Team 47 - Shutdown Schmutdown

Summary

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Episode: Team 47 - Shutdown Schmutdown
Date: October 5, 2025
Host: Clay Travis
Producer: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

This episode of Team 47 focuses on the government shutdown, the politics behind it, and its connections to ongoing healthcare debates in the U.S. Clay Travis offers his characteristic blend of humor, personal narrative, and critical analysis as he dissects the shutdown’s causes, the broken American healthcare system, and what he sees as the failures and contradictions of Democrat policy. The conversation also touches on political messaging, the influence of COVID-era policies, and the necessity of bringing conservative arguments to a wider audience, including younger generations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Government Shutdown: Context and Significance

[00:34 – 13:50]

• Clay minimizes the drama of government shutdowns, likening them to a recurring plot:

  "It just feels like the same plot over and over again, Groundhog Day. In many ways it is." (00:40)

• He provides historical context: 20 shutdowns since 1976; the longest under Trump (34 days).
• Core dispute: extension of COVID-era healthcare spending policies, mainly pushed by Democrats.
• Clay critiques the health care system as the “most inefficient and least effective part of the American economic system,” calling it “anti-capitalistic in many ways. It is profoundly broken.” (05:12)
• He uses personal anecdotes to highlight inefficiencies, opacity in healthcare pricing, and perverse insurance incentives.

2. Healthcare System: A Broken Marketplace

[03:10 – 13:50]

• Clay explains how neither patients nor doctors operate in a marketplace with visible prices, fostering irrational consumption and overprescription:

  "One reason our healthcare system is broken...is nobody has any idea what anything costs. You can't make a rational decision in your life..." (04:10)

• Anecdote: After his wife was in a car accident, they discovered ambulance costs were “thousands and thousands of dollars.” Similarly, hospital tours couldn’t answer what a delivery would cost.
• Points out the paradox where uninsured patients sometimes pay less than insured ones due to the convoluted system:

  "My incompetence actually benefited the family because we had to pay less money, but we paid a fraction as uninsured...of what a health care insured family would pay." (09:10)

• Argues that public policies now subsidize inefficient, costly care, often for those not paying into the tax base, including immigrants.

3. COVID Policy Extensions at Heart of Shutdown

[10:50 – 13:50]

• The disputed spending package would extend COVID-era healthcare subsidies, costing about $450 billion over a decade. Clay argues much of it is unnecessary and persists only due to policy inertia.
• Suggests government projects, once born, are almost never “sunsetted”—they become indefinite, growing federal costs.
• Frames the Democrats’ position as giving more benefits to non-taxpayers and illegal immigrants, while Republicans want to let temporary COVID spending expire.

4. Political Messaging & Media Battles

[13:50 – 23:07]

• Clay mocks Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for dismissing New York Times polling that blames Democrats for the shutdown:

  "It's so bad that Chuck Schumer is having to resort to saying the New York Times is biased against Democrats..." (14:52)

• Plays a clip where Schumer disputes the NYT poll and its framing.
• Clarifies confusion around whether federal policy directly supplies healthcare to illegal immigrants: details how federal dollars go to states, which then fund health care for illegal immigrants, particularly in blue states.
• Cites precedent from the 2019 Democratic primary debate, highlighting all major candidates supporting health coverage for undocumented immigrants:

  "Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants. Every hand went up." (22:00)

• Critique of COVID spending: many pandemic-era increases now serve as the baseline for permanent higher spending, which Democrats resist rolling back by labeling all cuts as “threats” to vulnerable groups.

5. Clay’s New Book & Conservative Outreach

[23:07 – 37:39, 26:56 – 38:58]

• Clay promotes his upcoming book “Balls,” stressing it’s about young men, sports fans, Trump’s political momentum, and the importance of messaging to new audiences.
• All proceeds to be donated to charity, with listeners invited to suggest worthy causes.
• Emphasizes the importance of disseminating conservative arguments to young people, crediting Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA for effective campus outreach.
• Encourages listeners to buy and distribute the book widely, explaining the publishing industry’s mechanics for positioning books in stores and airports.

