Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show podcast.

Welcome everybody to the Monday edition of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.

Much to discuss the government shutdown.

Where are we on this one?

Inching closer to official reopening here?

There's a deal in the Senate, so it looks imminent that the government will be formally opened.

But Democrats took this through the election and sure enough turned around and said, you know what, we probably should open this government at some point, considering that people are getting stuck on tarmac's, flights are being delayed, government employees aren't being paid, air traffic controllers, all of those things going on here.

And it seems, Clay increasingly clear that the pain and chaos was the point of what the Democrats were doing all along.

Their desire was exactly what we saw, which was to frustrate people, to make them anxious, to make them agitated in advance of the elections.

And you, sure, yes, go ahead.

You look like I can't tell if you're swiveling around with energy about this or you're just in your new studio.

I'm in my new studio.

So Buck, there's several things that could go awry.

First of all, we're gonna have to get a picture taken.

I am attempting, and you're gonna think this is the most ridiculous of all decisions that I've ever made.

I'm attempting now to do the show from a treadmill, like I'm trying to walk like four miles.

Yeah, You're losing your mind, and I'm probably gonna step off, and this is gonna be ridiculous.

We have designed in the new studio.

I have a walking desk where I am right now attempting to do like four miles instead of sitting.

This is my attempt to make America healthy again.

I'm trying to do the show like totally normal, just standing here from a Yeah.

So at some point if I just take a wrong step, at some point, I may just kill myself.

This is this is gonna be an interesting decision.

All I saw was you the shoulders moving side to side, and I thought you were just so excited to talk about the shutdown that you couldn't contain yourself.

Like my baby does this when I walk in the room if he hasn't seen me, he shakes side to side.

But that is in fact not what's going on you were walking while doing the radio show.

I'm gonna have to This is gonna take me a beat to get get used to, this.

Get adjusted to.

And also for people watching on the new cameras, I am told that I look like a penis with two different logos of Clay and Buck on either side of me.

So there's no telling how much will go awry before we get this all fixed.

But even if we are a mess on the show, optically, Buck, we're not as mess a much of a mess as the Democrat Party.

Is right now.

They have completely screwed this all up.

And this is yet another story that I would say we got completely right because we told you that they wanted to have their stupid no Kings protest, and we told you that they wanted to have the election in Virginia with all of the federal employees who were likely to be showing up, and that as soon as they did that, which they did, at some point they would buckle.

And it's amazing how quickly we pivoted from Boy Republicans have got a real issue here to try to figure out exactly what's going on to Boy.

Democrats are a mess.

Eight Democrat senators have joined in, and now as a result, I think you're going to see a real civil war breaking out among the Democrat party over how do they solve that, What is the next step, what should they.

Do going forward?

I don't know that they even have a very good answer, because right now, Hakeem Jefferies is speaking on CNN Live and he's.

Screaming at everybody.

And these eight senators have come out and they've made the choice that they wanted to make, and so I just think this is exactly what we told everybody was going to happen.

They had no plan, they got nothing.

They threw a temper tantrum.

You've got a six month old, hopefully he's not having temper tantrums yet.

But Speed is way better behaved than Democrat senators.

It's not even for time.

You get the temper tantrum that comes out and there is no result, and they're going to be even more frustrated.

The left is going to lose their mind over this.

So Trump put this out.

As we've said, there's already been agreement.

I don't think Democrats could really walk back from this in the Senate after they've made these concessions, and we'll get into some of the specifics of what the deal looks like to get the government back open.

Over the weekend, Trump was saying, and many others were saying, to nuke the filibuster.

Time to go, time to make it.

And there may still be an argument underway about that.

But here's what Trump says about air traffic controllers.

This is always clay historically, where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

On the shutdown, when people really get angry is when air traffic is a complete mess and you have people that are not able to go on business trips, on vacations, go see relatives, waiting three hours, waiting twenty four hours, you know, cancel flights, all that stuff.

So Trump put this out.

All air traffic controllers must get back to work now.

Anyone who doesn't will be substantially docked.

For those air traffic controllers who were great patriots and didn't take any time off during the Democrats shutdown, hopes, I will be recommending a bonus of ten thousand dollars per person for distinguished service to our country.

For those that did nothing but complain and took time off even though everyone knew they would be paid in full.

I am not happy with you, very Trump here, very big daddy Trump, letting everybody know where he stands on this.

Yeah, and look, I do think if you're a Democrat and you are convinced that Trump is a king, and you are convinced that Trump is Hitler, and you finally had your party say we're not going to take this anymore, and then they just meekly come back and.

Say, actually, we're just going to open the government back up.

And I do think Buck, this is a function of all of the travel issues, because whether you're a Democrat, Republican or an independent, if you have to stand in line for hours to get through TSA, people lose their mind.

And if you have to put yourself in a position where you are somehow defending that absurdity, it's not a good spot to be in it.

Again.

I just come back to we said this exactly was what was going to happen.

They would get through the elections on Tuesday, they would look around and they would say, hey, we don't really have the ability to keep this up forever.

Republicans called their bluff, said we're not going to change anything, and as a result, these Democrats, these eight just came back meekly and said, Okay, we're going.

To do it.

Here's what they did, Buck.

They gave Chuck Schumer an opportunity to look tough so that he can stand up to AOC right, which I think is a huge part of what.

He's trying to do.

