← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
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- [00:00]
Clay Travis
Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show podcast. Welcome back in hour number two, Friday edition Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us. We've been breaking down everything in the world of Trump and also us, Canada and pharmaceuticals and more. Buck, let's talk a little bit about this Ukraine United States rupture, to the extent we call it a rupture, in a pursuit of a ceasefire. And there's a bunch of interesting dynamics on this and what has been happening and where we are exactly as it pertains to this decision making. And that's a lot of words to say this. Trump has ratcheted up the pressure on Zelensky on a level that never existed during the Biden administration, saying, we're not going to give you an unlimited check. We need now to find a way to peace. And Elon Musk was asked about this. I'm going to play a really good description, I believe, of Marco Rubio, who we had on last week, secretary of State, laying out exactly why the United States is upset with what Zelensky has been doing in public and where this all comes from. But in particular, Elon yesterday was speaking and said, people say I'm a bought asset of Putin. He couldn't afford me. Which is quite the flex. Listen to cut six.
- [01:46]
Buck Sexton
People like, so I was like, to end this, say.
- [01:48]
Marco Rubio
Like, yeah, you know, I'm a, I'm a bought asset of Putin. Yeah, I'm like, he can't afford me. Yeah, I think, I think you're worth more than Russia.
- [01:57]
Buck Sexton
Think about it.
- [02:04]
Marco Rubio
True, by the way, that's why it's funny, because it is true.
- [02:07]
Clay Travis
That is an incredible flex to be able to put that out there. And so in a minute here, Buck, Marco Rubio sat down and laid out what's going on. And in essence, it is that Zelinsky has been saying publicly different things than what he's been saying privately.
- [02:25]
Marco Rubio
Yes.
- [02:25]
Clay Travis
And if you are involved in a negotiation on any subject out there and someone says something different face to face with you, then they say, then publicly, you can understand where the anger would come from from Trump. And essentially, Zelensky has been dishonest with American negotiators, either face to face or publicly, his story is not adding up. And so the United States is finally saying publicly, hey, you don't have a blank check forever. And also, hey, honesty actually matters when it comes to trying to negotiate a settlement of some form.
- [03:08]
Marco Rubio
What do the people who oppose Trump on this want for Ukraine for the next two years, what is the, the end goal that they are putting forward? I mean, that. That's where I think the conversation becomes much more clear. There's a lot of rhetoric about, oh, but democracy and standing with Ukraine and Russia's the aggressor and all this stuff. All of that is and may be or may be and is true. Whatever. Point is, do you want the war to end? If you don't want the war to end, why? And what do you think is better than that? And what you really have to have is somebody come forward to say, I think if we just keep, if we give the Ukrainians another $200 billion of US taxpayer funding and money, or, you know, weapons and money and all the rest of it, then I think that they'll be able to defeat the Russian Federation and kick them out of Ukraine entirely and have all of their sovereignty back. That's the only. Really, otherwise, what they're saying is nonsense and really pretty immoral, which is that they don't want the conflict to end. The problem, Clay, with coming out and saying that is anybody who understands the order of battle of these two sides, what they can bring to bear, men, materiel, munitions, understands that that's just fantasy land stuff. It's just not going to happen. It would have been a lot closer to happening over the last two years if it could happen. And we're getting to the point now where the war of attrition component of this, as in military age males and beyond, because in Ukraine, they're taking guys who are far older than what we usually think of as a military age male. They've been losing so many people and so many taken, so many dead and casualties and wounded and everything that if someone's going to run out, it's going to be Ukraine first. The even scarier thought that maybe some have, but won't say out loud in this country is, well, if we just keep backing them, eventually we're going to have to just step in and help them hold the line ourselves. And that's where people really lose their minds, I think rightly so, on our side, because hold on a second. We've been promised the whole time that would never, ever, ever happen. But we've been worried about it happening nonetheless because of mission creep. So Trump is trying to bring this to an end. Zelensky seems to be talking out of both sides of his mouth on the issue. You know, I saw that Ukrainian soldier tear the American flag off his helmet, and I just pointed this out. I think it's True. Without American taxpayers, you probably wouldn't have that helmet or that Kevlar to tear anything off of in the first place. So there's not. I understand they're fighting a war. It's a very, you know, it's a very horrific thing. But America has been more than generous to help a country that I still think, if you're looking at what is in our strategic interest, who's in control of the Donbas region of Ukraine really doesn't matter to us very much. And that is just the cold, hard reality of it.
