← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
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- [00:00]
Clay Travis
Sunday Hang is brought to you by.
- [00:02]
Buck Sexton
Chalk Natural supplements for guys, gals and nothing in between. Fuel your day@chalk.com Bold, reverent and occasionally random. The Sunday Hang with Clay and Buck podcast starts now. What I will say about Trump talking about Canada becoming a 51st state. First of all, logically not a great idea because it probably would give. Let's just talk about the law. Let's pretend that Canada wanted to be a 51st state. Both of those Senate seats are going left wing every year. You're basically getting two more Vermont senators. Right? I don't think that aids and abets the overall American political process. And so I think that the idea is not necessarily one that has a beneficial long range future. I understand the concept of, hey, inside of the federalism framework, we don't have to worry about the trade disputes and issues and tariffs that exist in North America. I also understand the argument that basically Canada is around the size, a little bit smaller I believe of then California. And so the concept of it being one state. Now if you wanted to pick a rural part of Canada and make it the 51st state and then a, you know, very cosmopolitan city based 52nd state and so the Senate seats canceled off, I actually think that would be the more rational way to handle it personally. But that's a dispute that would happen back in the day. We have an idea and I think what Trump has challenged on it, that borders and territory are basically fixed in place because for much of North America, in most of our lives the map has been set. But if you are a history nerd, Buck, you I love old maps because you can see, oh here is the, here is the Louisiana Purchase, like this is the French territory. Like there are maps that kids were taught in America about that being in existence.
- [02:14]
Clay Travis
I have the only things of value hanging on my walls are really old maps. I have a John Speed map from the 17th century. So it's really a page from an atlas. I have that framed here. I also have David Burr map. David Burr was New York State's cartographer and in, and in 1829, you have to remember this is before, this is when there was no Google Earth, right. So cartographers were really necessary and it's important for business, important for development, important for getting you know, to great on Ethel's house up in Buffalo. Like you needed to know where the roads were and what was going on. So he did a map of actually Manhattan in 1829 that was part of the campaign to make men and make New York the great American City over Philadelphia, which had been the great American city up until about, you know, 1829. That's right around when the shift started to happen for the commercial center and everything else. So, yeah, I haven't. Anyway, sorry. You got me excited with your map, your nerd map talk. I. I got the only thing that I spend money on that's like a sort of a keepsake other than firearms, but I guess those are not really. Well, yeah, they're keepsakes is I have antique maps on my walls hundreds of years old.
- [03:28]
Buck Sexton
So what I love about them is that they show you that history isn't fixed. And that much of what we contemplate as decided was at one point very undecided about what the countries would look like, about where the borders would be. And obviously, many times that comes about as a result of war. But it can also come from land purchases, treaties, all these things. I mention Canada because if you go back and look at the Revolutionary War, it was very much possible at that point in time that much of Canada, Quebec in particular, could have ended up a part of the United States. And maybe Buck should have ended up a part of the United States from a purely economic perspective. But the war ended up moving south, the Revolutionary War, and so the major battlegrounds again for the history nerds out there. That started off when we were fighting, Remember before Benedict Arnold was the greatest turncoat. He was one of the great American heroes of the early parts of the war. We moved very much from the northern border in our battles all the way down South. And so we ended up walking away from the idea of Canada being part of the American Revolution. But there is a subtle twist of the historical record that would have had Canada as a part of the United States for all this time.
- [04:54]
Clay Travis
I have an excellent book here on my shelf. This is the Clay and Buck Nerd Hour, brought to you by Nerds All Over. Crucible of War by Fred Anderson, which is about the Seven Years War, also known as the French and Indian War. And it goes into just fascinating detail about. You know, people don't think of this really, Clay, but the French had forts. You know, they had built forts in and around the trading post, but that became really the frontier. And the British and the French smacked together there. And that led to the French and Indian War. And of course, the Indian allies of the French and then the British as well, played a critical role in this. And we then. Things didn't go so well for them after. But, you know, we don't think of this as a. An area, a Landmass that was being fought over by imperial powers at the time and that it really was quite arbitrary and things could have been quite different at the time, you know, afterwards, based upon a few battles and a few relatively, you know, fortuitous happenstance situations.