And then ultimately, even though he's not involved in reopening the government he voted against it.

His number two, Dick Durbin from Illinois, was in favor of it, which kind of gives you a nod that Chuck Schumer is telling his constituents behind scenes, Hey, let's go ahead and do this.

And the whole thing is just it's a debacle.

Let's be honest.

There is no actual benefit that the Democrat Party has gained in any way.

Well, they threw a tantrum.

Yeah, I think that they've set the groundwork for the emotional manipulation that is going to be the foundation of their mid term pitch.

Right, what are they going to say so that they can take control of the House.

And then all it's going to be is do everything you can to stop Trump from doing anything for the last two years of his presidency.

Right, do everything you can in pgs to in PHM and just be as difficult as possible, grind the gears of government to a halt.

To the degree they can do that, they're they're really heavily leaning into the class warfare stuff.

It's feeling very two thousand and nine all over again here, Mom.

Donnie took the mask off buck in his speech.

Even the Washington Post editorial board I was reading it said, oh, he's a nice he's a gentle you know, socialist.

As soon as he won, he was like, we're coming for you.

We're going to tax you.

There are gonna be consequences.

We've got a mandate.

We got over fifty percent.

Get ready.

Yeah.

And that's people say, well, what happens to the identity politics of the Democrat coalition?

All they shift focus a little bit now, they go from race communism to old school communism.

That's essentially the playbook, I think, And that's why the healthcare issue plays so heavily into this, and why Bernie Sanders.

Of course, Bernie Sanders is one of the big voices you'll hear out there who's upset, as he always is, about the millionaires and the billionaires and all this stuff here.

This is a video that he released on social media.

This is cut to where he is slamming.

What is he slamming?

You'll hear it, play it.

Tonight, eight Democrats voted with the Republicans to allow them to go forward on this continuing resolution.

Into my mind, this was a very very bad vote.

Just on Tuesday, we had an election all over this country.

And what the election showed is that the American people want us to stand up to trump Ism, to his war against working class people, dontarianism.

That is what the American people wanted.

But tonight that is not what happened.

What is the war against working class people?

And what is that?

What does that even mean?

These are this is what I mean by emotional manipulation.

This is buzzwords to get people to play into Oh my bills?

Are you know high?

Oh?

I have frustration in life?

It's someone else's fault.

If it is someone else's fault, fine, but let's at least know who and why and then fix that instead of just playing on the rage of the masses, which is what Bernie's trying to do.

Buck think about the arguments that they simultaneously were making.

They said, hey, everybody's gonna go hungry and too many people are gonna starve to death.

Basically, that's what they were trying to say with the SNAP related issues.

And as soon as.

The government opens back up, what are they saying?

How dare we not stand up to Trump?

Wait a minute, what is the consequence of a government shut down?

Is it that tons of people are not gonna have enough food to eat, in which case the government should reopen immediately, or is it that you're just trying to extract pain against and throw a temper tantrum.

Well, as soon as the government gets opened back up, everybody who wants those Snap benefits is going to get them.

By the way, site Notebuck, have you seen a lot of the people being interviewed talking about their necessity of needing Snap.

Does it look like most of those people are a meal away from starvation?

Because to me, it doesn't.

And in fact, I think there's a stat out there that the people that are on SNAP benefits, as you pointed out, they're not making the most healthy decisions when it comes to the food that they're choosing to buy.

And it used to be that we would hear all the time about oh, you know, there's a food desert, or there's an inability for people out there to be able to make healthy decisions.

But as you pointed out, they did a.

Study where they gave people subsidized healthy foods, and the overall purchases of food did not change at all.

In fact, people continued to make unhealthy dietary decisions.

But this idea that calorically, somehow there's a huge percentage of Americans that are struggling and not getting enough to eat.

Most of the people that are on snap benefits that I've seen interviewed talking about how desperately they need Snap benefits actually look like they could go a couple of weeks without eating anything and might be in the healthier position.

Look, I think, first of all, you know, if you the CDC even estimates that the costs we're talking about healthcare costs, extreme obesity costs the American healthcare system two hundred billion dollars a year extreme obesity two hundred I'm not, by the way, don't start a all fucking on.

You know you've been twenty pounds or forty pounds overweighted.

No, No, I'm talking about like like somebody who is morbidly obese.

That's the term you use for two hundred million dollars a year is what that costs.

But the other part of this, and you know you've been tweeting about it, I've been tweeting about it.

We need to actually look at what's going on with healthcare in this country because Obamacare they want to move away from this.

Now.

Obamacare is a massive by its own standards everyone, a massive failure.

It has increased quote, coverage at the expense of cost quality care.

Everything that's gotten worse.

You have a little thing now that says you have Obamacare or whatever, you have a plan that's on an exchange, or you're part of the Medicaid expansion.

But you didn't increase doctors, you didn't increase efficiency in the system.

You've made costs for those who actually pay for their healthcare premiums more than double, a lot of cases triple.

And the Democrats answer to this is to shovel tens of billions of subsidies in the city.

They're just hiding play, they're just hiding the actual costs.

Well, when you subsidize something that is bad, the thing that you subsidize gets worse.

And we subsidized healthcare.

All Obamacare really.

Is is a huge giveaway to insurance companies.

And do you know.

Who the most hated groups of companies in America are healthcare insurance companies because no one has any idea what things cost because you can't figure out why you have to pay X one week and the next week it goes to why because there is no cost analysis associated with this at all.

So Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster.

Buck.

It is a failure of epic magnitude.

And it failed in exactly the ways that people like me who were opposed to it at the time said it would.

I'm not saying I'm the only one all Republicans were paying attention to this, Clay, but it is an absolute mess.

It is a disaster, and I think that we all need to start to grapple with the realities of the healthcare system instead of really what it is.

They just plan to make the whole thing collapse into a single payer that's the whole They're just gonna make everything medicare.

They're going to try to do the Canada model here, which is gonna be a nightmare everybody.

It's just gonna make it all worse when.

We come back.

I want to hear what MSNBC viewing was like this morning.

Oh yeah, I saw you at the six box.

You know things have gotten serious when you have six people who simultaneously need to be taught talking about how awful things are.

And I've also seen some of the Blue Sky reactions.

Blue Sky is the far left wing version of Twitter, and they're having complete meltdowns there over the Democrats bending the knee to King Trump.

We'll talk about that.

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So the shutdown is about to end, and I was curious how they were going to spin this.

So this morning I was a lovely Morning.

I was sitting there.

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But I was sitting there and I had little I had ginger on one side, speed on the other, and I'm like, all right, I'm I'm prepared.

I'm prepared to subject myself to the madness.

Of Morning not subject.

You are the number one fan of Morning Joe.

Don't downplay it here.

You are their base clay.

Just because I am so dedicated for this team that I'm willing to suffer through this.

Let's not pretend like I just want to see what kind of zipsweater Joe is wearing so I can mirror image it myself sometime, or I can watch Mika get all hissy up there.

I don't know that some times going that well, Buck, I don't I just just doing a little bit of a viewing.

They don't seem very happy.

Yeah, I had a female co host on TV at one point.

I gotta tell you, marriage is tough enough.

I can't imagine being married and then showing up and being co host on a TV show together as well.

That would be It's a lot.

That's a lot of stuff.

That's why I try not to text Clay over the weekend, because like, fifteen hours during the week of talking to each other not enough.

I gotta be like, hey, buddy, what's going on?

What are you up to?

You know, we try to try to give each other a little space on the weekends.

As Clay is now catching his breath on the treadmill, so we have no he's good, he's money, he's some money.

I'm gonna be in such elite shape.

People are not going to recognize me now with this treadmill setup.

So morning, Joe, they had to come up with some kind of a position on it.

And I just want you to get a sense you already know where this is going.

Somehow, the Democrats shut down the government caused all this pain, didn't get the concession that they were demanding, didn't get the you know the Rather, the hostage taking did not result in what they actually wanted.

And the real takeaway here is that the American people, according to Morning Joe, are blaming Republicans play for.

This is not like a Republican position or a Democratic position when it comes to the voters, and certainly not an independent fight.

This is not partisan.

They're Americans and red state America who desperately need this help.

They're Americans in blue state America that need this help too.

But I guarantee you from Dalton, Georgia, to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to every place in America, rural place in America, also.

Listen.

The Republicans are not on their side, not in this debate.

And I just sounds a little bit like a guy who's practicing a stump speech.

Part one, Part two, Part two.

This is a Republican's fault.

Like they're just doing the thing that we said they would do all along, which is they've lit the fire.

Okay, the house is now burning, the fire department's coming, and they're walking around telling the neighbors, can you believe these guys with this fireclay.

It's crazy what's going on here.

I also think it's kind of amazing how quickly we went from boy, Republicans are really going to have to have a civil war now two Democrats are at each other's throats almost overnight.

And I just wonder in a larger context, you and I asked this question from the get go.

You can't enter into a decision like the Democrats did here with no exit ramp.

We talked about this for forty days.

We said, there is no exit ramp here.

There is no goal that they are somehow, in some form or fashion going to get.

And so again no King's.

Protest on what was at October eighteenth, that Saturday, beautiful day all over the country that Democrats gave up to rally against President Trump.

And then you had the election, and I do think it probably juice turnout in northern Virginia and helped them get a little bit more political power in that state than they otherwise would have.

But then everybody who is in any way moderate on the Democrat side of the aisle just says, hey, we got to sue for peace, and buck I think the ultimate yes, it was no Kings.

Yes, it was also the election having taken place.

We told you that it would get solved right after that.

I think what they didn't calculate was, I guarantee you they're getting blown up about all of the issues at airports because it's one thing to hear, Hey, the government's shut down, and it's having this impact.

I'm talking about if you're not air traffic control, if you're not military, if you're not a federal employee.

But as soon as I show up at the airport and I have to stand in line for hours to get through TSA, or even worse than that, you get to the airport, you stand in line for hours at TSA, and then your flight gets canceled.

Democrat, Republican or independent.

People are mad, and you don't want to be on the receiving end of people being mad, especially when there isn't really a basis for any kind of tangible result that they're going to get.

And that was why I actually thought about you this morning.

When I woke up, I was like, I don't want to put on MSNBC.

I got to get the kids to school.

I got to make sure that things are going okay here.

But a part of me was a little bit jealous that you got to sit and watch the chaos unspool on MSNBC, because I did put it on for just a few minutes last night, just to see all of the people on the panel saying, wait a minute.

They got us all worked up.

They told us that they were standing up to Trump, and then the result is after forty days, they say, well, we made the conversation shift, Oh we made this.

