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Buck Sexton
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Clay Travis
Guaranteed human.
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The Team 47 podcast is brought to.
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Buck Sexton
You by Cozy Earth Comfort, style and quality. You can count on cozy Earth team 47 with clay and Buck starts now. I'll start from the defense and national security side and I think there's particular interest in this stuff, especially after Trump talked about the discombobulator I think he called it, which was used in Venezuela. My guess is that that's not the technical term for it. But Trump mentioned something about this publicly, which is unusual for a weapon system that people are not familiar with, but now the Venezuelans are familiar with it. So guess what? People are going to figure this out. But the truth is the wars of the future and just the national security needs of the United States going into the future are going to be increasingly reliant upon two things that intersect very powerfully, really two things that are complementary technology and manufacturing. And you have to be able to make the most advanced stuff, but you're going to have to be able to make it at scale and quickly. Because when you're talking about drones and AI and hypersonics and just go through the list of all these things that are either in use and iterating, coming up with new versions of right now, or just over the horizon and going to become much more a part of what we see in the national security sphere. You have to be nimble, you have to be fast. And this is what Clay, the speech yesterday that Secretary of Warhead said, it was great to see him. We got to catch up a little bit. I mean he was busy with like the second richest man in the world and taking around a bunch of very senior military folks. But we talked a little bit and I was glad to meet his staff and see how they're doing this arsenal of Freedom tour, which is what it was, the arsenal of freedom. And they're going around to a lot of the biggest, not just there's the defense primes, Boeing, Lockheed, I mean these are the companies that you think of when you think of the military industrial complex they've consolidated and this has happened really. Again, I'm not an expert on all this, but last 40 years or so it's been. There's been a huge consolidation of this stuff. And now there's these companies, there's these upstarts, these startups, I guess maybe both upstarts and startups like Anduril, based out of California, Palmer Lucky's outfit and others that are making really incredible defense tech. And Clay, before I get into the space side, I was gonna just say, this is one of the incredible things that Trump and the whole MAGA movement has accomplished that I think people don't have enough appreciation of. A decade or so ago, Google and its employees and from the top down refused, refused to do anything that could even have military use or you know, any military projects whatsoever with the Pentagon. And that was considered just oh, okay. It's a, it's a private company, they can do what they want. You know, it's like when they said build our own Internet, you know, do it our, do it our way. Clay, that is a massive. First of all, it's borderline, in my opinion, borderline traitorous. And that was the culture though in Silicon Valley, our tech leading edge was unwilling to work to defend America against the threats of China and Russia and global terrorism and all these other things. And they were fine with that. That's changed now and I think it's one of the biggest wins that the Trump administration has racked up on the national security side. And Secretary Hegseth is working to change the procurement timeline because it's become a joke. They're saying, yeah, we're gonna build something 15 years out and it's gonna cost 10 times as much as we say it is when all said and done. And by the time we get it, you're not even gonna need it, cuz there's gonna be some other technology. You can't have this in a world of drone swarms and hypersonics and increasingly low earth orbit activity that deals with all kind, a whole range of military threats. There's so much going on, Clay, and we can get into the space piece too. But this is a transformation of the way that the United States top companies now work with in areas. You know, I say I work with them on everything, but there's crossover and they're willing to work with our defense contractors. And I mean in my opinion, no American should be willing to buy or do business with an American company that will not help the United States military with technology, will not help the United States military defend us. Because these Google, without the US military providing it, they'd all be speaking Chinese, everybody, you know what I'm saying? Like Google only exists because the United States provides this marketplace. Yes, but this aegis of protection. And you're going to turn your nose up at working with, working with these companies. But remember, Pentagon's paying for this stuff. The Pentagon, it's not that they have to do whatever the Pentagon says, it's just Pentagon will say, hey, we want to buy this from you? No, we don't want to work with you on that. Hey, we want to co develop this with you. No, you know, and this was Google and all these top companies out of Silicon. Google is the main one. But all these top companies at Silicon Valley, it's shameful what they got away with. Palmer Lucky of Andrew has spoken about this consistently and it's amazing because he comes out of that community. There's a guy who founded Oculus, now he's the founder of Anduril. He's a self made multi billionaire. He's founded really two unicorn companies which is, he's like a double unicorn. It's pretty amazing. Clay. The whole paradigm has changed now where. And it's important because if China has better AI, better tech, better, you know, better drones and manufacturing capacity for them as well, they can put, if they can make, you know, 100 UAVs of the absolute top range that can be used in offensive warfare, for every 10 that we can make, we can't beat them. That's what people have to understand. It doesn't matter. Yeah, we have the best soldiers in the world. Well, if they can just out manufacture us, the bravery of our soldiers is not going to be enough in a fight that's increasingly tech based.
