Hour 3 - Elon Knows it's a Mess - The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Summary

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show – Hour 3: "Elon Knows it's a Mess"
Release Date: June 3, 2025

In the third hour of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, hosted by Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, the duo delves into pressing national issues with their characteristic blend of intelligence and humor. This episode, titled "Elon Knows it's a Mess," primarily centers around immigration policies, national debt concerns, and listener interactions about Medicare and Social Security. The conversation is structured into several key segments, each highlighting the hosts' insights and engaging discussions.

1. Immigration Crisis and the Boulder Terrorist Case [00:34 – 16:45]

Buck Sexton opens the hour by addressing a listener's query about the immigration status of the family of the Boulder terrorist. He highlights the complexity of immigration enforcement, especially when it involves families:

“...if you're in the country for a few years and if your wife meets you here or, you know, you just meet some lady... we have been separating families.” [03:10]

Sexton critiques the current immigration system, tracing its deterioration from the Obama administration through Trump’s attempts at reform, the impact of COVID-19, and into Biden's current policies, which he argues have exacerbated the border crisis. He underscores the inefficiencies and lack of accountability within ICE, emphasizing the human cost of policy failures.

“The whole system was not set up to deal with the systematic violation that we saw under Biden.” [04:00]

The hosts discuss the broader implications of these policies, such as prolonged asylum cases leading to family separations and the exploitation of legal loopholes, painting a grim picture of the ongoing border issues.

2. Elon Musk Critiques the "Big Beautiful Bill" [16:45 – 31:20]

Transitioning from immigration, the show shifts focus to economic concerns, featuring Elon Musk’s criticisms of a significant congressional spending bill. Buck Sexton reads Musk's condemnation of the bill, emphasizing its detrimental impact on the national debt:

“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.” [05:15]

The conversation deepens into a discussion about the unsustainable trajectory of the U.S. national debt. Travis elaborates on the structural problems stemming from unchecked entitlement spending, comparing the situation to a household budget out of control.

“We can't afford to pay for everybody's healthcare for the last 30 years of their life... it's just the math.” [09:45]

Clay Travis underscores the necessity of entitlement reform, highlighting that proposals like the Big Beautiful Bill fall short of addressing the root causes of fiscal irresponsibility. He fervently advocates for long-term solutions, such as transitioning retirement accounts to gold as a hedge against inflation and governmental overspending.

“Gold continues to hold and grow in value... It's a perfect way to manage your savings against inevitable inflation.” [14:30]

The hosts emphasize the urgency of tackling the national debt, warning of severe economic consequences if current spending habits persist unchecked.

3. Press Briefing Clip and Economic Indicators [16:45 – 22:05]

A segment featuring Caroline Levitt's press briefing is played, where she highlights positive economic indicators under the Trump administration:

“Inflation dropped to 2.1% in April. Personal income increased 0.8% in April...” [16:45]

Levitt attributes these economic improvements to Trump's policies, including tariffs that reduced the trade deficit and significant drops in commodity prices, such as a 61% decrease in egg prices since Trump took office.

Buck Sexton humorously notes the precision of these figures, reinforcing the administration's economic successes while critiquing opposing viewpoints.

4. Listener Calls: Medicare, Social Security, and Taxation [22:05 – 31:41]

The show invites listeners to share their concerns, with feedback centering around Medicare and Social Security reforms:

Jay from Ohio expresses frustration over mandatory Medicare enrollment and the perceived lack of freedom in managing his healthcare.

“I want the freedom to not enroll in Medicare, and I don't have that at this point. And it's infuriating.” [22:05]

Buck responds by acknowledging the systemic issues and reiterates that current beneficiaries are protected, emphasizing the need for gradual reform to ensure long-term sustainability without penalizing those currently receiving benefits.
Mike from Oswego, New York, discusses the historical context of income taxes, tracing their origins back to wartime funding and critiquing the modern tax system's complexity and perceived inequities.

“The modern federal income tax is the 16th Amendment, 1913... Once they got us with the 16th Amendment, then that was rough.” [24:48]

Travis and Sexton delve into the inefficiencies of the current tax structure, advocating for lower taxes and greater financial freedom, especially criticizing high-tax states like New York and California.
Dave from North Carolina, approaching retirement, voices concerns about potential cuts to Medicare and Social Security, fearing inadequate support in his later years.

“I'm turning 70, limited income. You guys get rid of Medicare, Social Security... What am I supposed to do?” [31:20]

Buck reassures Dave that current beneficiaries are safeguarded but acknowledges the need for future reforms to ensure the programs' longevity without compromising existing commitments.