- [06:00]
Buck Sexton
Okay, let me give you my craziest decision any state's ever made when it came to territory. The state of Alabama was offered before anybody knew that the sandy white beaches of the Gulf of America would become some of the most valuable real estate in all of America. The state of Alabama, because if you look at it, it doesn't really make sense geographically, right? You have Florida which extends as a peninsula down. And then you have the so called panhandle which if you think about, you know, like a typical pan. Like a small little strip of land that runs essentially directly south of Alabama all the way down to where it meets Alabama. Buck. They offered Florida. Did the state of Alabama the right to take that land. Alabama. Some of you might say this is just what Alabama politicians have been doing for a long time. Totally bungled that offer, didn't take advantage of it. And now that is the most conservative part of Florida. Now no one knew this in the 1800s when they were making that choice. But if you go back and look at elections in 2000 in, in, in certainly in 2000, but in many of the close elections that have occurred in our country where Florida was sort of the tipping point, if all of those votes had gone to Alabama, it wouldn't really have changed the overall outcome of the state of Alabama. It's very conservative Republican leaning state also. It would have made the state of Alabama infinitely wealthier because the property along the Gulf coast is again some of the most valuable in our entire nation. Now instead they have a tiny little pinprick Alabama does. If you look at the way the map works of the, of the Gulf coast and the state of Florida has the most conservative ribbon running right along the Gulf Coast. That is the Panhandle from basically the Florabama. For those of you who know that bar, which is a fabulous bar, Buck. Half of it's in Alabama, half of it's in Florida. It's right on the, on the beautiful, the Gulf of America. It's an amazing spot all the way down, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. You can be in the state of Florida. Nobody knows this story.
- [08:19]
Clay Travis
Didn't. It's funny, you would have been living on the Alabama coast. Clay. West Virginia split off from Virginia right before the Civil War.
- [08:29]
Buck Sexton
During the Civil War.
- [08:30]
Clay Travis
During the Civil War.
- [08:32]
Buck Sexton
West Virginia, because it was a supremely mountainous region of Virginia. They never had big crops and. And. And. And farms and slavery in the same way. And so it broke off and became an independent state during the Civil War.
- [08:51]
Clay Travis
1868. Right. In 1863.
- [08:52]
Buck Sexton
They refused.
- [08:53]
Clay Travis
Yeah, I thought it was during the Civil War. Yeah. And, you know, that's interesting because people laugh at the idea. And, you know, we sit here, we talk about how many listeners we have in California and how we feel a strong bond with you Republicans in California and in New York, you know, in these big blue states, because we are the voice behind enemy lines for you. Right. You know, you're not alone. We're like the transmission on the. On the ham radio after the zombie apocalypse that says, don't worry, like, there is civilization. You can come to these coordinates, and we'll keep you safe from the zombies. Every zombie apocalypse movie has that. But the. The truth is, every time there's a conversation about a state splitting up, people always dismiss it out of him. We've actually had states split up into other states, never mind new states being admitted into the Union.
- [09:42]
Buck Sexton
Buck, you talk about old maps. Back in the day, they had north and south. I think that would be longitudinal lines. Right. But the initial colonies just continued west. They didn't really know where the boundary of the states ended. So there are some maps, like you'll. North Carolina. It's not a. It's not a crazy thing that North Carolina and Tennessee are basically on the same platitude. Longitude, latitude, not obviously, but you look right across, like, that was the state of North Carolina that just kept extending on into infinity until enough people went into Tennessee and decided they were gonna create their own state.
- [10:21]
Clay Travis
And, you know, to bring it into the current context, I think, Clay, first of all, Trump's got a lot of negotiating going on right now regarding the Panama Canal. There's been talk about Greenland, too, and the US Having by contract, and obviously, there's a whole deal deep history here. We built the Panama Canal. We lost a lot of people doing it. It was a hellish thing. People dying of malaria and typhus and, you know, yellow fever and all kinds of stuff. But we built the Panama Canal, and then Jimmy Carter, right, decided, you know what? It's all. It's all Panama and. But the same way that, you know, why is Guam a U.S. territory? Well, it is, because. It is, because we made it that way, and everyone seems kind of happy with it. There's no reason why you can't have negotiations over some of these things, because a nation is not just a landmass defined by rivers, oceans or mountains. Right? I mean, there's always, there's always borders that are arbitrary, that are drawn, and there's competing polities, competing nation states that make determinations about who should be in charge of what. In the context of Greenland, you know what? It's, it's, oh, it's been a part of Denmark for such a long time. Why now? Look, if the people of Greenland don't want to be a part of America, that's up to them, Fine. But if they wanted to vote in favor of joining us as their, why is that such a, there's nothing crazy about that. It's funny. We think that's crazy. Why is that, or rather people say that's crazy. Why is that crazy?