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Clay Travis
History teaches us that war is often one of the great evolutions of technology. And you go back in time, Civil War for instance, Railroads changed the way that the war was bought. The war was fought under the concept of celerity. But troops being able to hop on a railroad line and be able to get to a different area much faster. I was reading actually this morning as I was getting ready for our show, Buck, we just rolled off what many people believe will be the last tank. And if you think about the history of warfare, certainly World War II to a large extent it was airfare, right? Air combat, air superiority, and then tanks and their ability to run roughshod over trench warfare and change the dynamic there. The Ukraine, Russia war has basically turned into a drone battle. And the question is, who can build the most drones? And advanced drone technology the fastest is dictating success on the battlefield and they say basically even attacks. But by and large with soldiers are becoming virtually impossible because drones are so skilled and adept at being able to kill people as soon as they leave protective areas. And so we are, I think, evolving in the same way that AI is iterating at a speed that frankly we've never seen before in the history of humanity. We are right now in a technological inflection point where where the manufacture of drones would likely dictate who would win World War three. And who knows what comes next? Buck? It may be robot warfare, right? I mean, when you look at Elon building all these optimus robots, it may be the case that the next war we fight is basically humans sitting around with joysticks trying to align robot battlefields and drones and everything else. The technology is just evolving so rapidly and the manufacturing capacity is so key, and it's one reason why we're exploding. Exploding is the wrong word. Expanding our overall budget for the military because this is expensive and we need the wheels and power of private industry to be able to win the future battles of combat.
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Buck Sexton
The other part of this that was really interesting, so there's that defense and manufacturing piece. And that's why the Arsenal of Freedom Tour the Secretary of War is going on is really showing everybody that this is now America, is now a place where, just like in World War II. And they really even borrow. I mean, I have some photos of this. They borrow from some of the imagery from posters of World War II for this current Arsenal of Freedom Tour. Because if you were an automobile manufacturer in World War II and you had to start making plane parts or tanks or whatever, there was just no question that's what, that's what's going to happen. Right? This is the reality of the world they were living in and that, that needs to be the reality today. But for high tech companies in particular, and tech that can be manufactured, can be manufactured at scale, which means quickly, efficiently, at a reasonable price, it's changing the whole military industrial complex situation right now. The whole, that whole apparatus is in the process of being shifted now. It's huge, it's unwieldy. A lot of people I think, who worked in the Pentagon or listen to us are going to say, yeah, right, good luck with that. Well, that's the mission, and they're on that mission and we'll see how they do. Um, you know, they were telling us a few years ago nobody could ever secure the border, and now that's an afterthought. Of course you can secure the border. We can't make stuff faster. The America we live in, where I can sit here and have basically whatever I want delivered to me with the, with the push of a button in my home, maybe within a few hours, certainly within 24 hours. We can't make drones faster or better than we currently are with the big defense primes. No way. There's, there's no way that that's reality. Okay? And Then on the space side of this, Clay and I know some people are really into space overall, we are absolutely in a rebirth and a renaissance of space exploration. And it's, and it's real and here's why it's commercialized now. And Elon deserves tremendous credit for this. There's, there are two companies that are driving this whole thing and it's SpaceX and Blue Origin and what they are doing. I mean, Elon speaks about this in a way that I think is particularly visionary. Blue Origin, and I was there yesterday, I heard Bezos speak about this. Blue Origin knows that it has to go a lot faster, knows that it has to get a lot more launches going. You know, they, they've been a little, they've been a little slow and it's kind of like private, it feels a little bit more like private sector NASA to