They just failed and it just makes them look utterly incompetent, and a part of me wonders if they're gonna demand Chuck Schumer's head on a platter over this buck.

Oh guess what Sonny Hostin?

Oh yeah, chief chief bitterness analyst over at the View.

She's She's the queen of Queen of bitter.

She always always unhappy about something.

Being married to Sonny Hostin, Buck, can you imagine that poor bastard husband, Like, how awful his life must be.

I bet he works one hundred and.

Eighty hours a week just to avoid having to spend time with her.

She just seems like an energy vampire of epic magnitude.

Even in the context of the View.

I don't think i'd be fun to be married to Whoopie or Joy Behar.

But they don't seem like they're awful humans.

Sunny Hostin seems to me to be an awful human.

She's a she's definitely she really should call her Sonny hostile.

Oh yeah, she's very she's very hostile.

Yes, very hot.

I mean she's very very un unhospitable and hostile.

Here she is.

She's hostile toward Chuck Schumer.

It turns out play twenty now they just cave and surrendered.

I think Chuck Schumer his days are over and he.

Cannot put that.

If he cannot keep his pockets together, if he cannot keep this clocketts together, he needs to go Clay.

What this really is is uh, you know Reme remember the the two minutes hate with Emmanuel gold See in nineteen eighty four, where Evering just shouts, I know, Emmanuel gold state, all right, so bad and no one even don't even know who this guy is or what's going on or whatever.

But it's just meant to get everybody.

This is the Left just venting their spleen, their rage, their anger at trump Ism.

And this was all in advance of the election, going to election day to make them think Democrats are fighting.

It was all kabuki theater.

It's all a pantomime.

I also think Buck this could be one of the lasting impacts of it.

They have created a world if you go look at issues, where people think, oh, Democrats they care about health care more than Republicans.

Now, I'm not saying that everybody out there listening right now believes this, but they have created the idea, oh, we care way more about healthcare than the opposing party.

I actually think the failure of Obamacare is going to open a larger conversation about health care where we sit back and we say, wait a minute.

Structurally, all we did with Obamacare was give huge subsidies to health insurance companies that huge majorities of Americans don't like.

Instead of I saw Trump put up a truth post about this.

Instead of putting more money in people's pockets and letting them make rational decisions about what healthcare they need or want that is the best result for their family, for all of you out there, they said, hey, let's just give way more money to health insurance companies and let's mandate that everybody has to buy health insurance.

It's a really bad idea.

That I don't think Republicans have really elucidated.

Well, you have the least popular for profit businesses in America health care companies, and the Democrats solution that people feel like cheat them, that people feel like, don't give them adequate coverage, that don't give them adequate customer service.

Can you even get your health care provider insurance company on the phone?

And when you do, how many times do they actually help you or even be able to explain why you're being charged what you are?

I mean, I hate health insurance companies.

Most of you do too.

In fact, you might even argue with your spouse over who has to call the health insurance company when you have a billing dispute, because it's such a miserable experience.

And so the Democrats solution to.

Healthcare was to give the least popular industry in America a handout of hundreds of billions of dollars to make them more money.

I'm sorry, that's a really bad position for them to try to defend.

Well, you know, this is where you get into the ways that this market is.

It's not a market really at all.

It manipulated so much that it's just central it's just central planning held together with some elements of the market in some places, but Clay.

This is when people find out that if you have insurance, the price could be you know, six hundred dollars for whatever it is that you're doing.

If you don't have insurance, the price can be three hundred dollars.

But if they find out you have insurance, you're not allowed to pay the three hundred dollars no insurance price.

Correct.

This is all about taking money from some people to pay for other people who don't want to pay for the stuff that they're getting.

That is the whole thing.

And by the way, this is all it's not insurance.

It's not even insurance.

You should not be paying for you know, or rather when you go into the doctor for your checkup and for these things, you shouldn't be filing acclaim.

You know.

You know.

This is when people think about with their car.

When do you call your car insurance?

If somebody t bones you at an intersection and you've got real damage, right or you know there's something that serious happened to your car, you don't call them.

If you know an a corps larren scratches the rim, you don't call them.

For gas.

But our whole healthcare system is just that now to you know, everywhere you go.

I can't even get in Clay.

I could go in somewhere, you know, Oh, I think I have a sinus infection.

I have to fill out fifteen minutes of paperwork about allline.

Probably even though it's all online now, you still have to fill out the stupid paperwork over and over and over again.

What's your insurance?

Do you have a secondary insure?

Who's your spouse is?

It's all garbage.

It's infuriating, It's infuriating.

And that's why I think Republicans have an opportunity here because all Democrats have done is subsidize the most hated industry in America and give them more money to an already broken system.

And I think that conversation is actually going to become more paramount here because this is a major, major issue, and look, Democrats are going to try to make it an issue in twenty twenty six.

I think trying to defend health insurance companies as doing a good job and deserving more of our money is not something that most Americans are going to nod along with.

And I just come back to time after time after time.

The reason healthcare is broken in this country is because nobody has any idea that builds on just what you were saying, Buck, what anything is going to cost?

Oh?

Hold on, No, you're not allowed to know.

It's actually worse than that.

You're not allowed to know cost.

It's not like you're just walking around, you know, like, oh, just you know, who cares about whatever?

I could go into the back office of a hospital and say, hey, guys, what is the actual cost of this?

