Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Welcome, everybody, to the second hour of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show. And we are joined by Stephen Yates. He's a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a former White House national security official.
Chapter 2: Are we going to strike Iran?
Our friend, Mr. Yates. Great to have you, sir. What's going on? Buck, great to join you. Thanks so much. So we want to ask you about whether we're going to war with Iran. It's a big question. And the reason we're asking is because, as we know, there's sort of a dual track situation playing out. On the one hand, there's negotiations, I think, in Geneva. Sounds right.
over Iran's nuclear program that the administration is involved in. And then there's also a buildup, a substantial buildup of military assets, aerial assets, specifically F-35s, F-22s in the Mideast, prepared for what could be a sustained aerial campaign against Iran. What do you see happening here? How do you think this plays out?
Well, Buck, I think that the president and his team are doing far more than any of its predecessors to kind of increase the chances of a negotiated settlement of sorts. It's very, very difficult to see there being any security from the nuclear program. Under the current regime, that's why the president says that if the regime were to change, that might be better.
He's not saying he's going to do it. But the armada that is there is doing two very substantial things. It is stopping the illegal support for the Iranian regime financially. That has been a big vulnerability in the past. And, of course, it has the ability to strike hard, and the president has proven a willingness to do that not very long ago.
So this should increase the chances of a negotiated settlement. But I have to say, bottom line, I don't see this regime in Iran negotiating a good faith in an appropriate amount of time. So I think the odds of a strike that would be an active war but not a total war, very high over the next two weeks.
Okay, so what is the goal of the strikes? Thanks for coming on, Steve. I mean, I think that is kind of where we dive into next because the understanding that we had, and I think it was the right decision on the first strike, was this is directly attributed to trying to eliminate Iran's nuclear arsenal, right, or their ability to develop a nuclear arsenal.
Are we trying to replace the Ayatollah with this strike? Are we still going after nuclear weapons? I think this needs to be a huge part of the discussion in general is what is the strategic goal here? Do you have a sense for that? And how do you think the administration goes about making that choice?
Well, I completely agree that it's necessary. We've fought off the ghosts of Iraq in many, many different ways. But that idea of making it clear what the strategic objective is and what America's role is relative to other countries' role, very, very clear.
I think that the targets that they would hit would look more military, so it would be nuclear, but also some of the ballistic missile and other capabilities to demonstrate that we can do this and there's nothing they can do about it and knock them back a little bit to maybe buy more time and see whether they sober up for real negotiations. There's
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Chapter 3: What is the Dirty Dem Playbook controversy about?
And I think that's a good thing in terms of making sure that we don't get pulled into something. And I think Trump is very wary of getting pulled into something deeper and at much greater risk to us and to our people than we want to be. So as part of that, one of the conversations that I think keeps coming up, and people have been asking me, so I want to pose this to you and get your take on it.
In Venezuela, okay, we took Maduro out and, well, took him to a prison cell in New York, but there was a clear pathway of other people, and really much of the rest of the regime is in charge there now. So there's kind of an ongoing negotiation process about what will happen and how that country moves forward, but the U.S. clearly has a lot of leverage. What is the opposition in Iran?
Do we have any real sense as to if the mullahs fall, if they fall, who takes over?
Buck, that is the most important issue that they have to work through. And I don't take it as a given that whatever the U.S. does in the near term is going to be about regime change. I think what they demonstrated in Venezuela...
is that a step along the way is that we are going to change the maybe the nature of the current regime and renegotiate sort of the terms of trade and dealing with the united states and the world and under these new terms maybe we buy more time for a longer term transition to whether it's an opposition or a reformed country but in venezuela the opposition is not yet in charge it may be in the not too distant future if there's an election
The same goes with Iran. I mean, the debathification issue in Iraq, which you know as well as anybody, just is one of the biggest ghosts of what people think of as a failure in the Iraq strategy. Keeping some of those institutions in place so there isn't broader instability and mayhem across the region is one of the priorities they have to have. So I think there could be a move that gets –
at the top leadership, and there could be a change to someone else in the regime. Personally, I would love it if this regime went away, but I personally just think that the U.S. role is to strike hard the way no one else can, to contain fallout as best anyone can.
But it's the Abraham Accords countries and others that really need to be managing more of how do we have an economic and political relationship that's different with Iran.
