Buck (5:04)

You know, I just also think there's such a difference in a lot of the conversation among Trump supporters first time around one year in. And I mean, for people who were as pro Trump as it gets, voted for him, love the guy, love what he's trying to do for the country. There was a lot of frustration over staff. Who's he got in place? Are they on board?

Clay (5:25)

Yeah, that's important.

Buck (5:26)

There was a lot of, oh, it's not his fault, the staff. Oh, you don't hear any of that now. Yes, it's just a totally different. And this is just marking the progress, I'm saying, marking the, the transformation of honestly, the experience level that Trump as commander in chief, as well as the people around him have had. We have very little now. Look, there's always going to be people who are, who don't like, you know, what happened at, you know, pick your department or they think that this could be different, but there isn't. This, you know, hey, it's not Trump's fault. It's the fault of these people or that people that didn't do this thing. We're not wasting any time with that because overall, the agenda is being implemented, is being pursued. You know, you have to give credit to the people that are the main implementors, whether it's at any of these different agencies, it's at State, it's at. Obviously, the funniest thing with Marco Rubio these days is all the memes about how he's got 15 different jobs and, you know, you have a lot of people around him who have stepped up. So the conversation is different and it's now just how do we keep it going? Instead of, okay, we got to have a big change in course here. Like, does anyone even remember what did Rex Tillerson do his first year as Secretary of State? Nobody knows. Didn't last long, didn't work, wasn't a good thing. Rubio, you see what he's been up to. And obviously he's a long, long standing Republican fixture now on this in the Senate and on foreign relations committee, etc. But these are people who, who understand what the Trump mission is and are getting it done day in and day out. So I've got to say it's been a great first year. That doesn't mean there aren't. There's always going to be areas of improvement. There's always going to be some criticism that I think is necessary to help the team get better. But, man, it's just a world of difference. We're playing a lot of clay. We're playing so much defense back in, we, you know, the Trump voters playing so much defense back in 20, 2017 into 2018 on the Russia collusion craziness. Yeah, it completely consumed the media news, the media cycle, day after day after day. All a lie. And yes, it's to Trump's credit that he battled through all of that and then all the other stuff they threw at him and got a second term. But it, it unfortunately was, was pretty successful in slowing down and sabotaging the agenda. Term, year one, term one. A lot of Russia collusion garbage.

Clay (7:57)

Yeah. I think your point there on staff continuity is hugely important because yes, there have been conflict, as there always is. People argue for what they believe in, people disagree with them, they go back and forth. Nobody's gotten forced out, no one in the entire first year. Did Trump say, you know what, I made a poor choice here. I'm going to accede to some of the, some of the smoke, some of the fire, some of the attention on these individual picks. Now that doesn't mean that he's not going to have staff turnover. He certainly is. As you move into year two, as you move into year three, people get burned out. That's natural no matter who the President is. But you remember this, they really went after Trump on his inability to have a consistent managerial core in the first Trump administration. And they were constantly shifting in and out of people. Man. With James Blair, with Stephen Miller, with Susie Wiles, the chief of staff corps has remained very, very consistent. And then you look at the entire cabinet, everybody, it seems, is in pretty decent shape as we move into year two. Now, again, people are going to decide this is too much work. I need a little bit more life work, life balance. That's natural in the White House because it is such an all encompassing job. But in terms of the media being able to browbeat Trump into making changes in his personnel, it hasn't happened. And I actually think if you look at Hegseth, J.D. vance, Marco Rubio and Trump in terms of those four supremely important positions, I'm not sure that we have actually been in a stronger position as a country than having all of those individuals involved right now. So I would give an A. You guys can weigh in. 800-282-2882. People are not always going to agree with everything the President did. But I saw the Wall Street Journal, I think it was came out 92% of Trump's voters support his presidency so far. So they've tried to sell this idea of, oh, Trump's base is leaving him. Oh, Trump voters are unhappy. I don't think that's remotely true.

Buck (10:01)

I'm going to tell you this. I had to gear up for this, you know, after the because again, we're marking the one year of Trump getting sworn in for the second Time one year anniversary today. So the start of year two of term two is today. And I remember after the huge win and just the, the huge, the enormous relief, thinking to myself and how we were going to have to deal with this if it came to it, which is this isn't term one. Like, there's no learning on the job. There's no, oh, trust him, he'll get it right eventually. This time around, had to be prepared to say is not if, if he wasn't pursuing the agenda on something that was promised or if he was making, you know, personnel decisions that were really counterproductive, we were going to have to hold that to account. And we will if that happens in the future. But I look at term one and I'm like year one, rather. And they're getting it done. They truly are. And we're not mired in defending against the same media nonsense with Russia collusion and then the prosecutions and all this other stuff they've thrown at Trump. You see, what is cape, what Trump and his team are capable of doing without, like I said, all the artificial sabotage of the media and the Democrat Party weaponizing the deep state against him.