6. Caller Segment: Listener Reactions and Culture Commentary

[37:39 – 39:24]

• Mark from Salt Lake calls in to thank Clay for his family focus and candor, admitting he’s come to appreciate him over time.
• Moses from Montana shares concerns about Portland’s urban decline:

  "I am telling you what, martial law needs to get imposed...it's the smell, it's the scudge, it's the homeless, and the cops do nothing." (38:58)

• Clay riffing on this point:

  "The left is not beautiful...There's something rotten at the core of the left that manifests itself physically in the structures, in the bodies. I do think that it then also certainly degrades the streets. They're dirty, they're disgusting, they're filthy. It's a physical manifestation, I think, of a hole in the soul that many in the left don't even realize that they have." (39:24)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On government shutdown rhythms

  • “It just feels like the same plot over and over again, Groundhog Day. In many ways it is.” – Clay Travis (00:40)

• On healthcare dysfunction

  • "It is the most inefficient and the least effective part of, I would argue, the the American economic system. It is anti capitalistic in many ways. It is profoundly broken." – Clay Travis (05:12)

• On insurance perversions

  • "Insurance is the only thing all of us have to pay for that we hope to never use." – Clay Travis (08:05)

• On why federal healthcare dollars for illegal immigrants are hard to track

  • "The money goes to the states. So the federal government cuts a big check...State government officials then take those dollars and allocate many of them to illegal immigrant health care." – Clay Travis (15:40)

• Recalling Democrat debate

  • “Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants...Every hand went up.” – Clay Travis recalling 2019 debate (22:00)

• On cultural decay

  • "The left is not beautiful...It's a physical manifestation, I think, of a hole in the soul that many in the left don't even realize that they have." – Clay Travis (39:24)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:34 – 13:50: Opening monologue on the government shutdown & healthcare system critique
• 13:50 – 23:07: Media blame games, Democrats' policy history, COVID-era spending
• 23:07 – 26:56: Clay’s book announcement & appeal for activist outreach
• 37:39 – 39:24: Caller segment: Listener perspectives, urban decay, and cultural commentary

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

Clay Travis delivers this episode in his typical, outspoken manner—mixing storytelling, pointed cultural critique, humor, and an urgent call to political engagement. He sees the government shutdown as more “sound and fury” over symptoms of much deeper, systemic issues—the healthcare system and the tax code. Repeatedly, he ties current policies back to COVID, arguing Democrats are leveraging pandemic chaos for permanent spending increases. The show also features substantial listener engagement, direct appeals for activism, and a strong push to expand the conservative voice to younger, less-reached audiences.

For listeners looking for a summary:

• The shutdown is viewed as mostly political theater, with deep roots in healthcare policy dysfunction.
• Clay sees both the U.S. healthcare system and the tax code as in need of full reform, not half-measures.
• Democrats’ COVID-era expansions are the principal fiscal battleground; much of the debate is about who gets subsidized care.
• Clay makes a dual appeal: change national policy through argumentation, and help his book (and message) break out to wider, younger audiences.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[B]

This is the story of the One. As head of maintenance at a concert hall, he knows the show must always go on. That's why he works behind the scenes, ensuring every light is working, the H Vac is humming, and his facility shines with Grainger's supplies and solutions for every challenge he faces. Plus 24. 7 customer support. His venue never misses a beat. Call quickgranger.com or or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[C]