We have a lot of Iranian listeners on this program. A couple of months ago, we opened up phone lines and said, hey, what kind of support is there in your social networks for Iranians in the United States for the royal family to be installed in some way as a holder of power that is a transition to potentially a new government? Do you like that idea, Steve? Is that a crazy idea in your mind?
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Chapter 4: How is the Trans Trend impacting society?
I think that might explain why we have this muddled or middle ground approach in Venezuela, too. If the opposition was seen as chosen by the United States and our president, then there could be maybe grounds for greater resistance. A more organic and sort of stepping stones across the river approach seems to be the way they've gone at that. That might be more what they try with Iran.
But I do think that looking at viable alternatives to the theocratic regime, most of the diaspora agrees with that, which is a fancy way of saying the people who are Iranian that live overseas. And then I think there are also large parts of Persian culture that are not Islamist.
that could work with that kind of an approach, but it needs to be seen and protected as being the Iranian people's choice.
Steve, I'm in South Florida, and so I got to ask, how shaky do you think the regime in Cuba is?
Yeah, I think it's very shaky, and that's an area where I think oddly, while people wouldn't attach smart power to the make America great again foreign policy, I think that we've used some very effective levers that are non-military. We've used our military to cut off the oil. That is an immense pressure on them. The movement in Venezuela politically was tied very close to them.
So in terms of political warfare, economic warfare, and economic security, we've really maxed options. And so I think we've got... the best shot we've had for this external pressure campaign to maybe give a different path forward.
But what fascinates me is really in Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and maybe other places, we're really seeing a very sophisticated approach to easing these transitions without America going in to push it too far and have it blow up back on us.
Buck asked a good question about Cuba, and I'm utterly fascinated about that. But also on Iran, you mentioned it. I think this is important.
There's a big difference oftentimes between what is publicly said and what is privately said, particularly from the other Middle Eastern countries, Saudi Arabia et al., that clearly have made the decision they don't like Iran and would like to see changes made there. Do they actually want the Ayatollah out in your impression?
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of President Trump's Black History Month event?
Steve, we appreciate you. We may need you back on when war breaks out.
He's going to have to fix the war when it breaks out.
That's right. Thank you. Thanks so much. Look, I was at Mar-a-Lago yesterday, dress code business casual, and producer Ali heard me and Buck heard me trying to figure out what should I wear. And one of the answers, even though Buck and I are not huge suit guys, is there's lots of awesome stuff with comfort in mind that Cozy Earth puts out there. They have luxury sheets.
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Inspirational stories that unite us all. Each day, spend time with Clay and Buck. Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back in, Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show. We've got a lot of different stories that we're following, but it is funny that we may go to war with Iran.
Uh, we're going to talk with Steve Yates at one in like 30 minutes, roughly about the possibility of war with Iran. Uh, our friend Carol Markowitz will join us in the next hour to talk about issues of the day, but Prince Andrew being arrested has taken over the new cycle as opposed to whether we might go to war in the middle East. Um,
And there are other news cycle moments that I think are worthy of discussion. And one of them just so happens to be us being completely right about the made-up James Tallarico interview. I know, Buck, you yesterday had FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr on. The team pulled a bunch of different cuts here. But here is a flashback.
from Tuesday's edition of the show where I said, this is going to be so much more beneficial to Tallarico in the Texas primary than running the actual interview was. It feels like a rigged job. Here is cut 11. When I hear and see this controversy emerging, I say, my goodness, this is elite Democrat power brokers deciding to set up this James Tallarico interview.
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Chapter 6: How is the housing market affected by mortgage rates?
So Texas will love him. And Texas was like, no, actually, no. So, yeah, I think this is Tallarico is going to be just like Beto. And it's not going to work for him. So that's the good news.
Now, I do think the question here going forward is, I know they're going to toss to the curb. Colbert's show in May, I think, is over. And in the meantime, as we could well have expected, he's throwing as many fits as he can, kicking and screaming on the way out to his show ceasing to exist. And then guess what's going to happen, Buck?
Spotify or someone like Spotify is going to give Stephen Colbert $100 million to do a podcast, and Stephen Colbert is not going to be a victim. And then every single left-wing legacy media outlet in the country is going to do a huge story about how Stephen Colbert was a victim. I can tell you exactly how this is going to play out.
His podcast is going to be highly rated because they're going to promote it like crazy, and he's going to do basically the exact same show on podcast, and he's going to make more money, and it'll be on YouTube, and they'll promote it, and they'll do a huge story about how Stephen Colbert is the big success and CBS are the losers.