Clay (11:12)

If I were going to point to one thing that was not handled well, it would be Pam Bondi and Epstein. Like, if you gave me a magic wand and you said, you can go back. And we said that.

Buck (11:22)

I thought she was getting, I thought she was going to get fired. And I said it here. I thought they were going to tell her that, you know, enough's enough.

Clay (11:27)

And even Susie Wiles, chief of staff came out and said, yeah, we really screwed that. The fact that she said the files were on her desk, the fact that they had those influencers walk in with the binders, and still, I think that's the biggest unforced error of the first year.

Buck (11:41)

They still have to get those piles out, by the way. We haven't forgotten. And, you know, people say put more pressure on them. We can, but I don't run any of these agencies. Neither does Clay. There needs to be more, more release of, of that information out there. And I think that that is coming, but it is too slow. But there's that and then there's these other things that we're talking about, the economy, the border, national security, not being involved in stupid wars. I mean, these are very, very big things that affect all of us. And I think that on those areas, those issues, it has been really strong. By the way, Scott Bessant, who I think has been the, I think has been the out I think, Clay, you could say that Scott Besant out kicked his coverage or has certainly outperformed expectations for what he'd be able to do, I think, because a lot. Look, I didn't know who he was before Trump made him Treasury Secretary. I don't think many people did.

Clay (12:36)

Did.

Buck (12:37)

So here he is. I think he's done a very good job here. We got two big issues that he's tackling here. Let's talk first about the tariffs. Here he is saying that he doesn't think, Clay, they're going to strike down the president's signature economic policy. This is 16 hit it. I think it's very unlikely that the Supreme Court is going to strike down a president's signature economic policy. It didn't early on with the aca.

Clay (13:03)

Also known as Obamacare.

Buck (13:04)

It. They reinforced that recently. And the real, the real problem here is President Trump has used IA for negotiating leverage for geopolitics in emergency situations. If we look back, the first, I. E. The tariffs were fentanyl tariffs. So on Mexico, on Canada, on China, and if fentanyl is not a national emergency, I don't know what was.

Clay (13:33)

All right, I'm nervous about this one, Buck. I think the Supreme Court is going to strike down some elements of President Trump and I appreciate the fact that Scott Bessen is making that argument because that is his job and he should be advocating for the president's perspective. So I don't begrudge anybody advocating in that way. I think this is one where the president's going to get a pushback from the Supreme Court and they are going to have. They're going to have a really complicated situation here. We keep waiting for the official. I was following Shannon Bream this morning because I thought we might be getting the tariff Supreme Court case. My concern is that they're going to slap him back some on this. We'll see. But I think it could be a major pushback. You're listening to Team 47 with clay and Buck. You said, I will not use force to take Greenland, as we told you was the case. But the media had been losing their mind over, oh, my God, Trump's going to invade Greenland and we're going to have a war. And here's cut five.

Podcast Announcer (14:38)

We never asked for anything and we never got anything. We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won't do that. Okay. Now everyone's saying, oh, good. That's probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland, where we already had it as a trustee, but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago. After we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and others In World War II, we gave it back to them.

Clay (15:21)

Okay, Buck. Last night I was doing reading on the history of. Of, you know, American expansion, as one does, and a buddy of mine who was also a Virgin Islands lawyer, he sent me this article that was really interesting about the acquisition.

Buck (15:38)

Yes, I was gonna say two Virgin Islands lawyers walk into a bar. It sounds like the start of a great show.

Clay (15:44)

There's not. There's not a lot of us. But he sent me an article and it was a good read. And I've been talking about the fact that we acquired the US Virgin Islands in 1917, paid $25 million in gold and bought it from the Dutch. Here is an article about that negotiation. Lansing. This is highlighted insinuated. This is the. I believe the Secretary of State back in the day, Lansing, in 1917, insinuated that if Denmark didn't sell the US the islands, it just might go and seize them to prevent Germany from getting to them. It was a bullying tactic, and it worked. Eager to prevent a US Military attack, Denmark was currently a neutral party in World War I. Denmark negotiated a treaty with the U.S. that President Wilson signed in 1917. On March 31, 1917, Denmark formally transferred governance over the islands to the U.S. and the U.S. reciprocated by paying Denmark $25 million in gold coin. What is old can be new again. Now we're going to get into a bunch of what Trump said, but I did think it was intriguing that 100 years ago, one of the negotiation tactics involved in the United States taking control of the Virgin Islands was, if you don't sell it, we're just going to take it might. Throughout history, Buck has often made right. Trump understands this, and I think it's a sign of how significant his pursuit of Greenland has become, that of all the things that he said, I think it is receiving the most consequential attention surrounding the Greenland decision. Did that stand out to you the most in terms of newsworthy statements of the moment to you, or was there other things that stood out in particular there.