The Team 47 podcast is sponsored by Good Ranchers making the American Farm strong again. Team 47 with Clay and Buck starts now. The shutdown is underway. And I gotta be honest with y', all, you know, and I think Buck and I have talked about this quite a bit on the program. We are not of the opinion that the shutdown is ultimately that big of a story because eventually it will get resolved and we'll just add on more debt. Uh, but I do want to give you some historical analogy of where we are. Since 1976, the US government has shut down 20 times. So if you are out there and you're thinking, this just feels like the same plot over and over again, Groundhog Day. In many ways it is. There were no shutdowns between 1995 and 2013, but three have occurred in the 12 year since. The longest one was in Trump 1.0 and that lasted 34 days back in 2018. Really, the essence of this shutdown, just so you know, is a battle over whether there should be an extension of COVID health care policies which were put in place by Democrats as part of their massive blockbuster out of control spending bills that they forced through in the COVID era. And the reason why this spending cost is up now is because they pegged it for a relatively short period of time so that it did not continue to cost money going forward. Now, this is me and you have heard me go off on this quite a lot. The healthcare system in the United States is broken. Every single one of you listening to me right now is nodding along because it is just a broken marketplace. It makes no sense the way we have designed it. It is the most inefficient and the least effective part of, I would argue, the the American economic system. It is anti capitalistic in many ways. It is profoundly broken. This spending package that the Democrats are insisting on continuing would add up over the next decade, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, to around $450 billion. And much of it is a subsidy to that is in a large Extent unnecessary. And so this, let me give you a little bit of a background of exactly what's going on. Try to simplify this for you. So we begin with the foundational point that the health care system in this country is broken. And anybody who's ever had to get on the phone with their insurance provider knows exactly what I'm talking about. Studies suggest that one reason our healthcare system is broken, probably the primary one, is nobody has any idea what anything costs. And so you can't make a rational decision in your life about whether or not you need an MRI or whether you need a, need to go to the hospital or not, because a lot of times you don't have the information as you're not a doctor as, as necessary. And what has happened is doctors wildly overprescribe because much of this is paid for by insurance. And patients, to a large extent are not making choices that are rational. I'll give you an example that that happened recently in my family. I think it was a few years ago. My wife was in a car accident. She was fine. She was able to get to the hospital and make sure everything was okay without needing an ambulance. But the ambulance, the police officer told her, hey, the ambulance can take you, but it will end up costing you thousands and thousands of dollars. Or you can take yourself to the, to the hospital on your own. How many people actually make that choice? How many people actually in much of your life? And I've talked about this in my own life, when it came to having our kids, we went to go tour the hospitals. Nobody could tell me what a delivery cost. Went to all these different hospitals, they're competing to see who has the fastest wifi. The they're competing to see who has bamboo floors, who has the best flat screen televisions in the delivery area, what sort of security there is to make sure that your babies are safe. All those things are fine. They don't compete on price. I just said to each of them, hey, what's this gonna cost me? None of them could tell me. I mentioned to you, I think last week, because I think it's a really instructive analogy, that I went and took one of our kids when he had strep throat. My wife took the other one. She was on the ball, knew where our healthcare card was, knew exactly who our healthcare provider was, turned it over when we checked in, when she checked in, I didn't have any idea where the healthcare card was. Somehow I couldn't find it in my wallet. I think we had switched and my incompetence meant that we were billed as not having health care, and we paid a fraction of what my wife paid for the exact same medical treatment because we had health insurance. It's all broken. All of it is broken. And I could get on a pedestal and talk about this forever. The fact that we run health care as someone who has owned a business and has had to pay for healthcare, the fact that healthcare is connected to employment is crazy. Uh, I have been a freelancer who was not an employee. Um, and the fact that I had to go out into the healthcare marketplace and figure out what policy was the right one for me was incredibly complicated, too. Insurance is the only thing all of us have to pay for that we hope to never use. And the entire insurance industry is totally broken in conjunction with health care. We spend way more than any country in the world, and we do not get the best results. And the data reflects that you could eliminate half of all medical treatments and there wouldn't be any change in life expectancy in this country. So my general proposition is, I don't want to take anything. I know Tylenol was in the news. I get made fun of. I don't want to take any drugs. I don't want to take anything. I feel fortunate. I've been pretty healthy in the grand scheme of things. And I think that they wildly overprescribe and overmedicate us as a whole. And yet, simultaneously, the people who actually do need health care, the people who are actually sick, the people who are in desperate need of health care cannot get it. And the people who don't need it don't feel like we're getting any kind of rational health care that makes common sense. Ok, so that's where we really are. And in essence, much like our tax code, because I would say, number one broken system in America's healthcare, number two is tax code. They're both so fundamentally broken that you would actually do better if you just tore them both down and built a functional, rational health care system and tax policy. Instead, we have just continued to add layer upon layer of a broken foundation. And as a result, if you want to use sort of a building metaphor, we have constantly shifting in the winds, tall buildings with no structural stability, and they'll fall over all the time, and they make absolutely no sense. So go. Hey, happy optimistic Wednesday, everybody. We've got two hugely broken systems that threaten the very fabric of our democratic republic. Because as we have an aging population, the cost that we're going to have to put out for healthcare is going to be Borne increasingly by a dwindling number of young people in America. And the budget and the math just doesn't add up. So all of that is the foundational issue that is in play here. And one of the real unfortunate aspects of, of of our democratic republic is once something is created, once the government creates a project, it almost never leaves. It just goes on the ledger as a cost long into the future. And Democrats want to provide health care for as many people as possible, including many different illegal immigrants. And ultimately this is paid for by all of you out there that are working hard. Every single day, they're reaching into your pocket, they're taking your money out, and they're giving it to someone very often who is not even an American citizen. But this is all part and parcel of a broken health care system. Obamacare is collapsing, by the way, because it's predicated on giving insurance companies more money. And the entire concept of insurance is they have to get tons of people who are never going to need it in order to pay for the people that actually do need it. And young, healthy people, a lot of them just say, I don't need health insurance. And as a result, the insurance companies don't get that money. And as we have an aging society, the profit margins of insurance companies going down in the future. But I just come back to that analogy. I would be paying far less for healthcare if I had no insurance at all. So would most of you. That is a broken system. And my analogy there of walking in with a kid who has strep throat one day after we got insurance for the kid who did have a strep throat, I paid. My wife knows the exact dollars because she's still fed up about it, because my incompetence actually benefited the family because we had to pay less money, but we paid a fraction as uninsured walking into a clinic patients of what a health care insured family would pay. So it's not only that the system is broken, it's that people who are actually trying to do the right thing are getting gouged. And people who have no interest whatsoever in buying in at all, they're essentially getting free health care. You pay a lot. Many people pay virtually nothing at all. Okay? So that is the essence of why we have a government shutdown. Because Democrats want to give more people who do not pay taxes free health care. And Republicans are saying, wait, that was a Covid era policy that we put in place. It should expire. Thankfully, now that Covid is over. So that is the essence of what is going on and we will see exactly how long it takes for this to be resolved. I suspect that many of you out there will be like me and there will be absolutely no impact to your life whatsoever by the fact that the government has shut down. In fact, a lot of you are saying I wouldn't mind the government shutting down for a long time.