They say, we'll get back to you in three months with a big bill.

By the way, look, I talked about this when my wife was having bait with our babies.

Right.

It's one of the few healthcare things where you can actually go around and ask what something costs.

I said, how much is it going to cost to have a baby here?

I'd like to compare that cost with somewhere else?

They said, well, we don't know.

How can you.

Give me an opportunity to tour maternity wards and the only thing you're not competing on your competing on Wi Fi bamboo.

Flooring, waiting rooms.

You can't tell me what the cost is it was.

I can tell you it's everybody out here in Miami Beach.

Uh, in this area at least, it's all it's all turning into concierge medicine.

Yeah, people are just doctors are just opting out of this system.

And it's not because they're being greedy.

They just want to be able to practice medicine without being paperwork.

Uh, you know, adult bureaucrats all day long, and so people are just paying.

This is what's gonna increasingly happen.

And you can have all these Democrats saying I love the I love Obamacare.

They're not Obombacare plans.

Correct, They're on gold plated, amazing plans.

They see any doctor they want, they don't pay anything.

I mean, if friends, if you want to want to see what their version of healthcare looks like for all of us, go see how it all was working out in the Soviet Uni.

Yeah.

Sure it was all free.

But well you know the government employees who never gave a paycheck.

Yeah, everybody in Congress, they kept getting paid.

We'll take we'll take your calls on this, my friends.

Here in a moment, we're.

Making progress, uh with the Trump administration with some of the spending cup acts, but the debt is still huge thirty seven trillion in counting.

Inflation is still a problem, cost of living is high.

I want to help you save some money.

Why not?

Why throw more of your money away every month?

There's no reason.

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Biggest news is.

That we finally are going to have an into the incredibly unsuccessful government shutdown that has been going on for forty days.

It appears that it will be over officially on Thursday.

The shutdown already underway, as eight different Democrat senators have joined all of the Republican senators.

We had to get to sixty in order for that to happen.

Now.

Unfortunately, the air travel disruption situation, I'm looking at it right now on Fox News book there are three thousand nearly flights that have been canceled today.

Over eleven thousand delays.

So if you are trying to travel right now, this is frankly a complete mess all over the country.

As I think a big part of why we finally got this resolution was because Democrats have recognized one they're not going to get anything accomplished, and two.

We are now past the No.

Kings Day and election in Virginia.

But a third part of this is a lot of people were and have become super frustrated overall with everything going on relating to air traffic delays, and so that is where we are positive news.

In fact, I believe we have audio from Senator Angus King who went on MSNBC and said, hey, yeah, by the way, it turns out that the decision to not open the government to shut down made everything more more powerful as it pertains to all things Trump.

Can we play that cut from earlier today on MSNBC.

Please.

You have to go back to what the strategy was at the beginning of the shutdown.

There were two goals, both of which I support.

One was standing up to Donald Trump.

The other was getting some resolution on the ACA premium tax credit issue.

The problem was the shutdown wasn't accomplishing either goals, and there was practically well it was zero likelihood that it was going to In terms of standing up to Donald Trump, the shutdown actually gave him more power.

Exhibit A being what he's done with Snap and Snap benefits across the country.

Oh, by the way, Joe, you're going to love this.

Guess who's getting paid during the shutdown.

Not the park rangers or air traffic controllers, the ice agents under special law under that big awful bill that they passed last summer.

The ice agents are being paid.

Nobody else is.

So standing up to Donald Trump didn't work.

It actually gave him more power.

Yeah, so Angus King going on with MSNBC and saying, hey, we've actually ended up in a situation where President Trump has more power than he would otherwise.

Also, by the way, Trump is continuing, he is meeting with the new president of Syria.

Underrated aspect of foreign diplomacy that has not gotten a ton of attention was normalizing relations with Syria helped to create more Mid East peace because everybody was lining up against Iran and giving a nod towards the new government in Syria helped with the relationships with other Middle Eastern countries as it pertains to all of that stock market.

Not surprisingly, buck up substantially as the government shutdown comes down, and now the big battle has become Democrat senators, everybody is pointing the finger at Chuck Schumer.

So question for you, where does Chuck Schumer go from here?

And let me give you the scenarios.

He's got AOC really after him on the left flank, and that was I think a huge part of the motivation for why he decided to allow this shutdown to take place as well.

Now eight senators on the right are coming forward and saying this is ridiculous.

We're not getting anything.

We have to go back and uh and and open the government back up.

We're getting too much blowback.

We're not getting anything.

This is a negative overall for the party.

Where does this leave Chuck Schumer?

Because we play you want me to be a lot of the pressure.

Is he done?

Like his career end?

At this point, Chuck Schumer's chief comms guy, Okay, here we go.

Uh.

This doesn't look good for Chuck right now, here's what's gonna happen, though.

He's going to go into this next year gearing up for the mid terms, doing a lot of fundraising, a lot of pressing of the palms.

What he's gonna say is, guys, I fought, I fought.

You got it.

You know, you can't have these upstarts like AOC.

They don't know the game so important that we take control of at least the House in this midterm election.

And I I know, and I'm gonna fight in the Senate and I'm Chuck Schumer.

He's created the narrative to allow him to go to the uh you know, ten thousand dollars or plate dinners or whatever it is, in order to present him self as the resistance against Trump.