- [06:03]
Clay Travis
And what Trump is trying to do now is there is an expectation that Ukraine has substantial mineral rights. And you're going to hear this from Marco Rubio in a moment. And given the fact that we have given Ukraine hundreds of billions of dollars in American aid, our taxpayer dollars, Trump is saying, if you want us to help in this conflict, we should get some of these mineral rights. And then the United States is incentivized in some way to help protect Ukraine going forward because we're partners on a business relationship. And that would theoretically dissuade Russia from deciding to invade again. Because the real concern, Buck, is let's say you solve this now, and then Putin decides, hey, you know what? I need more territory. You're trying to resolve this so that it doesn't continue forever. And remember, this all started with Crimea, with the way that Barack Obama responded when Russia decided they wanted to take some of Ukraine's territory. So I think Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, does a really good job of laying out exactly what is going on right now. This was an interview he did today.
- [07:12]
Ron Johnson
Listen, frankly, I was personally very upset because we had a conversation with President Zelensky, the vice president and I, the two, three of us, and we discussed this issue about the mineral rights, and we explained to them, look, we want to be a joint venture with you, not because we're trying to steal from your country, but because we think that's actually a security guarantee. If we're your partner in an important economic endeavor, we get to get paid back some of the money. The taxpayers have given close to $200 billion. And it also now we have a vested interest in the security of Ukraine. And he said, sure, we want to do this deal. It makes all the sense in the world. The only thing is, I need to run it through my legislative process. They have to approve it. I read two days later that Zelenskyy's out there saying, I rejected the deal. I told him, no way, that we're not doing that, well, that's not what happened in that meeting. So you start to get upset by somebody. We're trying to help these guys.
- [08:01]
Clay Travis
Okay? So I think that's a pretty good explanation of what's going on. And when you have people saying things to you privately that are different than what they're saying publicly, you can understand why it would be hard to work with them. And that's really kind of where Trump is. And look, Marco Rubio took you into the room. It's he, J.D. vance and Zelensky sitting down, trying to figure out how to hammer out this deal. Zelensky agrees to it in private, rips it in public, and then Trump decides, hey, I can't work with this guy. I'm going to tee off.
- [08:30]
Marco Rubio
You know, it's interesting as well that the expectation somehow on all this is that America is supposed to back Ukraine because it's the right thing to do. Well, you know, I've got a number of friends who are lawyers. You're a friend, you're a lawyer. I've got a lawyer in my family, and I've heard from lawyers before Clay that the most, some of the, their favorite words to hear as litigators is when someone says, it's the principle.
- [08:58]
Clay Travis
Yeah, it's a great gig.
- [09:00]
Marco Rubio
It's the principle of the thing when you're suing somebody and you're going through legal process gets very expensive very quickly. And because you're not actually looking at the cold, hard reality of what you're supposed to, what you're supposed to get from this situation, you're just, I want this thing because of the way I feel about it. And we're not supposed to run foreign policy that way, actually. And this is where Trump differs from a lot of the foreign policy consensus out of D.C. in recent decades, particularly with Democrats. Democrats only seem to like US Military intervention when there's no interest of the United States at stake. You know, it's, you know, we're going to, oh, bad things are happening in Libya. So Hillary is like, yeah, we came, we saw, he died. Remember that? Like, they like to do things where there's some humanitarian impulse or there's some defensive democracy impulse or whatever. That's actually not the way we should run our foreign policy. It should be what is good for America and for the American people. And, and that's. There's a big fight. And it's still, even among Republicans, some of them are a little more quiet about it, but they have the more neocon tendency to get more, to do more Intervention and get more involved. You know, I mean, how many people even know. You see there, there were 70 Christians were beheaded. I saw this in a church this week in the Congo. Should we. Should we land the 82nd Airborne and just start, you know, getting it, getting down to business and protecting people and everything else? You can make a humanitarian argument that, oh my gosh, 72 people were beheaded in a church. Like, we have to go. It's a horrible thing. We have to go right away. Well, the question you have to ask is, before we put Americans in harm way or we start writing huge checks from the American people, what does this do for America? And in Ukraine, when I start to hear people talk about what that, what that response would be, I go, that's not, you know, defensive democracy is very vague. You know, defensive democracy was Vietnam, everybody. I mean, defensive democracy is a little bit like the principle of the thing when you're suing somebody, which is you're losing sight of the actual interests of the individual and deciding that how you feel about it is more important than the realities and the ground. And I think that's led to a lot of big foreign policy mishaps. And in Ukraine, it's why the war has grinded on for two years instead of it should have gone to. Within six months, they should have been trying to negotiate this thing. No if ands or buts in the Biden administration and bring it to a conclusion. No, they thought that if we just gave them more stuff, eventually they would start to. They would win. That was what that was. The New York Times was writing, was writing whole pieces, Clay, every time the fighting season, which is when it's not as cold there and there's not as much snow and ice in the ground. Fighting season was started, was all, you know, Ukraine. This time around, they're going to really kick their Russians butts. And then within a few weeks, it was actually, no, that didn't happen.