[A]

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[C]

You're listening to team 47 with Clay and Buck. You know things aren't going well for Chuck Schumer when he's on the Senate floor and the New York Times had a huge poll that said voters will overwhelmingly and correctly blame Democrats for shutting down the government because Democrats are the ones voting to shut down government. Chuck Schumer doesn't believe it though. He says the New York Times poll is biased against Democrats. This is the argument he's having to make. Let's listen. Now.

[D]

I know the leader is going to show a poll that says that Democrats will be blamed for the shutdown. There are many more polls that show Republicans are blamed. The question in that poll is biased. Biased in the New York Times. But it's biased if you turn the that's true. I don't always believe the New York Times. You can be sure of that. Neither do you.

[C]

So it's so bad that Chuck Schumer is having to resort to saying the New York Times is biased against Democrats when it comes to this situation relating to the shutdown. But we got a couple of you. Of several of you, in fact, lots of you. Let me pull it up asking the question because there is a lot of discussion about how Exactly. Is this debate now over whether or not illegal immigrants get healthcare? In fact, here is one that synthesizes this VIP email from Ryan. First off, I absolutely love you guys. Good way to start. Always like we get a positive start to the email. Uh, that gets even better. Thanks for being the voice of reason and speaking the truth. I could go on and on and get all mushy, but you get the point. America thanks you. Ah, I love all this. Uh, question is there actual rhetoric and documented text in the Democrat dirty CR continuing resolution there that states or proves they are pushing for illegals healthcare? I cannot seem to find it. Any help would be appreciated. God bless and stay the course. Here's what they're doing and this is why you have to dive into the nitty gritty and intricacy of the language which with they are using, okay? They are saying the federal government is not paying for illegal immigrant health care. That is nowhere in this bill. That is not occurring at all. Here's the reality. The money goes to the states. So the federal government cuts a big check. Here's a billion dollars. And they send it to California, they send it to Illinois, they send it to New York. State government officials there then take those dollars and allocate many of them to illegal immigrant health care. So the argument that Chuck Schumer is making is, oh, the federal government isn't doing that at all. But that's because they are allocating the resources to the states. And then all these blue states take your taxpayer money and, and they are using it to fund illegal immigrant healthcare. And by the way, the other part of this is this particular part of the dollars that are being fought about, fought over, was directly related to Covid. And if you remember, and there were relatively few of us at the time, Buck was one of them, I was one of them. If you remember when everybody said, oh, we don't need to work anymore, the government will just give everybody money. Just go home, don't leave your house. Don't even think about going to the gym. Don't you dare go outside and walk in a park. God forbid you go to the beach. Hey kids, we're taking the rims off your basketball hoops. Hey, we're taking down nets so you can't go play tennis. I know everybody wants to forget all of this, but much of the spending is embedded from COVID So Democrats and there were a lot of Republicans that went along, saw the crisis of COVID and they said, this is the best opportunity we have had in a long time, maybe for much of our political careers to increase federal spending by a tremendously huge amount. And we are going to do that. We're going to implement all these gargantuan cost increases and it's going to become very difficult to ever dial them back. And I think we're not giving enough credit to guys like Senator Ron Johnson, friend of this program. We had him in studio when we were in D.C. just to explain all this. The budget plan that makes the most sense is go back to all the pre Covid spending and just increase it on a rate of inflation. If we had just done that, we'd all have a balanced budget right now. But Democrats are smart. They recognize that all their allies in the legacy media that nobody trusts anymore, they will label this a cut. Anytime you reduce spending, they say, oh, this is a cut. You're cutting childcare, you're cutting pregnant. Pregnant women are going to die. That's immediately what they say. And you go back and say, well, that wasn't happening before 2020. Covid's over. Thankfully, everybody's like, yeah, now you might get a sniffle and you don't know whether it's a cold, you don't know if it's the flu. You don't know if it's Covid. I, I mean, I'm not, I'm not trying to make light of it, but that's the reality. You, you get a little bit of a light fever, you don't feel great. Who knows what it is? Might be Covid, might be any of the other innumerable ways that you could have gotten sick before COVID All we're doing here is saying, hey, this healthcare spending doesn't make sense going forward. Much of it that is going to illegal immigrant health care should certainly not be spent. But in general, this is an expense that was directly connected to Covid. Covid is over. Finally, Mercif. Mercifully, why would we embed that cost into the overall federal budget? Schumer's wrong, Democrats are wrong on this. And Trump and Republicans are just saying, hey, we funded the government. We're not going to continue to fund this. We're not going to bend to your will. Let's keep the government open. Democrats said, no, we're going to shut down the government. And if you're out there and you're saying, okay, well, hold on a minute. Democrats don't really support illegal, illegal immigrants getting healthcare. Here is a flashback. You may remember this. I remember watching this debate and thinking, boy, these people are crazy. In on June 27, 2019 in Miami, second Democrat debate. Every Democrat raised their hand when asked if their health care plan would cover illegal immigrants. Listen to this. Just to take you back in time, the Democrats on the stage at that point in time. Joe Biden, Mayor Pete, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, Cory Booker. Beto. Remember Beto? Beto o'. Rourke. Everyone applauds inside of the audience. But just a flashback. Cut three.

[E]

A lot of you have been talking tonight about these government health care plans that you've proposed in one form or another. This is a show of hands question and hold them up for a moment so people can see. Raise your hand if government. If your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants.

[C]

Every hand went up. Every single hand went up. All of these people, all of these Democrats support this, and it's impossible to argue otherwise. Now, this is. I want to hit one more. One more hit here. Jasmine Crockett. I know. I just. I can't believe that this is real. The Democrat Party thinks that she is somehow an eloquent voice on all of this. Jasmine Crockett says the White House's messaging on shutdown is illegal. Cut 12.

[F]

I think they're being a lot more illegal in their messaging. The first thing that I wanted to know was how can this not be a violation of the Hatch act in some way? Right. Because we are not allowed to politic on official sites, period. Right. And that's what they're doing. They literally change official government websites to put out their propaganda. Instead of just saying, we're currently in a shutdown, you decided to play partisan politics on an official website.