People will forget and this may sound cynical, but I think it's quite obviously true.

People will forget that this was much ado about nothing, and he will turn it into oh, I stood and fought and we got some concessions out of Trump when we were in the minority.

Just wait till we actually have a majority in Congress.

Give me money, Chuck Schumer.

That's the whole thing that's going to be the pitch.

I think.

So he's going to create a narrative out of this that ignores the truth of what really happened here.

The best asset that he has sho hire me, by the way.

I feel like that's pretty good for Schumer spokesman.

Oh, not so much.

I don't know.

I don't know that.

I think the best asset that Schumer has is that AOC doesn't actually want to be a senator.

That's my she wants to be president.

I don't think she sees that much difference in being a House of Representative member or a senator.

There is, but I think her aspirations are higher.

Her senate's an excellent steppingstone, especially for Democrats.

That's how they always see it.

Remember, Democrats like to have senators run, We like to have governors run.

Okay, So question then in that context, And I don't know that anybody's even talked about this, Mam donnie.

We know he could be governor one day, he could be senator one day.

That's the apex of his power.

You can argue, New York City mayor is a higher level of office than senator or governor would be.

Is there a world where Mam Donnie decides to challenge Chuck Schumer.

If AOC is running for president, and we know that Mam Donnie can't run for president because he was born in Uganda, I'm just trying to play it out for Schumer.

A lot of these results buck to me end with Schumer not running for reelection next year.

The problem with that is what else does Chuck Schumer have going on such that he would give up power at seventy five or seventy six years old, which is young compared to Nancy Pelosi who went all the way.

Up to eighty five.

And again that's depending on who control, because if you're in the minority, that's not necessarily very enjoyable.

I'm told from people who you know work day to day in the Senate.

When is uh?

When is Schumer up?

When is his turn next year?

Right?

Next year?

So he's up, so I mean by January or February of next year, right, meaning like four months from now, we'll start to find out whether anybody is actually going to primary him or not.

I'm not sure what the filing deadline is in New York, but he's terrified AOC is going to primary him.

My thought is AOC doesn't actually want to be Senator, although maybe to your point, she thinks, hey, I can be a senators.

Not the reelection next year.

I thought he was up in twenty six.

No, no, no, no, no, no, okay, he's up in twenty eight.

Yeah, and yeah he's up in he's up in twenty eight.

So that's this is But this is all right, now, maybe you do want to hire me as Schumer spokesman.

Clay he just goes into the fundraising cycle for next year.

No one's even gonna by the time he's up, no one's even going to remember this challenge from his left flank.

I always thought that was a little overblown as an explanation for this.

I think that they realized the real problem is that with Obama, they got to shore up.

The boat is taking on water with Obamacare in a big way, and that causes big problems for them on the healthcare front.

And twenty in the midterms, healthcare was the quiet issue.

Wasn't really that quiet, but health care was the issue in twenty eighteen that delivered the Democrats a big win.

Overwhelmingly.

It was healthcare that they said was what was, you know, propelling them forward?

Well, that's why I said in the last hour, I think the issue they could have going forward is they may well have created real obstacles for themselves on the only issue that really they show up in a positive vein.

Now, I know people, the economy is just it's a negative frankly for everybody because there's just a lot of unhappy people.

Border crime, very positive Trump issues.

I think the economy by next year is going to be a Trump issue if Democrats don't have health care.

If a lot of people start to have the conversation that we did last hour, where they look around and say, wait a minute, the reason why healthcare companies have increasingly more and more power is because the Democrats just gave them hundreds of billions of dollars in handouts.

I think a lot of people might start to say, wait a minute, Democrats have totally screwed this up, and Obamacare has made everything worse.

And I think, to your point, the idea with Obamacare, honestly, it feels like it's designed to fail so that they can just to your point, say, hey, government's got to take over everything otherwise everybody's going to die.

Which is that was always that was always the opposition to Obamacare from the start was that the way it was constructed was destined to fail, but that failure would lead to a single payer system, which is Medicare for all, which is what Bertie Sanders is always saying, which you want to talk about out of control costs and blowed in bureaucracy and waiting.

I mean, you know, if the government is writing all the checks for everybody's health care and you have something like this in the UK where the government also controls the output of healthcare right National Health Service, which means that not only are they paying for it, but they are the deliverers of the product.

And the NHS has blown an enormous hole in the UK economy for decades.

The whole thing's a disaster.

I thought this was interesting, though, Clay that of the eight Senate Democrats who have voted to end the shutdown, none of them are up for reelection next year.

So the thing that they have going for, the thing that they all have in common is that they're not facing angry AOC leftists next year because it's a it's a pretty wide You got Dick Durbin out of Illinois, super Several.

Of those guys too are stepping down buck like Seth Right Heen like they're they're just.

Waving on their way out.

So these are the Democrats that it's safe for them to stop the madness.

Quartes Mastone have Well, you got a purple state there, but she's not up next year, you know, to Tim Kaine or Virginia, Angus King of Maine, Jackie Rose in Nevada, Jean Shaheen New Hampshire, none of them are up.

I think that's very interesting.

The most vulnerable incumbent in fact is John Ossoff, who next year Georgians will be deciding, hey, are we going to re elect this guy?

There's a primary battle underway to figure out who the Republican nominee is going to be.

He supported this and Georgia you talk about a state that is truly up for grabs.