- [11:41]
Clay Travis
And the question now is, how do you end it? How do you end it? Do we want for American taxpayers to continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars as Russia slowly but inevitably inches forward on Ukraine? I think the hard reality is Ukraine cannot win this war. And it is self evident to anyone who has looked at the way this war has gone over the last really two years. And so there has to be a negotiated peace in some way. What Trump is offering seems imminently rational. Hey, we will help you develop mineral rights so that the United States taxpayer is getting some benefit for all of the money that we have spent. And as A result of that, based on that alliance, as opposed to allowing you into NATO, which Russia would see as a direct provocation, we are then going to have a security relationship predicated on this business relationship, and the Ukrainians will have a successful extraction of mineral rights and the United States taxpayer will get back some of the money that we invested here. That seems imminently rational to me at this point.
- [12:57]
Marco Rubio
And you look at the casualty figures, I would note the official Ukrainian casualty figures are 31,000 killed in this conflict. We lost how many in Vietnam?
- [13:11]
Clay Travis
50,000, I think.
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Marco Rubio
Yeah, so. And that went on a lot longer than this has gone on. But the Wall Street Journal's reporting on an internal assessment from Ukraine that they did. That's not the official. But that's actually closer to what they. What we think is the reality is 80,000 killed and 400,000 wounded. 80,000 killed, 400,000 wounded in three years of this fight. And. Or two. Three years. Right.
- [13:36]
Clay Travis
They invaded in 22.
- [13:38]
Marco Rubio
Yeah, yeah. So. So it's been three years. So this is. I just feel like it's so clear that the sooner you can stop the carnage, the better, because this is really about terror. You know, this is about a territorial dispute. Russia is not going. The people that say Russia is going to run over the rest of Europe, that's. I know Zelensky says it, but that's just insane. So why not end this thing and end it as soon as possible? And I'm not somebody. Some people get to the place where they say, you know, Zelensky is a crook and he's lied, he's taken billions of dollars, and I just want the war to stop.
- [14:13]
Clay Travis
I agree. I also point out those numbers that you just shared. 400,000 wounded. A lot of people survive now that would have otherwise died because of our advances in medical technology.
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Marco Rubio
They've lost an arm or they've lost, but it is both legs and they didn't bleed.