me. You know, SpaceX is a whole other thing. Blue Origin is like, we're going to build rockets so we don't have to buy them from Russia. Hey, that's great. And Jeff Bezos is one of the most incredible entrepreneurs and you know, company minds or company managers in history. Elon is like, we're going to build death stars and go to Mars. Like it's a whole other category. And, and now you're talking about the possibility of low Earth orbit data centers. And this is particularly useful for AI but we might start having, instead of building these massive data centers that have to require all this cooling, you don't need a lot of cooling in space, have all this stuff. We might be able to start building them in low Earth orbit. The infrastructure for space and space exploration and utilization and getting us to other planets and everything is actually being built right now. It is real, it is happening. And it's a pretty amazing moment in the history of our species. I will say, Clay, it's, it's the, it's the real deal. When you start looking at the progression here, how, how fast they're going, how many more rockets they're going to be able to make, how much better the rockets are, the increase in the, just even the kind of carbon fiber that can be used in these things today, the, you know, in the Apollo missions back in the day, they couldn't have imagined. Some of the rocketry stuff has just been repurposed. And it's the same. A lot of the principles are the same, but some of the technological advances make stuff so much more feasible now. So I was nerding out with it yesterday. It was really interesting. And, and it's real. And there's a whole lot of stuff going on. Met the. I met the NASA administrator. Great guy, by the way. We might be having him on the show soon. Clay. We're getting people back on the moon, but we're doing a whole lot more than that, too.
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Clay Travis
What I would also add to all that, and it sounds like an awesome way to spend the day. Yesterday, news officially came out that SpaceX, X, AI and Twitter, slash X are all now one company. So it's not only that things are evolving rapidly, it's that AI is creating a world where satellites, social media, the evolution and rapidity of AI, and all of these things are being coalesced together. So I think, to me, there's a little bit of an analogy where we do this radio show. And when Rush did this radio Show in the 1980s and the 1990s, there was only one way for you basically to get this show. You had to be listening live on a radio channel. Maybe you could bring out the old cassette tape for those who you remember doing mixtapes back in the day. On Monday, this show will go on satellite radio. We just had our best month of growth we've ever had on YouTube for this show, and we're on every social media platform.
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But.
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But I think increasingly media is just becoming one thing. There's no difference between the television and YouTube and everything else. Media is just one colossus. I think a lot of these businesses, when you look at SpaceX, when you look at the. The ability to provide Internet from space, when you look at Xai, when you look at Twitter, when you look at all these companies, SpaceX, they're all one thing. And I think we're rapidly evolving towards everything synthesizing together. And that might sound complicated, but I think it's occurring at a rapid speed, the likes of which we've never seen before. So buckle up. Because we're accelerating at a level that I'm not sure technology has ever occurred. And they're both exciting things about that and terrifying things, frankly, about that as well.
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Buck Sexton
You're listening to Team 47 with clay and Buck. The capture of a Benghazi terrorist. Right? We all Remember back in 2012, the Benghazi attack on the. On the consulate and the annex in Benghazi, Libya. Here is Attorney General Pam Bondi announcing that Zubair Al Bakush is now in custody. We did not forgive. We did not forget. We did not relent. This is cut one. Play it.
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Pam Bondi
We have never forgotten those heroes, and we have never stopped seeking justice for that Crime against our nation. In fact, from day one, Cash and Dan would sit in meetings and say, we're going to get them. And they did. Today I'm proud to announce that the FBI has arrested one of the key participants by behind the Benghazi attack. Zubar Albakosh landed at Andrews Air force base at 3am this morning. He is in our custody. He was greeted by Director Patel and U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro.