[C]

Yeah. It's illegal. It's illegal to point out that the reason that the government is shut down is because Democrats voted to shut down the government. You're listening to Team 47 with clay and Buck. All right, I got a request for you guys, all right? And I'm open to where you would like for me to make a donation to. So where's the best place to go with this? I have got. If you're watching on video, my new book is coming out. It is one month away from being released. It's called Balls. I. I will post the link on my Twitter feed. It'll be up certainly at Clay and Buck, but you can just type in Clay Travis on Amazon, Barnes and Noble on any of the sites, and it will take you there. I'm in a good spot where there have been times in the past where I wrote books and I needed to sell Copies of my book to be able to feed my kids, to be able to pay my mortgage. I'm in a good spot now where I don't have to worry about that. So I am going to donate all of the money that is made from this book to charity. But here's what I want. I want you to guys to give me good idea on what that charity should be. Second part of this, I want you to go please buy the book. Because I want the arguments that I make in this book to get out as widely as they possibly can. You guys know that I believe best arguments win, but we got to get the best arguments in front of the largest possible audience. The way you do that, this is just full disclosure, is you sell a bunch of books in advance of the book actually being released. So they print a ton of them and they put them in the front of stores. I want this book to be in Hudson bookstores. If you're walking through an airport. I want this thing to be in Costco. I want this thing to be in Walmart. The way that happens is we have to sell a ton of them before it's even released. So I'm asking you for a favor. And again, all the proceeds are going to charity. I'm in a great spot. I'm going to post the link on Amazon. Please go buy the book. The book is balls. It's easy. You just type in my name, Clay Travis. It's a fun read, but I think it's an important one. It's about how young men, sports fans and President Trump won the election and, and how we keep the momentum of that win going forward. Your sons, your grandsons, your granddaughters, your grand, your daughters. I think they would enjoy it. They might not have been exposed to the arguments that I'm making. I'm asking you to buy them. Give it to people. Just type in my name, Clay Travis. I'm going to share it. I want this book to be as widely distributed as possible because I think the arguments are important and I think we are correct.

[A]

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[C]