All of the elections in Georgia have been very close, notwithstanding the statewide when that Brian Kemp had that was so substantial in twenty twenty two.

But yeah, in twenty twenty six.

Osoff is up next year.

He's probably the only sitting incumbent that would be in true peril in terms of potentially getting beaten in a normal election cycle where it doesn't drastically favor one side or the other.

And he voted to continue the shutdown, and he's been voting in favor of men and women's sports, and so he's really out of touch with the overall voters of Georgia.

Now the question will be what does the electorate look like in you know, eleven months there.

But it is interesting to me that he bent the knee and stayed committed to the far left wing even in a very middle of.

The road state.

Clay, you know what they say.

There are a lot of quarters of baseball left here.

So it's a lot of time, a lot of time between now and that next election.

We'll see what ends up happening.

See Clay knows.

He didn't even feel the need to correct me.

There he knows, all right.

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Got a bunch of things I want to talk to you about.

Obviously, the shutdown is coming to an end, longest shutdown in our history, and the Democrats are trying to say they fought the good fight.

Really, they threw a temper tantrum and they made people anxious, frustrated, and made people suffer just because Democrats like to do those things.

They did not actually achieve their main end, but we'll discuss that a bit more coming up.

We've also got the very very important news that Claire reminded me of that Kim Kardashian, despite trying, did not pass the California bar exam.

I believe she's tried a few times at this point, but has not yet passed it.

So we're hoping, we're pulling for Kim to pass the bar exam.

I think she isn't she worth a billion dollars so this really is just like a personal mountain that she is trying to climb.

I we'll get into this, but yes, she is.

She definitely does not need the money that might come from practicing law in any way.

So that's not obviously an important story, but it's one of those stories that people are going to be talking about.

So I just thought i'd let you know she has failed the bar exam three times already, but she's gonna keep going.

And you know what Clay a wise man once said to me, Persistence is the key.

Persistence is the key, very very important.

A lot of people are making fun of her, and I'll just say this, I think we should encourage people to try to do hard things, and it would be very easy, to your point, buck, when you become a billionaire, to just say, hey, I've got everything I could possibly want.

I'm not going to try to push myself any further.

And she decided she wanted to try to become a lawyer, and she is attempting to do it.

I would point out who was it that failed the bar a ton of times, JFK Junior, I think, if.

I remember correctly, Yeah, yeah, well no one thought the JFK Junior was going to be a rocket scientist, so that's not surprising for me.

But I mean he went straight to law school.

I think they led him into Columbia or Harvard or wherever the heck they did.

Completely irrelevant.

They let him in because of his last name.

Yes, he could be illiterate Kennedy, and they would have led him into Harvard law school and he continued to trail.

So anyway, I do think everybody's trying to poke fun at her, but I give her credit for being willing to try to do something super hard when she could just chill and have an easy life.

I think it's I think it's important to always try to work on yourself and to be willing to embrace the humility that must come with that.

So I'm actually with you.

I'm far less.

I'm not you know, Oh my gosh, how could you fill the bar?

Exam.

Good for Kim Kardashian for trying, and hopefully at some point she'll pass.

On the other side of the gratitude scale, yes, on the other side of that scale, we have the former First Lady Michelle Obama, who has a remarkable talent for seeming just perpetually ungrateful and full of grievance, which for somebody who has who was the First Lady for eight years, I don't even know how many magazine covers.

Uh has her pick of which billionaires three hundred million dollar yacht she chooses to vacation with her daughter's on.

I don't know if you could find all in a more privileged and elitist person on the planet, it would be very hard, right, because you know, yeah, there's like like Elon Musk is worth a ton of money, but Elon Musk is like sleeping on the floor of the Tesla factory building.

All this stuff big cost to his personal life.

Some people hate him, obviously, He's the allied with Trump.

Michelle Obama, everwhere should go.

She is worshiped, worshiped by elite society, and yet you when she talks about things like, for example, how she needed to have a celebrity style glam team when she was in the White House, this is how she speaks of it.

Play eight.

I didn't really have that choices firstly, worst right, yeah, every day every time I was up as we called it, you know, I was up for the public, yes, and the days were long, so as you mentioned, to save time, you know, I know, having a glam team a trifecta.

It feels like a luxury, but it was a time's time, this necessity.

There's absolutely no way that I would be able to do my hair and make up and have clothes ready that fit, you know, because where is the woman that can live off the rack?

I know a lot of women who live off the rack, eight Clay, I know a lot.

Actually, Michelle Obama might be the person who should give the country more gratitude than anyone that has the least gratitude of anyone in public eye that I can see.

And every time she speaks, I like her less and I don't think I'm unique in that she has been hoddled, she's been protected, she has been told that she is incredibly accomplished and a uniquely transcendent figure, such that she decided that she needed to start her own podcast.

I actually feel sorry for Barack Obama for having to deal with her, And let me explain why that is.

I went off.

I might have gone off more on this than almost anybody in the country when she wasn't willing to show up for Jimmy Carter's funeral.

To me, it was such a personal slap in the face to every American.

Look.

I understand you don't want to always have to go to public events, but when you run for president of the United States, or when you are married to the President of the United States, there are certain moments that demand to me that you show up and show the least semblance of respect for the country that you could.

Hillary Clinton was at the funeral for Jimmy Carter.

The Bushes were at the funeral for Jimmy Carter.