5. Personal Anecdotes and Closing Remarks [31:41 – End]

As the show nears its conclusion, Buck Sexton shares personal stories, including interactions with his dog and his views on media integrity. He criticizes mainstream media for being biased and propagandistic, reinforcing the show's stance on seeking truth beyond corporate-controlled narratives.

“The media lies and has no integrity whatsoever. The people who call themselves journalists are not journalists. They are propagandists.” [28:05]

Sexton emphasizes the importance of awareness and vigilance among listeners to counteract misinformation.

The episode wraps up with Buck promoting engaging with the show’s platform for future topics and encouraging listeners to submit their talkback suggestions for upcoming episodes.

Key Takeaways:

Immigration: The current system is failing, leading to family separations and inefficiencies in enforcement, a legacy of successive administrations mishandling border policies.
National Debt: Elon Musk's critique serves as a catalyst for a deeper discussion on the unsustainable national debt, emphasizing the need for entitlement reform and fiscal responsibility.
Economic Indicators: Positive economic metrics under the Trump administration are highlighted, showcasing the impact of targeted policies on inflation and trade balances.
Listener Concerns: Real-world implications of policy decisions on Medicare and Social Security are brought to the forefront, underscoring the necessity for thoughtful reforms that protect current and future beneficiaries.
Media Integrity: A critical view of mainstream media is presented, urging listeners to seek unfiltered information and remain informed beyond biased outlets.

This episode of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show provides a comprehensive analysis of pressing national issues, blending expert opinions with listener interactions to foster a nuanced understanding of complex topics.

Transcript

Buck Sexton (0:00)

This is an iHeart podcast.

Clay Travis (0:05)

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Buck Sexton (0:34)