- [11:49]
Buck Sexton
Because in most of our lives, maps have remained relatively fixed in our geographic arena. And so that's, this is what I think is so important about this. Trump is basically signaling the country isn't settled. Right. We still have more growth and opportunity ahead of us, both economically, but also maybe geographically. And talking about it, remember when he first started talking about Greenland, everybody thought it was crazy. Now, I think there's a decent number of people out there that are like, yeah, you know what, they may vote to leave Denmark, stop being a colony of Denmark, and maybe they would like to be supported by the United States.
- [12:25]
Clay Travis
We've had a new country just over the last decade or so. Clay on the spot. What is the new country? Tick tock, tick tock. We got a million dollar question for Clay. I don't know who the million is coming from. I'm just saying it would be, I.
- [12:38]
Buck Sexton
Have no, I mean in Africa, it seems like they were coming up with new countries all the time. So I'm close in Africa. Suriname, you're close.
- [12:45]
Clay Travis
South Sudan, South Sudan. South Sudan, the newest. Not, not doing well these days, I might add. By the way, no one pays any attention. Speaking of, not big rock concerts about it.
- [12:55]
Buck Sexton
Speaker 1 Speaking buck. Only 50% of Africa has electricity. You know this. Only 50% of. There's a big graphic about it. Like 90% of some African countries still don't have electricity.
- [13:09]
Clay Travis
Well, when you say electricity, you mean, wait, are we talking about 24,7 access to it or are we talking about.
- [13:15]
Buck Sexton
I think just like it's wired and you have, you know, reliable access to.
- [13:20]
Clay Travis
Are we talking about by landmass or by like the population centers in Africa overwhelmingly have electricity. In terms of Graphic from the New.
- [13:28]
Buck Sexton
York Times that I took a photo of over the weekend that I was staggered. Maybe it's considered to be. Yeah, that showed the percentage of many of these countries that still do not have electricity.
- [13:38]
Clay Travis
When I was in Afghanistan, I think the estimate was that roughly 20% of the country had access to rely. Like this is the thing, right? Reliable electricity because you could always travel and get to a place as a generator. So I think, you know, I want to see what the New York Times is saying, how you, how, how you kind of frame it really matters. But about 20% of the country had real electric access and 20% of the country could read. That was a statistic they had.
- [14:03]
Buck Sexton
So here's a stat for you, Buck. 45% of Nigeria doesn't have electricity. I just sent it to you. This is nerd out stuff. We'll talk about it when we come back. This was in the New York Times over the weekend because I took a picture of it.
- [14:15]
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- [14:36]
Buck Sexton
Hair growth starts from the inside. @nutrafol.com that's n u t r a f o l.com Sunday hang with Clay and Buck. AOC has said, and I couldn't believe this when I listened to it, that Elon Musk is an unintelligent billionaire. In fact, one of the least intelligent billionaires that she's ever met or seen. This is real. We're going to play the audio for you, Buck. I have offered up that I will host a quiz bowl, which would be. Can you imagine Elon versus AOC in a quiz bowl? I think AOC. AOC. AOC's entire career would be over. There are lots of things you can attack people on. Elon being dumb is maybe the worst front I've seen in a long time.
- [15:29]
Clay Travis
The thing about being a very dumb democrat is you can be so dumb that you think you're smarter than the smartest people on the planet, which is an amazing thing.
- [15:39]
Buck Sexton
I mean, he's better at sending spaces to rockets to space than NASA.
- [15:45]
Clay Travis
Like much.
- [15:46]
Buck Sexton
Oh, he's not very intelligent. Is unbelievable.
- [15:49]
Clay Travis
Aoc. She's like really smart. And like, she does not think that, like Elon. Mr. Like, ooh, space rockets. Like silly little bumper cars, man. She does not think that Elon Musk is impressive. And here is the great future hope of the Democrat party Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
- [16:12]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
This dude is probably one of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met or seen or witnessed. Which, you know, you can probably even glean that from watching these people on tv. Anyways, all of that is to say is that they don't do their homework. Clearly they're putting 19 year olds in at the Treasury. This dude is not smart. And the danger in the lack of intelligence and the lack of expertise that Elon has, I mean this guy is one of the most morally vacant but also just least knowledgeable about these systems that we really know of.
- [16:53]
Clay Travis
Clay, how, how dumb do you have to be to go in public and say that Elon Musk is dumb? You could say a lot of things, but dumb is just not one of the things you can say.
