elections in Iraq, Nashville was one of the places that allowed the voting to occur here because there was such a huge Kurdish population.
- [32:22]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting.
- [32:23]
B
Learn something.
- [32:25]
A
Yeah. He looks at me every day. There's not a day that goes by without our Sunspeed doing something so cute that I have to take a photo of it or a video of it. IPhones make that easy. And that's life in 2026. But 20 plus years ago, you had to have a camcorder and record it on a cassette or a VHS tape and then label it and then keep it somewhere. Well, if you're part of that videotape generation, let's get all that precious content digitized today so you can relive and share those memories again. And Legacy Box makes that easy. They put everything on digital files that live in the cloud. You can access them on your iPhone, iPad, computer, or smart tv, just like I can with videos of Speed and Ginger. Legacy Box has done this now for a million and a half families, including our own. It's going to be so cool when Speed grows up and he's able to see his family roots, grandparents, things that happened 20, 30 years ago, because we've transferred those tapes onto video. Don't wait for this. Don't wait for your old media to fade. Preserve it now for future generations and lots of fun today with Legacy box. Go to legacybox.com buck and get 50% off. That's legacybox.com buck.
- [33:42]
B
We are continuing to roll. I'm up here in Washington D.C. as we get ready for everything. Senator Kennedy is going to join us at the top of the next hour. And to a large extent, Buck. I can't wait, honestly, from Louisiana Senator Kennedy, to hear what he's going to say, because it seems that his questioning of the DHS Secretary Noem and the amount of $220 million that was spent on an advertising campaign may well have been the final precipitating event that led to her being removed. So we will be talking to the senator here in a few moments and I would just say to everybody, maybe get your popcorn, cuz I feel like Senator Kennedy is usually pretty entertaining with a lot of homespun wisdom, but I think he might be bringing a little bit of a bazooka with him on this interview in a bit.
- [34:34]
A
Well, there's reporting that is out already that says that Noem, the last straw, was saying that Trump approved the 220 million. There's also reporting that for Trump, the last straw was the way that she answered the question, answered the questions about her special government employee advisor, Corey Lewandowski. So both of those have gotten a lot of focus right now. But one thing I do know for sure about Trump is if, if most of your currency is, and I mean like 99% of it is your loyalty to Trump, you better stay loyal to Trump and not crack under oath and try to throw him under the bus or involve him in some problem that you've got. That was a very, very big mistake. Regardless of, of what the reporting all says on this. By the way, we got a VIP email from Michael who says, Buck, I was with ISG in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, starting in Erbil, it's up in the north and moving to Baghdad. Remind your listeners of what happened in Halabja in 1988 with the Kurds and what Saddam did to those people. Yeah, he dropped sarin gas on them. He gassed the Kurds, tried to rise up and Saddam just with helicopters, he had air superiority. There was no Kurdish air force really to speak of. And they were, they gassed people, villages in Halabja. It was thousands of people killed. So, yeah, Saddam was a very bad guy. And the Kurds suffered horribly under the Saddam regime. But that meant when Saddam was gone, they were willing to fight. Look, some of this clay, this brings up another part of the conversation. Do the, do the Iranian people, you know, do they have an estimate for a fight? You know, do they have a stomach to step up for their own freedom? It's being, it's being offered to them right now, not on a silver platter because they're going to take casualties and losses. That's going to happen. But do they want it? Do they want to be free of the tyrant? We'll see. We'll see what ends up happening. With that, Jack in Nashville says there's a lot of Kurds in Nashville. What's going on, Jackson? Well, I was just going to refer you to a book called Sellout by a guy named Schiffers, and it's predominantly about the Clinton impeachment. But we got the Kurds here because of Clinton and Gore's immigration policies, the same policies that brought the Somalians to Minnesota and the Cubans down to Florida. And the theory was that they're going to try and swing purple states blue or even red states blue, and we're going to put the immigrants there. And it's a very good book. You know, the guys, the guy that wrote it is a pretty hardcore Chicago Democrat, but it's worth referencing there. But that's how we got them all. All right, thank you. Thank you, sir, for calling in Clay. Interesting, interesting little historical tidbits. I know you like history, although maybe not this region of history as much. Saladin Salahuddin was a Kurd. In fact, Richard the Lionheart's great opponent in the Crusades was Kurdish. Something that let me tell you, the Kurds certainly remember, probably the greatest general of that period of history from the Muslim side. But yes, Saladin was a Kurd.
- [37:56]
B
I, I think I mentioned this on the program, the Rick Atkinson book about World War II. I've been reading about the battles in North Africa. He's such an amazing writer that he has gone all the way into Hannibal and the way different ways that attacks happen back in those days and now it's got me. Super fascinating to read more about that era as well. But the Rick Atkinson books on Revolutionary war, World War II, can't recommend them highly enough. We come back, Senator Kennedy, with a two by four. I think y' all are probably going to enjoy this. Keep egging with us.
- [38:37]
A
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