Third hour, Clay and Buck kicks off right now. Thanks for being here with us, everybody. And I got some breaking news for you. This was a question that was just asked before. I think it was actually. Well, it's a talk back question from one of our esteemed listeners. What about the family of the Boulder terror terrorists? Where is their immigration status or what's going on with them? And ICE agents have arrested the wife and taken into custody of the children. I don't know their ages of the Boulder terrorists as well. I would assume that we'll find out more here on Are they also in the country illegally? This would be so interesting, wouldn't it? You'd have somebody who comes here, overstays his visa. Maybe the family overstayed the visa as well. The same game. And then, and then he applies for asylum. And then if he gets asylum, he manages to keep the rest of his family here as well. Perhaps he has a child while he's waiting for his, waiting for his asylum case to be heard. So think about this. Even if your asylum case as something like 80 or 90% of the ones that have been heard are dismissed. And then there's a, then there's a detainer order put out. Or rather, then there's a, what do you call it, an expulsion hearing, A deportation, Sorry, deportation hearing, Not a detainer. A deportation hearing that's separate from this. So you have all these chances to stay in the country. But if you're in the country for a few years and if your wife meets you here or, you know, you just meet some lady, I mean, you know, these things happen, right? You have a kid here. Well, now you're separating families. Now you can't be sent home, right? Because now you're sent, you're, you're breaking up a family. The, the whole system was not set up to deal with the systematic violation that we saw under Biden. And honestly, before that it occurred as well. Trump was cleaning it up. Trump inherited a terrible border from Obama. And then there is this exploitation of the asylum loophole. And then Trump tries to clean that up and starts locking that down. Then we hit Covid and then Covid does create actually a lockdown at the border for a while. And then Biden just kicks the whole thing wide open. And we are still very much dealing with the consequences of that to this day. So that's something that we are going to continue to talk about here. But also just the ICE agents arresting that Boulder terror suspect. That's breaking news right now as I talk to you. They've taken that family into custody. And we'll see. I'd be curious to know more details. Really? The wife didn't know the guy was building a homemade flamethrower? No idea maybe, but no idea. Hmm. Now, something else. We've got those Caroline Levitt, White House press briefing sound bites for you. We'll get to that here in just, in just a moment. But something that has come up on the radar too, and that is, this is from Elon. I'm just gonna say I'm making sure it's. He's 2220 million subscribers. A lot of fake Elon accounts out there. Elon is saying this about the big beautiful bill. I am quoting to you now from the founder of Doge himself and the owner of the X platform, which is where I am reading this from. I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it. Yikes. Elon continues. It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to 2.5 trillion and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt. That's from Elon Musk, everybody. That's the Doge guy. So I think we know where he stands on the big beautiful bill. And I think we also know that all along there was a, there was a time limit. Yes. By, by custom and law. I think for a temporary government employee, there was a time limit on what could be, what could be accomplished, what could be done here by Elon. But also I had worried all along that somebody who has operated in a private sector where you have the ability to do the things you want to do would quickly become incredibly frustrated by a government sector where there is, it is deeply entrenched that there is no accountability and that the system is perpetuated. That is the whole thing. The giant self licking ice cream cone in D.C. that is the whole thing. It just keeps doing what it does. It doesn't need anything else. It just keeps pushing along. So Elon making it very clear that he thinks that this bill is not at all what it should be, that it does not take into account and like, he doesn't care. Right? He's. He's no longer. He's no longer running Doge. He's back to his companies. He told us what was going on. He told us about the spending problems. And this is, It's. The spending problems are not getting better. We're still spending too much money. Everybody. I, I didn't, you know, I sit here and does anyone want to hear it? Does anyone care? We gonna do anything about this? And the truth is we're spending too much money. And we're spending too much money because we can't afford to pay for everybody's healthcare for the last 30 years of their life, more or less. Even though I know we're told we're. We pay into it. But if you won't touch entitlements, we're spending ourselves into oblivion. That's just the truth. That's just the math, and that's why it's unpopular. If we could fix the debt by cutting back on windmill spending or something, a Green New Deal scam, we could fix the debt, not help it a tiny, tiny, tiny bit. If we could fix it, of course we would do that. The reason our Congress does not address the problem of our increasingly unsustainable, mathematically unsustainable debt is that we don't want it to. So I don't know how energized or exercised I can get about this, because I can tell you what the numbers are. You know, if I sat down, if we were doing a household budget, and I sat down with you and I said, look, here's the problem where we have a thousand dollars a month that we can spend on food, and we're spending $2,000 a month on food. And all we have to do is we have to get rid of, you know, sorry, we can't eat red meat anymore. We cut out. We cut back on the red meat. You know, we can actually hit our budget. And you say, well, no, we can't do that. I need my red meat. And you go, okay, but then we're spending too much money. So just understand that there's a push pull here. There's no we. If we don't reform entitlements, we don't change this. And that's just it. And I don't want to argue with anybody about it. That's just reality. That's math. And I know that people be told or they've been told, oh, but I paid for this. You actually end up taking out the average person over two times what you pay into, for example, Medicare over the course of the program. So you know, you can't. And Trump won't touch Medicare and no one's going to touch Social Security or Medicare. Medicaid is just this massive slush fund nationally that has very little accountability mechanisms in place. The big beautiful bill actually tries to do some of that, but we're just going to keep spending too much money. It's tough for me. It's a little bit like the debt ceiling fight for me. Now how am I supposed to go through histrionics and tell you that this is going to become a bigger and bigger problem? It will become a problem that is so big that by the time everyone agrees it's a problem that must be fixed, it will be too late to fix the problem without tremendous