The Team 47 podcast is sponsored by Good Ranchers Making the American farm strong again. You're listening to team 47 with Clay and Buck. If you have simply held onto your stocks and not done anything at all, you have never had more money in the stock market than you have right now. So congratulations on that. Several other stories that are out there that I believe are actually very positive. If you voted for Donald Trump, you're having more babies. That is according to Ryan Gardusky, the Cracker Barrel has fired. I don't think I've mentioned this yet. The marketing agency that nearly destroyed the 50 year old brand of the. Of the stock market there. Sorry. Of the Cracker Barrel and led to a huge stock market collapse. American Eagle sold out of all of the Sydney Sweeney jeans and the Sydney Sweeney coat. And the stock price has soared simply because they said, hey, let's put a pretty girl in denim instead of an androgynous dude with a almost curse. Dude with a penis who is pretending to be a chicken. Uh, and we are in the midst of a lockdown that is having almost no impact. And many people nationwide are realizing that the Democrats stand for absolutely nothing that is actually in any way a positive. Now those are all things that are stringing together. I am asking you guys to do something for me. I mentioned this yesterday. My book is out in exactly one month. It's called Balls. A ton of you went and bought this yesterday. I'm telling you that I want this book to be out there everywhere. I want you to give it to your grandson. I want you to give it to your granddaughter. I want you to give it to your son or daughter. Because I think they are going to respond favorably to many of the arguments that I make because I'm making them from a cultural perspective that they will understand. We have to win. Young people. This is the great genius of Charlie Kirk. Going into college campuses, going. This is something that I think about all the time. I'm going to be on another college campus this weekend. I'm going to Be at Florida State. I have for the last 20 years basically been on college campuses every weekend for big college football games, talking to a lot of young people. Some of you listening to me right now are now no longer young because I'm now no longer young. But when I started doing this, I was very young, 25 years old. Now I'm 46. You now have raised your own kids. Heck, I'm going to have a kid in college next year as well. I'm writing this book to try to influence the next generation. I have written books in the past and I've told you about this Dixieland delight. On Rocky Top, when I didn't have any money, when I had a super negative net worth, when I had tons of law school loans out there, when I had a big mortgage. I have lived. When. When you're looking around, you're like, man, this is going to be a tough month. It's gonna be a tough year. I've been through it. I'm now in a spot where I am not having to struggle financially. That's a credit to the fact that the market has responded very well to the messages that I put out there. And that's a credit to you guys listening every day and, and how the last 20 years has gone. So I am donating 100% of the money that I make from this book to charity. And I have decided that based on some of the arguments. Ton of you sent me emails. A lot of that's going to go to Turning Point because I think Charlie has done tremendous work and I want to give back to the organization that he supported and the arguments that I'm making in this book he helped to popularize out there going around to college kids, we all have to lift up. We all have to make arguments better. I want this book in the front of bookstores. You wonder how do you change hearts and minds? Sometimes you have to find people when they're not looking for you. The argument that I made that I, that I talked about was the older I get, the more I see it. My grandparents, Richard K. Fox and Ruth Fox. 8 Trenton Street Red Bank, Tennessee, just outside of Chattanooga. House is still there near the Bojangles, near the the Red Bank High School. Super specific. Could be any community out there in America because there's lots of people doing what they did. My grandfather worked combustion engineering, worked in a factory much of his life. My grandmother was a schoolteacher in Georgia. She drove into Georgia because they paid a little bit better than Tennessee. Grandfather played football at the University of Tennessee Wouldn't buy gas in the state of Georgia because there were too many Georgia Bulldog fans, and he didn't want to support him. This. This is where I come from. They retired and spent the rest of their life ministering to people in prison and trying to get them to become Christians. They didn't go and preach to the choir. There's nothing wrong with preaching to the choir, but the reason that phrase exists is it's easy to convince people who already agree with you that they should agree with you. That's not how you win, and there's a role for that. I'm not disparaging the importance of preaching to the choir. You can make the die hards more die hard. You can deliver for the diehards, as many of you out there that are a