Buck (17:43)

There are a few. A few funny aspects of this. One is you could really feel the exhale from so many of the assembled Eurocrats.

Clay (17:53)

In that room.

Buck (17:54)

Oh, you mean he's not actually going to just seize it by force? No, dude, he's not going to seize your island with the Marines. We're not going to be sending F35s in the sky and blowing up Greenland air defenses. We're not going to make them throw harpoons at our tanks. Like it's fine. Ok, we're not going to do that. And just the fact that there was real, apparently real concern as it was reported among the assembled that Trump is just going to be like, it's mine, I'm taking it. So that's, that's one aspect of it. There's also clay, something else because I've been looking into this as well. Now I am not licensed to practice law in the US Virgin Islands, but I am good at deep dive Internet research. So I was wondering, I was like where else does the United States have something that is a analogous arrangement or situational territory?

Clay (18:50)

A territory, I mean is the official legal term.

Buck (18:53)

Well, but there's something else actually. You jump in and yes, that's part one, part two. We have territories like the Virgin Islands. We also have something that I honestly had not heard of before, which is a voluntary compact, essentially. And now we have this with Micronesia. So that is a situation that is similar here. It's called a compact of free association. And we have this with a number of islands in the Pacific. Now it gives us defense, basically. It gives us the right to provide their defense, but we get basing rights. We also have free total control over their waterways for strategic military purposes and their air, but we totally defend them. Visa free migration to the U.S. a lot of U.S. federal assistance given to them, economic assistance for education, health, infrastructure. But if they decided they don't like the situation, they can end it. This requires just vote of this is not a two thirds Senate treaty situation. A compact of free association would just be a majority in the Congress, a majority in the House and the Senate signed by the President. So it's a lot easier to do. Now, it's not as, it's not as enduring. But I'm just saying we already have this with thousands of little islands in the Pacific where we say, look, we're.

Clay (20:22)

Going to protect you, we're going to.

Buck (20:23)

Hook you up with some stuff. But if we need to like build an air base somewhere, we're all good, right? Like we have control.

Clay (20:29)

Yeah. Look, some of the Danes would argue based on the World War II relationship that we had with Greenland, that we have access to Greenland to protect for Purposes of military related issues. That's why I think this is actually twofold, Buck. And I think Trump is being a little bit sneaky on this. He's primarily selling that we need Greenland for military reasons. And I do think there's a lot of legitimacy for that. But the secondary part is he wants to control the long range future of Greenland as the minerals there are potentially able to be mined. So I think he's trying. And again, a lot of times this happens with any of you who've dealt with real estate developers, there can be a mutuality of goal. And so the lead is, oh, we need this for military purposes and it gets a lot of attention. But if we have the ability to defend Greenland in a way that is significant already. The secondary and maybe primary in many ways aspect of this, Buck, is I really do think that he wants to have complete title to Greenland so that the United States has the ability to profit off of it in the years ahead. And, and that is why I think the territory example, like the US Virgin Islands, Guam, that to me is where we would wedge Greenland in. If I were trying to project how it should happen.

Buck (21:52)

It also though, wouldn't be Trump if he didn't take this opportunity, like the right wing uncle at Thanksgiving, to just lay down the facts of life a little bit for some of the commies sitting around and some of the, the whiny libs, the snowflakes as we used to call them a decade or so ago. Here he is telling all those Europeans, you know it's coming without us. You'd be speaking German and Japanese play.

Podcast Announcer (22:17)

For this in World War II when Denmark fell to Germany after just six hours of fighting and was totally unable to defend either itself or Greenland. So the United States was then compelled. We did it. We felt an obligation to do it, to send our own forces to hold the Greenland territory. And hold it we did at great cost and expense. They didn't have a chance of getting on it and they tried. Denmark knows that we literally set up bases on Greenland for Denmark. We fought for Denmark. We weren't fighting for anyone else. We were fighting to save it for Denmark. Big beautiful piece of ice. It's hard to call it land, it's a big piece of ice. But we saved Greenland and successfully prevented our enemies from gaining a foothold in our hemisphere. So we did it for ourselves also. And then after the war, which we won, we won it big. Without us, right now you'd all be speaking German and a little Japanese. Perhaps after the war, we gave Greenland back To Denmark. How stupid were we to do that? But we did it. But we gave it back. But how ungrateful are they now?