- [17:03]
Buck Sexton
I kind of blown away by it. I mean AOC this might be. There's a lot. We got a bunch of clips of people saying really stupid things on the Democrat side. But to argue that the guy who is. We talked about this a little bit yesterday, Buck, but if anything I think it's being under analyzed and discussed. We talk about the historical record. Somebody called in I think or sent us an email and said he's a modern day Benjamin Franklin. I don't think that's a crazy idea. You can make the argument that Elon Musk is the most accomplished American of all time right now. And some of you out there are going to say wow, that I mean he's sending rocket ships to space more efficiently than NASA. He has redesigned the way that a car is propelled. He is. People don't even talk about it. He's building tunnels, Buck, that are like the greatest tunnels that have ever been built.
- [18:01]
Clay Travis
The boring company, which is a clever name. Yes. Yeah.
- [18:05]
Buck Sexton
He has, he has bought Twitter and committed it to first amendment principles while also building a brand new AI company that is built to some extent off of the data coming from that. And he now is deciding, hey, I'm going to look at the books on the federal government and it reminds me a little bit you, you read them and I read the book and also watched it, the movie the Big Short. And the way that those guys made money was they were like well what are these mortgage backed securities? And they're like, well they're actually just a collection of, you know, hundreds or thousands of mortgages.
- [18:47]
Clay Travis
Michael Burry, who is the kind of the central figure really in the Big Short, has Asperger's.
- [18:54]
Buck Sexton
Yes.
- [18:55]
Clay Travis
And you know, Asperger's as part of that condition. I remember reading about this in the book. You can often have people who will become very fixated. You know, it could be like a specific card game or it could be, I don't know, any number of different things. But he became fixated on mortgage backed securities and actually read the things that nobody else would read.
- [19:17]
Buck Sexton
Literally no one else would read it. He's sitting there looking at, okay, well they're like, the risk is lower because it's a mortgage backed security. We're putting hundreds or thousands of them into these offerings and nobody's actually looking and seeing like, ok, what are these actual mortgages? How connected are they? And his big bet which panned out was that they were all connected and there was going to be a mortgage crash.
- [19:39]
Clay Travis
Can I also point out that he has been unbelievably wrong about the stock market constantly, it seems, in public, since the big, since the big short, since his incredible moment of genius, he has basically been horribly wrong on a lot.
- [19:52]
Buck Sexton
Of big things, which, which actually makes sense because pessimists can be wrong about one big thing very often. But optimists tend to win. And basically when you short something, you are saying, hey, I am pessimistic. There is not that, that mindset, that contrarian mindset often ends up being wrong.
- [20:16]
Clay Travis
You are borrowing shares to sell with the idea that it will go down, the stock will go down, or the market will go down and you can buy it back at a later date under a contract. Yes.
- [20:26]
Buck Sexton
And so he made a ton of money there. He's lost a lot since. But my point on using that as an example is he actually went into the mortgage securities and looked and said, okay, what are these made up of? And that in essence is what Elon is doing right now in the government. Because a lot of people just say, okay, well the budget is $964 billion for this company. And then they break it, or this part of the government, and then they break, break it out by saying 24% goes here. And Elon actually said, okay, where are the actual ledgers? What is the accounting of the $964 billion? Who's signing off on these checks? Where is the money actually going? And most people never even ask. Buck.
- [21:11]
Clay Travis
USAID has a $43 billion budget. Everybody, 43 billion. It is operating as though it is entirely unaccountable to the rest of the executive branch. It is not a congressionally constituted agency. It is a Jimmy Carter idea. As if anything else needs to be said. And we just operate in this world of, oh, well, because it now exists. It exists forever. I mean, Clay, 40. $40 billion is a lot of money. I mean, you know, this is. No matter who you are, that is an astonishing amount of funds to be wasting. I mean, I'm just taking a look right now. Anyone guess what Border Patrol's budget is? Border Patrol, I want you to just think in your head, USAID gets 40 billion. Clay, what do you think Border Patrol gets?
- [22:10]
Buck Sexton
Oh, man, I legitimate. 60 billion. 100 billion. 7.
- [22:18]
Clay Travis
7 billion.
- [22:20]
Buck Sexton
That's pretty crazy for Border Patrol.
- [22:22]
Clay Travis
The FDNY, the Fire Department of New York has like, a two or $3 billion budget. Our entire Border Patrol gets $7 billion. This is the 2024 budget, everybody. And. And USAID gets $40 billion.
- [22:37]
Buck Sexton
Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
- [22:38]
Clay Travis
The world is a big place. But what matters to us more? Everyone.