part of congregations have seen ministers, preachers, priests do for generations. It's not how you win. I think about winning all the time, way too much. The only way you win is by convincing people that you've got the best arguments. And that means. I started talking about earlier. That means you have to find. Zoran Mandami is doing it, guys. He bought a freaking ad during the Bachelor and stands there with a rose. Every one of his arguments is wrong, but he's going to where people are and convincing them that he has the answer for them. And a lot of people are responding. We have to take the fight to people who don't even understand that we're in a battle yet. We have to win hearts and minds. That's how you convert people. And Donald Trump, I think the math is. I write about this a lot in the book. Got 64 million votes roughly the first time he ran for president in 2016. He just got over 77 million in 2024. How'd that happen? Some of you, God bless you, Trump people. 16, 2024, that's great. But that means, at a minimum, 13 million people who weren't willing to vote Trump in 2016 showed up and voted Trump in 2024. Probably more than that, because the reality is, a decent number of the 64 million that voted Trump in 2016, they weren't with us by 2024. So probably 20 million new voters showed up and somehow pushed that button, wrote down that name, pulled that lever for Donald Trump. How did that happen? Convincing people of the rightness of the arguments, going to people who are not already in the congregation and. And saying, hey, it's the right choice for you. How do you get a majority of Hispanic men? How do you get 21% of black men. How does Asian support skyrocket? You know, the only group Kamala Harris did better with in 2024 than she did 2020 white women. This book, I'd like to think a lot of young white women are going to read and they're going to say, you know what? These are good arguments. I'm asking you to help me get this book out to as many people as can possibly see it, and I'm donating all the proceeds. Arguments I make here, I think are really important. I'm not trying to make money off this. In fact, I'm going to donate all the money that I make to a variety of worthy charitable causes right now. Books a Million. They heard me talking about this yesterday. They said, hey, we're going to give you a 30% discount. If you go on the Books a Million website and you use the code Travis, it's $9 off the thing's 20 bucks. If you've got somebody in your life that maybe you think could be influenced, maybe they're a reader, they're not a video watcher. Maybe they're a thinker and they're open to persuasion. I'm asking you to get this book in their hands. And I want people to see this if they're walking through an airport. That's why the COVID has two big balls on it, because a lot of people do judge a book by its cover. And the first thing you have to do is sometimes punch him in the mouth and make him think, wait a minute, is he really saying that? Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. The Republican Party has balls. Democrats don't. It's a metaphor, somewhat figuratively accurate if you've watched Tim Walls walk around with spirit fingers. But I think I can cut through the noise and convince a lot of people of the importance of being engaged. And we all have to do more in the wake of what happened to Charlie. And so I'm willing to do as much as it can possibly take. And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. Certainly I've been willing to put my time down. I write the whole book. I don't have ghostwriters sitting there in front of my laptop by myself after I finish the show every day, grinding, trying to make arguments that I think matter. So go to Books a Million. Use code Travis. My last name. $9 off books a Million website. If you just want to go to Amazon, I would love you to go there to tons of you. My publisher called me yesterday. He was like, this is incredible. Thousands of people went and bought the book yesterday after you asked them to do on the show. So I'm asking you favor to me, but I'm donating all the proceeds for me. But for more importantly, the arguments in this book, please go get it. The reason why I'm saying it now a month before publication is I hope people go out to bookstores and get it in a month. This is when they decide where to put your book. Do you get to be on the front tables? Do you get to be in the airport when you're walking down the aisle and there's a Hudson bookstores there? Do you get to be in Costco? Do you get to be in Walmart? Do you get to go to where people are, get the book in front of them and have them think, oh, what is this? Let me pick this up and see whether or not I'm gonna buy in. And so that is my request for you would mean a ton to me personally. One month out, show up on your doorstep on the Tuesday if you read it, pass it on to somebody else. Word of mouth is valuable, but please, I'm asking you, go buy a copy. $9 off right now at Books a million. You can get them at Amazon free shipping if you're part of Amazon prime, as I know a lot of you are. Mark in Salt Lake city listening on 105.9 KNRS GG. What you got for us, Mr. Clay.