pain financially and as a society. But smoke him if you got him, cuz it's not changing. And you know, for Elon to come out and say this, I wonder, I wonder, is Trump or anyone gonna have harsh words to say about, I mean, Elon, he saw all the books. He knows, Elon knows that if the United States government was a company, the company is headed to bankruptcy. He knows that and we know that. And this is what the numbers are telling us and this is what Elon is telling us. But now we're told, oh, we will handle this, but not yet. There's a bit of a procrastination explanation here. We will tackle this national debt, but we will do it in the future at some other point. Guys, I told you, I've lost, I've lost Now, I'd say £40. Really. I mean, when I got sick last week, it got down to like another 10 pounds because you don't want to lose weight that way. But I'm down at least £40 and you know what I end up, it's funny, I remember my guy, my online training coach, Dane Anderson, he, he's a great guy and just, he lives this stuff and he's a really unique character and just lives fitness and health and everything. And I remember he kind of gave me my first meal plan and there was just, there's a lot of like lean protein now. I love protein, but like a lot of you, I'm sure you know what kind of lean or rather you know what kind of protein I like. Hamburger meat, rib eye, New York strip, right There, that's a bacon. That's the protein that I like. You know what lean protein is? Eh? 99% lean ground turkey. You know, white fish, you know, things like. Things like that. You know, it's like, oh, that's not as exciting. But I remember he put on there, I had to eat ground. Now I eat ground turkey pretty much every day. I've really developed a taste for it. I season it. I. Is it as exciting as cutting into a delicious piece of short rib? Definitely not. But what I'm saying is, initially it was, well, I. I'll do this, but I don't really want to start eating, like, come on. 99% lean turkey, ground turkey. That sounds. That sounds not fun. It's never going to be fun. But I had reached a point where I was like, okay, time to do it. The nation needs to go on a diet, and we don't want to do it. We don't want to eat ground turkey. We want. We want bacon cheeseburgers. And I get it, but don't tell me that you want to eat bacon cheeseburgers every day and you want to lose weight. Don't tell me that you want to tackle the debt, but we can't touch entitlements. Like I said, I'm not going to fight with anybody over it because it's not worth it, because people feel so passionately about this. But that is the truth. That is the problem. We have set up a system that is financially unsustainable, and we've made promises to people that are based in things that are unfortunately, mathematically not true. Like you're paying in more than you're getting out. That's not true. It's a little bit like a Ponzi scheme, and this is where we are, and I don't think anybody wants to handle it. So it's not going to get handled. Elon, saying this, I think that the Trump economy is going to be. It's going to be booming, and it's going to be fantastic. I still believe that. I think there's stuff in this big, beautiful bill that is awesome, and I'm very excited about it. But we shouldn't kid ourselves. We're not tackling the problem of the debt. We are not dealing with the debt. So now's probably a good time to tell you about gold, because you know what? They can't print gold. Gold has been a store of value for as long as there's been human civilization. You know, you think about this. Gold has a lot of value today. You Got some gold coins in your hand. Gold coins go back to like ancient Babylon. Would anyone laugh at you if you're like, hey, all I've got are these measly gold coins. Hmm. That's thousands of years ago. Gold, my friends. It makes sense. Gold was $2,000 an ounce back in 2019-2020. Today it's hovering around $3,400. I've owned gold for over a decade. Like I said, this Trump economy is going to kick ass. But where is your, where are your savings going to be in 10 years? Trump's not going to be president in 10 years. Why don't you put yourself on a pathway now to store value for the long term and hedge against the inflation that is inevitable. We're not touching the debt. It is going to happen. Elon saying it, he's the best CEO on the planet. He's telling you this debt is going to get worse, which means they're going to inflate away some portion of that debt with money printing. This is where gold comes in and why gold continues to hold and grow in value. It doesn't hold, it grows in value. Look at gold over the last five years. Look at gold over the last 20 years. You know, conservative talk radio, a lot of us, you know, me and Glenn and people have been talking about gold for a while. It's been a great investment. Birch Gold Group is who I trust for you to get some gold today. They're the best informed, customer friendly company in this space. You should give them a try. I recently bought some gold myself from the Birch Gold Group. I hold physical gold, but if you've got a 401k or an IRA that you want to have transitioned into a gold IRA or 401k, Birchgold is the best in the business. They specialize in doing that. Think about it, you know, maybe you've got, you know, 30 or 40 grand that's in some old 401k or some number like that. You're like, well, what am I even going to do with this? You can transition into gold and then in 10 years and 20 years and 30 years, just see what that gold value is. My friends. Birch Gold Group. Text my name. Buck to 9898 98. Receive your free no obligation info kit on gold. Again, text my name. Buck to 9898 98. Learn how to hold gold and silver in a tax sheltered account. And Birch Gold can help you convert that existing IRA or 401k into a gold IRA for no money out of pocket. If you Want to just go online, too? Go to birchgold.com buck that's birchgold.com buck just a note. I, I do think that the big beautiful bill is going to be great for the economy. Right. There's two different things to handle here. There's what this will do this year and for perhaps the rest of the administration, the footing it'll put it on. And then there's the debt that we have been piling up for, particularly the last, call it, you know, 30 years or so and what that is. Right. So that's a very long term structural problem that is going to stay with us post Trump administration, no matter what Trump does. And I have no illusions. There's no world in which Trump can just be like, all right, $30 trillion, it's all good, we paid it all. You know, that's not going to happen. But to begin to pay it down would be the best that we could hope for. And if we could say we're going to pay a trillion dollars toward the debt next year so the number actually meaningfully goes down, or maybe even if we could just have a, you know, a balanced budget for the year, even take a step back from that, that would show what is possible and it would show us that we can do this. And that's not what's going on right now with this bill. But I do think the short term impact on the economy is going to be particularly strong. And here is Caroline Levitt who is just telling everybody and doing it based on the numbers. This is cut 25. Look, inflation is down. The economy's good play 25.