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Buck Sexton
So here we have, over a decade later, one of the senior terrorists involved in that attack. And remember the controversy, the political dust up that all of this created. There were a number of things. One, of course, was that there was a complete lack of honesty from the Obama administration about what had happened. Remember they arrested a guy who made a video somewhere that insulted the Prophet Muhammad and that this and that, that was somehow supposed to be responsible for this attack. I think 13 hours, by the way, is a tremendously underrated movie. And I can tell you, as somebody who knows a thing or two about the Annex and the Agency and all of that, 13 hours is a very well done, very accurate movie. So I feel like, I'm sure a lot of you have seen this, but it didn't do that well in theaters, which was disappointing. It should have done better. Maybe it's done better on, you know, DVD play and all that afterwards. But 13 hours, I thought was an excellent view into what it's like to be particularly GRS officers who were the paramilitary kind of defenders of facilities and personnel for the Agency abroad during the war on terror. GRS was a big part of the gwad. In fact, I write about GRS a bit and my time with them in my book Manufacturing Delusion, which I've never talked about this before. I've never talked about the GRS teams that took me out in Iraq and Afghanistan. And some of you would be, would say, well, but you were an analyst. And don't analysts just sit at Langley? Oh, there's a lot of sitting at Langley eating donuts and drinking lattes, don't get me wrong. But I wanted to try to do more. So wherever I showed up abroad in the war zones, I said, how can I be useful? I'll go with whomever, wherever, let's roll. And so yes, I did do GRS movements off base. Yes, I did have to get all kitted out and have these guys with me side to side. Yes, I did have the conversation with them that I move behind them and if they both get taken out of the fight, then it's my job to, to radio in and get into the fight when all of that was real. And I look back now and I look like a, like a college kid because I basically was, I was in my early 20s doing this stuff, running around the war zones. But yeah, I was with the GRS guys. I did get outside the wire. I did do movements with them and I am very grateful to them. They were, they were badasses. Truly they were, they were a great bunch overall. I really liked and now some of them I know in later life in, in media. So, you know, we've crossed paths later on. Anyway, that whole Benghazi situation came to. Well, there was the incident itself and that there was a complete lack of any assistance given Hillary Clinton. The whole thing was a, their whole thing was a disaster. They were not prepared. They, there were all kinds of political considerations. It should have cost, well, certainly Hillary Clinton her job and it should have cost Barack Obama reelection. But remember Candy Crowley in the debate? Remember Barack Obama did say it was an act of terror. No, not really actually. And Mitt Romney, I know right now Mitt Romney we think of in a very different context. He's like, well, I think Black Lives Matter and you know, he's marching with them. Okay, we lost Mitt. Mitt went over to, you know, Mitt went over to Mordor. We lost him. But in 2012, he was the best we had. OK? He was our candidate and he actually did a great job against Obama in the. Completely destroyed Obama in the first debate, which all the Obama fans out there. Obama's so brilliant. Go back and watch it. Don't take my word for it. You only have to watch 10 minutes of it. I mean Obama was a, was a no show and Mitt does his homework, good on his feet, square jaw, handsome, you know, all that stuff. So he did a good job. And then in that second debate when it was focused on national security is when CNN's Candy Crowley threw her considerable weight in front of Barack Obama to defend him from the accusation that they had downplayed that this was an act of terror on the anniversary of 9 11. Of course that the Hillary Clinton State Department was completely ill prepared for and lied to the American people about. And it just was a. On national security, Barack Obama, there's, it's, it's amazing. He got one thing right, which was the bin Laden raid and everything else was a disaster. But because of the bin Laden raid, because of the CIA and Seal Team Six, Barack got the credit and everybody generally forgets about the rest of the record, which was abysmal and it really matters because Joe Biden was the guy. He was their foreign policy. Think about that. Joe Biden was Barack Obama's foreign policy brain. Eight years of nothing but America in retreat. Eight years of disaster. Trump comes in, turns that around, puts America back on its front foot. And then of course, as we know, Biden 2020. And now we're back after four years of Biden retreat, most notably the disaster in Afghanistan. But you know, this, this is all, this is all tied in together what happened in Benghazi over a decade ago and that now we still have