- [14:30]
Clay Travis
It is devastating the rest of the life that they're going to have. It's fortunate that their lives were saved, but we're not talking about guys who took a piece of shrapnel and you'd never know they were wounded. A lot of these individuals are disabilitated on a level that you would never have survived in past years. So it's going to be very hard for them to recover. We'll take some of your calls. By the way, it's Friday, 800-282-2882. But I want to tell you, we're talking about how the war in Ukraine ends. But if you're interested in how World War I happened or World War II, or maybe you're out there and you're like, hey, you know what? I never really read Shakespeare like I wish I had or man, Mark Twain. I kind of, maybe I got the Cliff Notes out back in the day and I didn't really read Huckleberry Finn and some of the other incredible works out there. Hey, we're talking about the Constitution all the time. Maybe you aren't as well versed in the Founding Fathers as you wish you were. Maybe you didn't spend that much time in history class or literature class or the history of the world and you want to know more about ancient Rome. That's what Hillsdale's for. You can learn for learning sake on your timeline. You don't have to be up super early in the morning. Maybe you're a late night owl. Maybe you do get up super early in the morning and that's your free time. It's all what's best for you. You can go to clay and buck4hillsdale.com no cost. Easy to get started. Clay and Buck f o r hillsdale.com to register. You can check out all of these great college level courses to make you more intelligent than you otherwise would, to expand your depth of knowledge. If you're intellectually curious at all, why not check it out and see. Clayand buck4hillsdale.com to register. 40 plus courses on your time, no grades. You're gonna love it. It's learning for learning sake. Clay and Buck4hillsdale.com One more time. Clay and Buck4hillsdale.com.
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Marco Rubio
We've got some numbers coming in here on the border situation. This is Cut one, CBS reporting on how things are going under Trump' versus things before.
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Clay Travis
Play it over the past week, Border Patrol has apprehended an average of 285 migrants per day along the entire southern border. He says that's down 95% from the same time last year. Banks credited the decline with the increased federal and state assistance that Border Patrol has received.
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Marco Rubio
The strong law enforcement posture that we now have out there with our partners assisting us from the DOD to the Texas National Guard, we're being able to send a message that if you, if you cross the border, your, your, your chances of being apprehended are much greater. And if you are apprehended, you're going.
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Buck Sexton
To be removed from the country.
- [17:20]
Marco Rubio
Clay it has changed the situation of the border dramatically. It has changed the incentive structure and it is what we need to see happen. And it's a, it's a good start, but it is just a start, no doubt.
- [17:32]
Clay Travis
And, and I do think, again, the question is how many violent criminals are there in the United States? I think, smartly, the Trump administration has started there. But it's not only shutting down the southern border, which should be a huge story. It's also that a lot of people, I think, are deciding to go back voluntarily because they're recognizing that the environment has changed.
- [17:53]
Marco Rubio
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- [18:58]
Clay Travis
We are joined now by our friend, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, and we're going to dive into the latest on the budget and the priorities of 2025 in the Senate with him in a moment. But I actually want to start with you because I know the conversation about Ukraine has been very detailed of late. And you have met with Zelensky before and I'm curious what your experience has been like with him and what your thoughts are on the attempt to bring peace to the region after almost three years of war now.
- [19:37]
Buck Sexton
Yeah, I was the chairman of the European Subcommittee when he became president of Ukraine. So I was the only member of Congress in his inauguration in May of 2019. Then I went back with Senator Chris Murphy in September. At that point in time, President Zelensky told us that he knew he could not dislodge Russia from the Donbas or from Crimea and that he had to do a peace deal with him. He knew it wouldn't be popular in Ukraine, so that's what he had to do. So obviously things changed and he encouraged by the Biden administration to resist Putin. And now we've got this three year bloody stalemate. And I'm completely on board with what President Trump wants to do, which is to end the war. There's no way that Putin is going to lose that war. You have to face that reality. You know, none of us like that reality, but it's just true. So the door has to end.
- [20:36]
Clay Travis
I think it's fair to say that Zelensky was invaded by Russia partly because Biden was there and Putin didn't trust Biden's toughness. Do you think also there would have been peace sooner if Biden and his administration had been open to it, as opposed to what now looks like the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, both Ukrainian and Russian?
- [21:00]
Buck Sexton
Yeah, yeah. I was not in Istanbul, but you hear stories of the fact that they were very close to a peace deal, not had a peace deal. Then Biden sent Boris Johnson in there to kind of blow that thing up. So, sure, first of all, the war never should have started. We should have told Russia, no, we're not going to offer Ukraine NATO membership. I think that probably would have prevented it right there. We could have probably done more in terms of arming Ukraine early to deter Putin. But again, they had a peace agreement, as we're told, and that got blown up by Boris Johnson at the behest of Biden. So, no, this thing never should have started, never should have gone on this long.