I can tell you exactly how the next year of Stephen Colbert's life is going to play out.
Which reminds me, they manufacture his popularity, and they manufacture delusions. which is a fantastic book, Manufacturing Delusion, that all of you who have not already purchased your copy should go purchase a copy of because this first week we have to beat John Meacham's book. You know, Clay, I am getting John Meacham, for those of you who don't know, he's a presidential historian.
You know, there's a lot of books about these presidents, okay? But he became the go-to historian on Morning Joe alongside Beschloss to be like, Trump is Hitler and he's going to destroy America.
I have people sending me, because our books came out on the same day, that if you go to, let's just say, a large brick-and-mortar retailer with many stores across the country in places, you will see that there will be like 15. There's a huge display of Meacham books. My book, you can't even find it. You have to go.
It's almost like you're going to buy the naughty book that you're not supposed to know exists. Who makes this decision? Corporate libs in these places.
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Chapter 7: What are the recent developments in transgender medical procedures?
Most liked review so far. That is from me inside of Amazon. And I am a verified purchaser, to be fair. You can see that if you doubted whether I paid my own money for Buck's book, It is in my Amazon account. I am Richard Clay Travis, just so you know. I'm actually nervous now that I've said that. I'm like, have I reviewed anything else? No, only a couple of things.
So I was like, oh no, what else have I reviewed on Amazon? Only a couple of books. Another one was like 15 years ago. Somebody asked me to review it. So that's the only reviews that are on my Amazon account. But that is my actual Amazon account. Go buy your copy of the book and... Oh, yeah. Ali's saying they used to turn Rush's book over upside down.
Look, what I would say is in the marketplace of ideas, I think about this all the time. How do you reach people that otherwise might not be aware of your arguments? We are incredibly thankful for all of you out there that are listening to us every day. And every day there's a few more of you than there were the day before. And that's been the case for each of the last five years.
And that's a credit. to the staff and the fact that we try to do a good job with this show. But there's also tens of millions of people that would like our arguments and do not get exposed to them. And so hopefully, I hope that they are going to see your book and become aware that there are arguments like these being made.
Absolutely. Very important. So go check out Manufacturing Delusion. Tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires, ice storms. In a country as large as ours, there's a lot of reasons for power outages to occur, and each of those can cause an immediate shutdown of the grid. Without warning, you're suddenly cut off from the people you care about most, unless you have a set of rapid radios at the ready.
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When the world goes quiet, make sure you don't.
Sometimes all you can do is laugh and they do a lot of it with the Sunday hang. Join Clay and Buck as they laugh it up in the Clay and Buck podcast feed on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Chapter 8: How does Taylor Swift compare to cultural icons like the Beatles?
I made the top ten.
So there's that. That makes sense.
Carol, congratulations on all the success of the podcast, and people should go check out The Carol Markowitz Show. Now, hard turn here because we're about to get into something pretty intense, but it's important. We had the second in less than two weeks, maybe 10 days apart or something.
transgender mass shooting someone killing their members of their own family let's there was the one in british columbia up in canada and now there's one that just happened in rhode island this guy in rhode island was clearly the most if you were drawing a picture or if you were trying to create in a laboratory somebody who was manifestly insane it would be this guy
And the fact that this guy was not considered to be a serious mental health case that needed immediate attention long before this goes to there's just a complete unwillingness to see reality when it comes to this transgender stuff now.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And look, you know, I'm reading this great book, Manufacturing Delusion. You may have heard of it, but the whole thing is, I mean, it really is so good. And it's so right for this moment because it's the same question going on with the transgender debate.
It's like, are you going to tell the truth or are you going to have to parrot the line that we were told to parrot, which is that there's nothing wrong or wrong. or odd or different about declaring yourself transgender and that there is no mental health component.
I think that's absolutely ridiculous, especially when we're talking about young people, because we've seen the fact that it's such a social contagion. The number of gay people has not gone up basically in our lifetime, but the number of trans people has spiked. It is this brainwashing thing that is happening across our culture. And it seems like people are waking up to it.
But right as they're waking up to it, the number of violent incidents involving the transgender community have really spiked. And I think it is because they're constantly being told that they're under attack. This shooter in Rhode Island, he was on Twitter and he said that
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