Certainly Trump and Milania were there.

It doesn't take a lot to be willing to give a few hours of your time to get on a private jet and fly somewhere, get off be respectful for a couple of hours.

She didn't show up for the inauguration of Trump Barack Obama.

Did I give him credit for that?

She doesn't seem like a person that would be fun to spend time with.

Buck and I just I look at this and instead of saying, hey, boy, you know I'm from I think the South side of Chicago.

If I'm not mistaken, I grew up and I got to be the first lady of the United States, I married the president.

What is an incredible story that is that you can be a kid from the south side of Chicago and you can grow up to do this, right.

I mean, you know who's actually leaned into that, because I think he's also from the South side of Shchaquaro the Pope.

The American Pope Leo.

He's talked.

I've seen quite a lot about how amazing it is that a kid who grew up on the South side of Chicago could ascend to become the Pope.

I just every time Michelle Obama speaks, I think to myself, what a be careful here, you might need to turn down the radio.

What a bitch?

What an ungrateful bitch?

Michelle Obama is unique among all of the first ladies of different political parties.

All she does is wine and talk like, hey, well I have to have a glam squad or I'm not even gonna travel with my uh with my wardrobe.

People, Oh, I don't.

I don't wear a lot of things off the rack.

I wear everything off the rack.

I know a lot of women that wear things off the rack.

Now you can come after me because I shouldn't, because you should say, oh, you should have that better tailored.

Oh why are your pants drag?

Why are your sleeves too long?

Those are criticisms.

The answer is because I just things off the rack, and I'm not a diva, and I just I don't get it.

I don't get it.

Every time she speaks buck, I just think to myself, boy, she had an opportunity.

She reminds me of the US women's soccer team.

I think there's a lot of this.

I don't think it's just unique to her for left winging people.

Do you remember when Meghan Raupino they were playing in the World Cup and she just chose that opportunity to take shots at President Trump said, I'm not gonna go to the White House.

I'm not gonna visit and then she insulted him with explotives.

And I'm thinking to myself, you were on the national stage for young women everywhere around the world who aspire to grow up and be great soccer players like you.

How about a sentilla.

Of gratitude for the fact that you have this opportunity and this.

Left wing and I think it's.

Primarily women, honestly, which is the foundation of the Democrat Party.

This left wing.

Hectoring, ungrateful, baseline bitchiness that is the Democrat Party.

Buck.

I think it's why men are done with them.

Every man out there is like, yeah, I've had to deal with that in my life.

It's like every single Democrat woman has got her finger out and.

She's lecturing you all day long.

And I think a lot of women out there listening to us right now are nodding along.

It's like the whole party is just the most annoying person at your job who's lecturing you about something that she doesn't like that really isn't anything wrong at all.

Nothing has changed, by the way, in the apparent attitude that Michelle Obama formerly Michelle Robinson has, you can easily go find her Princeton thesis, which I read back in the y you told me it was just atrocious administration.

It is atrocious.

It is absolutely brutal reading in terms of you're like, what is this?

But it's Princeton educated blacks and the black community is was her was her thesis.

Does anyone want to guess what it's about?

The isolation and the feelings of subtle racism you deal with as a black student at Princeton.

She wrote her thesis on this, her entire like the peak, the pinnacle of her academic life as an undergraduate was to write a one hundred page whine about how hard it was to be black at Princeton, which, by the way, this was in the heyday of affirmative action.

She probably got about three hundred points worth of assistance on in terms of SAT comparison, at least two hundred plus points to get into Princeton.

So the reason she could whine about being black at Princeton is because she was black at Princeton.

And being black and applying to Princeton at that time was a particular privilege in the admissions process.

So yes, that is the great irony of this.

Michelle Obama got into Princeton in large part because she was a black woman.

And then she wrote a thesis about her heart it was to be a black woman at Princeton, and that kind of sums up the attitude.

I also think it sums up the legacy media in general, the protect you see the I don't know that we played this clip.

I think it was last week.

It was going viral.

She was saying something like, oh, our family never got the grace that other families got.

And I saw that clip.

Maybe we can grab it before we finished the hour, and I'm sorry, Buck.

Do you remember, as I do, the Bush daughters getting destroyed by national media for relatively minor teenage related infractions as if they were modern day you know, felons of an enormous magnitude.

They got treated basically the same as Hunter.

And by the way, how about the Bidens.

Now they did a lot, but Hunter and all the other Biden kids got incredible negative media attention.

And Chelsea back in the day, I don't remember everybody bending over backwards to.

Treat Chelsea really well.

And so you look at all the other kids, I would say that the Obamas and their daughters got treated more fairly than any children of the president have, regardless of political party, in my whole life.

And we know we've had all these guys on the program.

Do you think the Trumps have been treated fairly like the kids?

I'm not talking about Trump himself.

They would put them in prison if they could, for sure, and they haven't done anything wrong.

Yes, all true.

Well, the Democrats tried to be clear they would It's not just they would desire to put Trump family members in prison, they made moves to do so.

Oh totally.

Other people are gonna say, oh, well Hunter, Yeah, Hunter committed about one hundred felonies on his laptop.

If you just click and went and looked through any of.

Hunter's laptop, he got insanely favorable treatment.

I guess maybe it was all just Russian disinformation.

Story.

That's a joke, everybody, that's a joke.

Calm down, Calm down.

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