- [21:41]
Marco Rubio
Do you think Senator Johnson appreciate you being with us? It's Buck. Do you think that this is something that President Trump will be able to bring at least to a ceasefire relatively quickly? Do you think that we could see it by the summer? I know I'm asking you to project out a little bit, but just based on your sense of Trump and his team and Secretary Rubio's capabilities and the realities on the ground here, and, you know, the strategic realities on top of all of that, what kind of a timeline are you hopeful Trump can achieve.
- [22:14]
Buck Sexton
As soon as possible? Again, I'm not going to like the deal. I don't think anybody's going to like the deal. You know, maybe Putin will like the deal. You know, again, this is. This is awful. But every day that goes by, the deal gets worse because more Ukrainians, more Russian conscripts die, more Ukraine gets destroyed. So, again, I've just been focusing. Gotta end this war. I've been saying that for a couple years now.
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Clay Travis
Let's go into the budget situation. Long night in the Senate. A lot of things that are going to be occurring. What should the our listeners know about where we are headed with the budget process here in 2025?
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Buck Sexton
You have to know the numbers. You know, in Washington D.C. they don't really like talking numbers much. But the facts are in 2019, we spent $4.4 trillion. Then we had Covid went on a massive bipartisan spending spree, spend almost 6.6 trillion. And I've said this in the past, no family, if they had an illness, had to borrow $50,000, pay medical bills. If that family member got well, you wouldn't keep borrowing $50,000 and spend at that level. That would be insane. But that's exactly what the federal government has done. The last five years we've averaged $6.5 trillion. Last year we spent 6.9. This year we're on a path to spend $7.3 trillion. So 4.4 to $7.3 trillion, that's a 63% increase while our population's growing 2.6%. So what we need to do is we need to return like a family would to some kind of pre pandemic spending level. I've laid out four options. What happened is Chairman Graham of the Budget Committee took my option where I said use President Trump's own budget for 2025. Back before he left office, he projected out his budget for 2025. If you'd use his numbers +day, Social Security, Medicare and interest, he'd be spending about $6,061,000,000,000. That is what we used in the budget we passed last night in the U.S. senate. I've laid out other options too. If you use Clinton's spending from 1998 and you increase it by population growth and inflation, plus this year's Social Security, Medicare and interest, that'd be $5.5 trillion and we'd virtually have a balanced budget. In other words, using Clinton's spending priorities, inflate it, we'd have a balanced budget. If you use Obama's spending priorities from 2014, it'd be $6.2 trillion. So I've laid out, I tell my colleagues, you all campaign on zero based budgeting, right? We'll never do it, but this is the next best thing. How about a 5.5 or 6.1 trillion dollar based budget? Let's do that. What the House is doing is they're basically starting at $7.3 trillion and they're suffering death by a thousand cuts, because everybody can't cut that, can't cut that, can cut that. So the House budget, you know, listen, I appreciate the difficult nature of this, appreciate what they're trying to do, but they're basically going from $7.3 trillion, and at most they'll cut 200 billion from that and end up at 7.1 trillion. That's totally inadequate. It sounds like a big number we're going to demand. We're going to cut $1.5 trillion over 10 years. So my message to President Trump, I told this to Vice President Vance when he's in lunch this week. I said, you know, I don't think anybody that voted for you either, or President Trump expect you to be spending at present Biden's levels. But that, in fact, is what we're doing here. That's what the House budget does.
- [26:01]
Marco Rubio
Speaking to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Senator, there's been a lot of noise from Democrats, Senator, Senate colleagues of yours, various Democrat appointee, judges from the federal bench, trying to prevent access to these kinds of numbers about spending, whether it's at the Treasury Department. I know the IRS has gotten a visit from Doge. Do you think that that's all being worked out and that Trump's, you know, stamp of approval on Ellen and the Doge team to go in and do this is going to be respected or because. Because to a lot of people, it just seems like Democrats are obstructing something that should be truly bipartisan, which is, let's see if they can find fraud, waste and abuse. And where they find it, they should be able to, you know, the government should deal with it.