the Trump administration trying to get justice for what happened. Remember, we lost people that day. We lost four killed. And they burned down, you know, a U.S. facility tried to burn down, another one, the annex. Thankfully, GRS was there and they were unable to do so. And I just have to say the difference in both the approach to foreign policy, but really, most importantly, in some ways, the sense that people, people in the world of Trump and the MAGA Republican America First Party take the notion of America's reputation and American pride seriously and we will hunt down anyone who kills Americans. And that is something that is really meaningful. And you could say, oh, well, Barack with the bin Laden raid, yeah, but that, like I said, there was that everything else was appeasement, everything else was Iran deal. Everything else was disaster. Disaster in Libya, disaster in Syria, disaster in Iraq, the rise of isis. It couldn't have been, couldn't have been more of a mess. And so as we are in or entering the latter part soon, I guess we're still in the first half, but we're, you know, moving along in Trump 2.0. It's worth noting that Trump and his team take this stuff seriously. AG Bondi, Attorney General Bondi, this is cut to she pointed out Hillary Clinton, remember that it was Ron Johnson who asked her the question, thank you team, for reminding me, to which he responded, what difference does it make? Makes a big difference. Here's Pam Bondi Play two.
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Pam Bondi
Hillary Clinton famously once said about Benghazi, what difference at this point does it make? Well, it makes a difference to Donald Trump. It makes a difference to those families. And 14 years later, it makes a difference to law enforcement. Who made the difference in this case? Thank you, President Trump, for supporting all of our agencies around the country and around the world. ABA Koosh will now face American justice on American soil. We will prosecute this alleged terrorist to the fullest extent of. He'll face charges related to murder, terrorism, arson, among others.
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Buck Sexton
It matters to the families of Ambassador Chris Stevens to Sean Smith, to Tyrone woods to Glenn Dougherty matters to all of them, and it matters to the American people. Because if a bunch of savages murder our people in a foreign land, it is absolutely our obligation, our duty, using the full might and force of America to hunt them down and bring them to justice. And this sends a message. A message has certainly been received here by the other side.
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Clay Travis
I'm extremely thankful to the CIA and Director Ratcliffe and our other law enforcement partners for making sure that the world knows that if you kill an American citizen in an act of terrorism, we, we will hunt you down, we will bring you to justice, and you will face justice here in America, not in another court and not in any other proceeding around the world. But here. You killed our own, so we are going to take it to the streets to make sure you are held accountable. Once again, I'd really like to thank the entirety of the FBI headquarters divisions. There are so many moving pieces to actually execute a foreign transfer of custody. And now we're talking about the seventh, the third in just a couple of weeks. And I don't know if that has ever happened before in US History.
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Buck Sexton
Man, Cash Patel doing a great job as FBI Director on, on this and so many other issues of public safety, of getting the bad guys. Look, I know that there. And we've talked about some of the, some of the problems with the rollout of the transparency around Epstein. We've talked about it, we've addressed it, and the administration's tried to address it. But let's also give credit where due. When it comes to finding terrorists, when it comes to finding murderers, when it comes to going after dangerous gang members who are illegals, this FBI has been just on it, has been on it. And I think they deserve a lot of credit for that. It's also reminding me of the old days when I was working in the intelligence division of the nypd, which I write about in Manufacturing Delusion. Now you might be like, buck, why should I get it now? Why should I get the book now? If you go to clayandbuck.com, there's a pre order place on the site right now@clayandbuck.com if you do a preorder, there's a special bonus video with a former CIA ops officer friend of mine where we talk about MK Ultra, where we get into some of the stuff that you're going to want to hear about. It's a whole conversation. Plus you get the book pre order right now, go to clayandbuck.com, you'll see right there up on the page, there is a buy. It's right there. Click here to preorder Buck's book. It should be right below Clay's mustache photo with Jesse Waters. Guys, it's a great book. I'm telling you. I put my heart and soul into it. Please go get your preorder. You get a special bonus video if you only for pre orders. Got to go there now.