Buck (23:47)

Okay, so, by the way, there's a great podcast opportunity. Trump Does History. So then we crush the Nazis. Huge crushing of the evil, evil, bad Nazis. And the Japanese, very bad, too. The Japanese good cars in the 80s. Bad World War II Japanese. Would you not listen to Trump Does History as a podcast? It'd be amazing. Only extemporaneous allowed, though it is great.

Clay (24:11)

Too, for him to go in front of that entire European community and remind them that the only reason they have freedom and the only reason that they're not speaking German and perhaps a little Japanese, which is a just a great aside the way to the way that Trump delivered it. I do think when you break all of this down, I'm going to make a prediction, Buck. I think we're going to get Greenland. I just, I don't know exactly what the timeframe is going to be, but I think it's going to fit some form of territorial, like the Virgin Islands, like Guam, some form of construct like that. I think it'll be more substantial than the agreement you're talking about, Buck. Now, they may argue, for purposes of trying to look like they are just completely relenting to Trump. They may say, well, this is just a mutual. He's not getting anything that he wants. Right. Like, there could be an element of the way the media plays it. But I think Trump wants, you know, free and clear title of Greenland and the ability to develop its resources for the next hundreds of years for the United States. I think he's going to get it, and I think it may lead to us having to pay off all of the 57,000 of the people who live in Greenland. Right. It's not going to be cheap and we're not going to seize it. To your point, with boots on the ground, there's not going to be paratroopers coming into Greenland. But I do think that there's going to be some form of agreement reached.

Buck (25:41)

You know what this really means. We're heading toward Clay and Buck's excellent Greenland adventure. I'm already doing the research. It's happening. I'm working on my dog sledding skills. I'm going to get it all going. We're going to be ready for Greenland, hopefully by this summer. We're going to get this thing in motion.

Clay (26:01)

Look, I think there is a, an element of, of, of capitulation that's already in place. Even Naito is saying in the un and all these other different groups, I think they're going to have to roll over and Trump's going to dominate them. It just feels inevitable to me that that is where we are headed. And part of this, we were just talking about the energy Buck that Trump has flies overnight. They have to turn Air Force One around, bring it back to Andrews Air Force Base, change the plan, planes. And yet he's right now going full speed, basically no sleep. The Team 47 podcast is sponsored by.

Buck (26:41)

Good Ranchers making the American farm strong again.

Clay (26:45)

You're listening to Team 47 with clay and Buck. I don't think it's going to be talked about very much and I actually think it is a tremendous accomplishment. One of the best accomplishments so far of Trump 2.0. I'm reading from Axios. Buck US murder rate hits lowest level since 1900. I want to repeat that because it should be everywhere. Everybody should be talking about this. The murder rate in Trump 2.0 year one just hit the lowest level since 1900. Murders fell 21% last year, the biggest one year drop ever. Likely the lowest rate since the year 1900. Axios data says the decline signals a complete reversal of the COVID era crime wave. Here are a couple of data points inside of this. Aggravated assaults fell by 9%. Gun assaults and robbery down 22% and 23% respectively. And in some cities, Listen to this, Buck. Murders fell 40% in Washington, D.C. do you remember when they told us that Trump surging resources in Washington, D.C. was going to have no impact? 40% in D.C. and in Omaha, Nebraska. Murder down 41% in Denver. And in general, the national murder rate is down to 4 per 100,000 people, the lowest level it has been at since 1900. This is a big deal, a really big deal. And I think it's a sign of Trump's endorsement of law and order. And it's having real impact already.