- [26:52]
Buck Sexton
Well, Democrats use government to fund their radical left ideology, and they don't want the public to see it, and so they are resisting it. You know, the good news is the court are actually supporting President Trump. I completely support what Elon Musk is doing. I mean, the narrative is always unelected. All the bureaucrats that refuse to turn over information to members of Congress and the American public, they are unelected. I have a far greater faith in a representative from a duly elected president elected to do just this, going in there and uncovering this. Now, the trick's going to be just because Elon Musk and Doge uncovers the waste, fraud and abuse doesn't make it go away. We have to do that through the legislative process. And again, that's why I've been supporting a keep it simple process, what the Senate is doing. Okay, let's first start by giving Trump the resources he needs to secure the border. Defenders nation. I would actually do a three step process next. I'd come back using that same budget, by the way, in passing that, we use current policy on taxes, which means all we have to do is come back a second reconciliation, say we're going to extend the current tax code, as complex, as awful as it is. By doing that, we would prevent a massive automatic tax increase that occurred in 2026. Then we come back in the third round with the fiscal 2026 budget. And that's where we do all the other stuff. I mean, that's where you simplify, rationalize the tax code. That's where we take a look at Trump's tax proposals. That's when we do the pre pandemic spending level. Not going to be easy. But as you're seeing, the House, the one big beautiful bill is one really complex bill, which I think is probably one really impossible to pass bill right off the bat. And President Trump needs the border funding.
- [28:45]
Clay Travis
Now we're talking to Senator Ron Johnson. You made the analogy, and I think it's a good one. In 2019, we had a $4.4 trillion budget. Democrats, but also Republicans signed on to blow up that bill, that budget. During COVID money just flew out. We ratcheted up the national debt by a massive degree. Isn't there also a pretty good historical analogy here? Look, we responded, you know, and you've been on the show a lot. Much of the government and much of society failed in responding to Covid. But if you go back historically, During World War II, we ratcheted up spending massively for the federal government. But as soon as World War II was over, we dialed that back down and came back to some form of sanity because we weren't fighting the war anymore. Isn't it kind of crazy that there's almost no debate about the budgetary policies that were put in place during COVID being retracted at all? Like, I don't think most people even contemplate or discuss this.
- [29:47]
Buck Sexton
Well, one of the devious things the unit party has done is they've transferred discretionary spending into the mandatory accounts. So we've increased other mandatory, not Social Security, Medicare or even Medicaid. We've increased from 642 billion to 1.3 trillion since 2019. One thing this is three omnibuses ago. I asked my Senate colleagues, Republican colleagues say, hey, anybody know how much in total the federal government spent last year? I asked the Washington press corps that nobody knew because we never talk about it. One of the press guys said, well, I think it was over a trillion dollars. Now, that's discretionary spending. That's less than 30% of our budget. So we put so much of a federal budget on automatic pilot, we're supposedly the 535 member board of directors of the largest financial entity in the world and we don't even know in total what we spend now, because I raised that issue three years ago. People are aware, but they're looking at again, if you start it $7.3 trillion and try and cut your way through pre pandemic level, you'll never get there. You have to start at some pre pandemic level baseline again. I've laid out Clinton 1998, Obama 2014, even Trump's 2019. If you inflate that, you'd only be at 6.5 trillion. I still think that's too high. But it's $800 billion below where we are right now and it's over half a trillion below where the House is trying to struggle passing a budget.
- [31:19]
Marco Rubio
Thanks so much for being with us, Senator Ron Johnson.
- [31:21]
Buck Sexton
I'm not saying the Senate's going to have a good easy time getting down that level, but at least our budget says 6,061,000,000,000. Okay.
- [31:32]
Marco Rubio
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, thanks for being with us, sir.
- [31:35]
Buck Sexton
Have a great day.