- [27:46]
Clay Travis
The Team 47 podcast is brought to you by Cozy Earth.
- [27:49]
Buck Sexton
Comfort, style and quality, you can count on Cozy Earth. You're listening to team 47 with Clay and Buck.
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Pam Bondi
The Benghazi saga was a painful one for Americans. It has stayed with all of us. And let me be very clear, there are more of them out there. Time will not stop us from going after these predators, no matter how long it takes in order to fulfill our obligation to those families who suffered horrific pain at the hands of these violent terrorists. And now I again want to tell everyone that American justice is here, that President Trump will make sure that the cavalry comes for Americans no matter where they are in this world.
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Buck Sexton
Two things I just want to say about this before we switch out the topics a bit. We were talking there about the capture of Benghazi terrorist Zubayr Al Bakush. Going all the way back to 2012 Benghazi attack. This administration has tracked this guy down and he is now in custody on U.S. soil. And he is going to spend the rest of his life in a cell pending, of course, our judicial process, which we still give even the worst vile terrorists because we are America. I mean, sometimes we just have to blow them up. But if we capture them, we give them process. So this is, this is a good day for that. And I know that a lot of people, you know, there'll never be real justice for what happened that day in Benghazi because first of all, we lost four good Americans. And then there's also the political injustice of what happened where the Obama administration and most notably Hillary Clinton were derelict in their duty and lied about it. And unfortunately, because Obama won reelection, got away with it, meaning they didn't even pay the political consequences of being so incompetent and so derelict in their duty. So at least we're still tracking down the bad guys. And I think there's more to, there's more to come on this one. I would not want to be, I'll tell you this much. Think of the difference if you are a Al Qaeda, isis, any of these entities, you know, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Boko Haram, you know, we just fired, we just got, went after Boko Haram in Nigeria. You look at these moves that this administration is making, bad guys anywhere in the world, meaning people who want to kill Americans and harm our interests as a people have to know that Trump will just, Trump will just go for it. He'll just take them out, whether they're in Venezuela or Iran or wherever. He'll just do it. Biden, what do you think? They're going to wake up old man Biden from a nap and get him to make an executive decision on something like this? And then think about who was real Ron Klain, I mean, who was really the president. Look at the guys that he had even running. I mean, I'm going to tell you, they still make jokes about the former Secretary of Defense who was also kind of a doddering old man, Lloyd Austin, and had like the double shield face mask thing on the double. He had, he had the face mask, but the big plastic shield out in front of you. You're the Secretary of Defense. You're gonna send men and women into battle to die for this country, and you're afraid of air breathing. Very different deal with my man. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. And I have to say, Secretary of War, I always tell, you know, we know Pete's a friend. He's been a friend for a long time. I did Pete's virtual, virtual book signing for his first book. This is taking me back a ways. It was now Secretary of War Hegseth, but it was Pete Hegseth, Kimberly Guilfoyle, now ambassador to Greece, and me doing Pete's first book signings. I mean, I've known Pete a long time. And, you know, I won't, I won't knock my friends personally on air. I just won't do that. I tell you that. It's just a point of personal, point of personal. I don't know if you want to say honor or if you just want to say code. It's my code. I won't do that. But, Pete, I'm telling you, the Secretary of War, from everything I'm seeing apart from our friendship, is doing a great job. And Marco Rubio as Secretary of State is doing a great job, and Scott Bessant as Treasury secretary, doing a great job. And Tom Homan, now that he's been put in a more central role in this, is and will be doing a great job. And there are some key pieces here that are executing on this Trump administration's agenda in a, in a really remarkable way. And it's a great. It's a beautiful. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.