Buck (28:42)

Well, I'm sure it's coming. Minneapolis right now is the focus, as is Greenland and the negotiations at Davos. But I think this White House is probably going to have a press conference in the days ahead where the first thing we hear from Caroline Levitt is going to be all these stats that you just shared. If they haven't done this already. Maybe I've missed some of this, but they should do that because a few things, one, they deserve, the administration deserves the credit for making a decision in the face of tremendous pushback. And also, this really matters. This isn't adjusting the marginal tax rate for a, you know, 12 month, period, until we figure out what the next appropriations bill is. This is saving people's lives. And so it's important that everyone understands the old way of, sorry, we just have to have x hundred number of murders in this city or that city, because that's the way it is. Should no longer apply. What's even more. What's the word? Shocking, but maybe it shouldn't be shocking is clay. All the people that were opposed to this should now be saying, wow, murders are way down. Trump was right. We should do more of this. But they won't because they would rather, I don't know how else you could frame this. They would rather more people get shot and killed in D.C. in, in Memphis and all these different cities we're talking about. They'd rather more people get shot and killed because they don't have to see that and deal with it. If they don't live there or they don't live in one of the bad neighborhoods that admit that Trump was right and that he's saving lives. Think about that. Imagine that's where. That's your moral calculation, because that's the calculation Democrats all across the country are making.

Clay (30:29)

And buck, this is just going to be 100% true based on the data. Do you know, as we hit the lowest murder rate since 1900, do you know what Donald Trump has done? He's actually proved black lives matter. Because overwhelmingly the people whose lives were saved were black. Because you got to get that on a T shirt.

Buck (30:52)

Clay. We got to sell the clay. Travis Trump has proven black lives matter.

Clay (30:56)

No one has saved more black lives than Donald Trump. I mean, in the history of the presidency. I don't know who was president back in 1900. But, but when you look, I mean, in all seriousness, it's, it's, it's unfortunate truth that the black murder rate, that is people who are black, who are murdered, is. I think it's 20x the white murder rate. I think that number is correct.

Buck (31:20)

In other words, the victims, not perpetrators. Right?

Clay (31:23)

It's.

Buck (31:24)

It, I think it's, it's 10x perpetrator, 20x victim rate, something like that. Does that sound.

Clay (31:31)

I think that's about right. We'll have a, we'll grock it. But I think you are 20 times as likely to be murdered if you are black as if you are white. So my point on that is when murder rates come down, they overwhelmingly are leading to fewer black murders because the numbers are statistically what they are. So if you truly believe that black lives matter and you've been focused on it since George Floyd. No one has done more to save black lives as a president than President Trump has. And the reality is, what I love about this, in addition to the fact that way more people are alive, which is a good thing, the D.C. numbers, Buck, we got lectured. So many journos came out and they said. They wagged their fingers, and they either said it's not actually that dangerous, because that's one of the things they would say.

Buck (32:24)

Well, they tried the national. You're right about this. But I think it's interesting, Clay, because, remember, we talked about it. Journos who didn't live in D.C. wrong. D.C. is great. I went there on a school trip, and it was really nice.

Clay (32:36)

You know, they're super safe.

Buck (32:38)

I don't know what they're talking about. Yeah, I went to a cocktail party once in Georgetown and didn't get shot. What a surprise. The. The actual journals in DC Though, including some libs you remember, there were cracks, there were breaks in the ranks on this, where they were like, yeah, no, it's really dangerous. They were the ones who lived there. Some of them started speaking up because they were sick of worried about getting robbed for their phone on their street corner in nice neighborhoods. So that was real.

Clay (33:06)

The numbers have plummeted 40%. D.C. murders overwhelmingly saved black lives in D.C. because almost everyone who dies of murder in D.C. is black. I mean, that is what the data actually reflects. Also, Buck, this ties in with what we're talking about in Minneapolis. Do you think that just maybe letting ICE go arrest violent criminals in the United States and put people on notice that they're coming for them might also have impacted in a significant way the overall murder rate that we saw happen in this country. I just think if. If you just objectively step back and just said, hey, let's look at what the data actually reflects. This is where I think President Trump is correct. He's not getting credit for having a transformative first year of his presidency. When it comes to border security, when it comes to actual murder rates nationwide, when it comes to locking bad guys up. Think about this. No one alive listening to us today. This is pretty incredible. No one alive listening to us today has ever lived in a United States safer than last year in the United States. That's a pretty remarkable stat. Unless you were. Unless you're. I don't think anybody's 125 years old or 126 years old right now, then none of us have ever been alive in a United States that was safer than President Trump's first year in 2025. And it's a remarkable turnaround since 2020, when the murder rate skyrocketed, that we now have gone to a level of. Of safety that no one living today has ever seen before. You know what I might call that, Buck? Making America great again.

Buck (34:59)

In fact, it's not making America safe again, for sure.

Clay (35:02)

Making America safer than it's ever been before. We're not even going back to the word again. We're going to a new standard of excellence when it comes to safety in the country. This should be the number one story everywhere in the nation right now, and I bet many of you will not hear it. But for having heard us talk about.

Podcast Announcer (35:23)

It, this is an iHeart podcast.

Clay (35:26)

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