[G]

Travis, this is Mark in Salt Lake. Just wanted to tell you when I first started hearing you on the radio, you drove me absolutely nuts. But I've come to find out that you and I are a lot, a lot more alike than we are not. And I absolutely love that you're such a family man and that you talk about your kids and the things that they're doing and how involved you are with them. Keep up the good work.

[C]

Well, thanks for the. Look, there is no difference between what I say on the mic and what I will see if I ever see you in person. Some people are great performers. Some people are incredible actors. That is not me. I sit down in front of a mic and same thing when I sit down and write and say exactly what I think. That's rare because most people tiptoe up to their opinions. They're afraid of what other people might think. They're sensitive about the responses to what they say. That's normal. I don't have those genes for whatever reason. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. But I like to think and certainly my radio career is reflected. The more you listen, the more people start to think, hey, you know, I kind of agree with a lot of what this guy says, or at least somewhat entertained. Moses, Moses from western Montana. He's going to lead us to the promised land. What you got for us?

[H]

Look, I've got a son, two sons, one daughter and five grandchildren that live in the greater Portland area. And I am telling you what martial law needs to get imposed. My last two visits there. It gets worse and worse. It's the smell, it's the scudge, it's the homeless, and the cops do nothing.

[C]

I think what he said is actually so important. They're. The left is not beautiful. And. And I don't mean that necessarily physically beautiful. I mean the things that they embrace. Look at what they do to their body. Look at the lack of beauty in buildings. There's something rotten at the core of the left that manifests itself physically in the structures in the bodies. I do think that it then also certainly degrades the streets. They're dirty, they're disgusting, they're filthy. It's a physical manifestation, I think, of a hole in the soul that many in the left don't even realize that they have. And again, I think this is where you come back to arguments. You just hope that you can convince people that these are not good choices being made for you or your families. And I do think over time, we're winning this argument, but it's going to be a long battle, and it's not going to end when Donald Trump leaves office, not going to end in 2026 or 2028. We need a generation of healing, I think, in this country, and it's going to take a lot of us fighting for a long time to come. This is an I Heart podcast.