- [31:38]
Marco Rubio
Three buses exploded on the southern edge of Tel Aviv last night in what Israeli police say is a suspected terror attack. Thankfully, they were empty and no one was killed. But it's a reminder of the constant threat of terror that Israeli citizens are living under. Understandably, it's left a mark on the psyche of so many in that country. Case in point, the Israeli Health Ministry put out a report identifying 3 million Israelis who have experienced anxiety, depression and symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder since the Hamas attacks in October of 2023. That's no surprise to anyone following the events overseas. The International Fellowship, of course, Christians and Jews, has continued to support those in the Holy Land still facing the lingering horrors of war and those who are in desperate need right now. Your ongoing monthly gift of $45 will provide critically needed aid to communities in the north and south parts of Israel devastated by the ongoing war. Your generous donation each month will help deliver to those in need. Help deliver aid rather to those in need. You can provide hope during a time of great uncertainty with your gift. Bless Israel and her people by visiting support ifcj.org that's one word. Supportifcj.org or call 888-488-IFCJ. Oh, my gosh, how am I getting through this wonderful radio show today? Well, Crockett Coffee is always here for me. I've got my Crockett coffee mug at hand with delicious Crocket instead side the mug, which would make sense because that's mugs are for. No, no surprise there. Clay has his, too. Look, this is the company you are building. A coffee company that loves America. American history celebrates the spirit, the frontier spirit of Davy Crockett himself. And 10% of the profits goes to our friends at the Tunnel, the Towers Foundation. Use code book. We've already got over a thousand of you have signed up for this. Thank you so much. Become a subscriber, use code book, and we'll get a signed copy of Clay's American Playbook to you. And like I've said, eventually, when the CIA gives me back my book and says it's okay to publish, which hopefully will one day happen, that will be something that will run maybe in the fall as well. So code book is going to be a thing that we're doing. But go to crockett coffee.com subscribe. I love the organic roast, but there's so many different things. K cup, whole bean, ground bean. It is delicious. Let's take a call from Linda, who had. Linda, I'm told by our team you have three adopted Ukrainian kids. You want to weigh in on the Ukraine situation? Go ahead.
- [34:01]
Caller (Linda)
Yes. Thank you. I'd like to preface this by saying I support President Trump. I'm very happy he's president. I love what he's doing with Doge. However, I'm not happy with his recent comments on Ukraine. I spent quite a bit of time in Ukraine. They love freedom there. They want their independence. But this comment about Zelensky being a dictator is just not correct. The constitution in Ukraine actually does not allow for elections during wartime. His popularity in Ukraine is actually above 50%.
- [34:31]
Clay Travis
And so let me ask you this, let me ask you this, Linda. I appreciate you calling in. How should it end?
- [34:38]
Caller (Linda)
So I agree with Trump that it needs to end. I mean, the country is devastated. My daughter's orphanage has been bombed. Like, why are they bombing orphanages? Putin is such an evil, evil person. And obviously we're all upset about the war in our family. So I agree that needs to end. I agree with Trump. Probably Ukraine is going to have to concede some land, maybe crease 214 I'm hoping they can get back the land that he's taken in the last three years. I think Trump is. Russia's not going to give up Crimea for sure. They may have to say goodbye to Donbass. I agree. For negotiated settlement. I mean, I don't like it, but it is what it is. But I don't know if it's productive for him to exclude Zelensky from talking. And I don't. It's definitely not productive to say that he should have stopped the war. When Putin literally gave Zelensky no choice, he invaded. The only option they had was to abdicate and have no Ukraine, have no country, have no language, have no culture. They were going to.
- [35:35]
Marco Rubio
Linda, thank you. Thank you very much for. We're sorry, we're at the end of the hour here. Appreciate you calling it. Thank you for sharing your perspective on it. Just in response to some of the points you've raised, I would say, you know, Trump's always been off office for a month, and it seems like it's finally realistic because you want the war to end, too, as we all do. It's realistic that that may happen imminently. So, as they say, let the man cook. You know, he's, he does his thing and, you know, he's not always, it's not always the way of the, you know, the diplomatic niceties that are expected in these things. But the results are what matter in this case. Results that save lives and billions, perhaps hundreds of billions, dollars of taxpayer money. Yeah.
- [36:15]
Clay Travis
And I would submit to you that on some level, Trump is playing the bad guy, which may give him more opportunity to get a deal done with Russia.
- [36:24]
Marco Rubio
I mean, it's like you want to deal with Trump or you want to deal with Rubio. It's kind of a good cop, bad cop situation. Rubio is like, look, I'm the nice.
- [36:30]
Clay Travis
One here, I think, for sure. Buck, you are out for the weekend. We'll be back on Monday. I'll close up shop last hour of the week, next.