- [22:43]
Buck Sexton
$7 billion is crazy, Buck. Roughly. That would mean, I think I'm correct in this, that basically a lot of, like, the NFL teams spend more money to pay NFL players than we do to actually secure the border.
- [23:03]
Clay Travis
Like that kind of the entire NFL payroll may be bigger than what we pay for the border.
- [23:07]
Buck Sexton
Yeah, but that. Doesn't that sound crazy to you? Like, I mean, when you think about that, that is. It is staggeringly low to me, some to be. I mean, that. That is especially when you consider what the cost of the failure to do it is. Right. Because whatever you spend on the protection of the border, that. I'm in disbelief.
- [23:32]
Clay Travis
I have been very impressed with Mr. Saquon Barclays runs lately. Though, to be fair, he's been doing a phenomenal job. So those. Those gentlemen on the NFL are earning their. Earning their. Their. Their money.
- [23:44]
Buck Sexton
I am drinking my Crockett coffee, the greatest coffee on the planet. I am soon going to be signing my books. A hundred of them stacked up downstairs. You can go get hooked up@crockett coffee.com and we are going to do at some point. I know Buck's got a baby coming, so it's going to be a little bit chaotic in the spring, but for all of our subscribers, we're going to do some form of meetup. I've been saying I want to go to San Antonio. I know they got the final Four there this year in San Antonio, so that might be a tough overlap. Probably hard to get hotel rooms, but I want to go to the Alamo. I want to go visit San Antonio again. I would like to visit the Battle of San Jacinto as well again. History nerds are like, yes, this sounds awesome. Lots of you are rolling your eyes, but those are directly connected to Davy Crockett, who we named our coffee company after. And if you love America and you love American history and every morning you wake up and as you get your day started or you're reading about the news, you want to celebrate the fact that you live in the greatest country that has ever existed. While you have your coffee, you need to be a Crockett coffee subscriber. It's fantastic. Light roast, dark roast, medium roast, organic. What else? We got some other flavor. Like we got a decaf everything you could, everything.
- [25:03]
Clay Travis
And please subscribe. You get a copy, signed copy of Clay's American Playbook. If you subscribe. If you just want to try it first to see how good the coffee is, you can try it and then you'll want to subscribe after. But use code book and you can get a signed copy of American Playbook. I hate being wrong, so I just have to take this one on the chin. I said running off the cuff here, getting fired up that Jimmy Carter started usaid. It was Kennedy who started usaid. But as far as I'm concerned, that's not any better. So just a quick ombudsman note there. Sorry, not always, right?
- [25:36]
Buck Sexton
So Clay, when we come back, Buck, I've got a fun one that I'm going to. I don't know if anybody else has ever done this. I've been trying to get my 17 year old junior in high school to study for the ACT and the satisfaction. I challenged him to a head to head act challenge which I believe we are doing tonight. I'm getting a little nervous about how cooked I might get. I have not taken a standardized test in as you would well imagine a very, very long time. Sundays with Clay and Buck. I mentioned I didn't watch the Oscars. I barely saw any of the movies that were nominated for anything. I'm betting, Buck, you did not watch the Oscars either. But I did see this come across my Twitter timeline during the Oscars last night and it's pretty awesome. Kieran Culkin, who is the brother of Macaulay Culkin, was a star in the show succession most recently and I believe won an award last night. And Oscar got up on the stage and he had a message for his wife who made a bet that she probably didn't expect to get cashed this quickly. Listen, after the show we're walking through.
- [26:51]
Kieran Culkin
A parking lot, she's holding the Emmy. We're trying to find her car. Emily, you were there, so you're a witness. And she goes, oh, God, I did say that. I guess I owe you a third kid. And I turned to her and I said, really?
- [27:00]
Buck Sexton
I want four.
- [27:03]
Kieran Culkin
And she turned to me. I swear to God, this happened. It was just over a year ago. She said, I will give you four when you win an Oscar. I held my hand out, she shook it. And I have not brought it up once until just now. You remember that, honey. You do.
- [27:18]
Buck Sexton
Okay, then.
- [27:19]
Kieran Culkin
I just have this to say to you, Jazz, love of my life, ye of little faith. No pressure. I love you. I'm really sorry I did this again. And let's get cracking on those kids. What do you say?
- [27:34]
Buck Sexton
So this is great. Buck, you've got your first coming soon. He won a third kid with his wife, betting he would win an Emmy. She said, okay, I'll give you four if you win an Oscar. Back to back years. He won Best Supporting Actor last night. I thought that was pretty great.