Hour 1 - Weekend at Ayatollah's
3/16/202637 mincomplete
0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.
0:02Guaranteed human. Welcome, everybody, to the Monday edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton
0:08show. Iran, Iran, Iran. Very much the center of the news and information space right
0:17now. People focused in on a whole range of aspects of the campaign in Iran.
0:24We're not calling it a war.
0:26It is ongoing strikes, overseas kinetic activity, kind of like a war.
0:32But we are seeing now concerns over the Strait of Hormuz rising.
0:40We had Carg Island was hit over the weekend by us, where they refined the
0:50oil. And we didn't hit the oil infrastructure.
0:52We're hitting military targets is the latest on this.
0:55But showing that we can hit that island if we choose to do so.
1:00Trump is speaking about the mission set here, talking about what the plan is.
1:05People are asking more and more questions about this.
1:08The oil price is something that you're going to be watching in the days ahead.
1:13And it is likely to go up considerably as you have a major bottleneck at
1:18the Strait of Hormuz because ships do not want to enter.
1:24Nobody wants to be the first oil tanker to get blown to smithereens by Iranian
1:28missiles, drones. They have a whole bunch of stuff.
1:32Clay, I believe at the narrowest, the Strait of Hormuz is three miles across.
1:39That is a puddle for the purposes of military targeting and technology of today.
1:47I mean, that couldn't be any easier.
1:48There's no, oh, we're going to, you know, back in the day, in the age
1:52of wooden ships and sail, maybe you could try to make a run for it
1:56across a three -month. No.
1:58So there's a lot of concern over this one.
2:00The energy secretary talking about short -term price disruption.
2:05Trump saying the mission is getting more and more accomplished.
2:07But we'll also, there were the Oscars last night.
2:09We'll just make fun of them because it was really sad.
2:11The Oscars, sad. Did you watch any of the Oscars at all?
2:16The last 10 minutes because Kerry wanted to.
2:18The last 10 minutes, yes, to see what.
2:20I'm going to be honest.
2:21I did not watch a single moment.
2:24I don't even think I've seen hardly a clip.
2:26I watched the World Baseball Classic, which was fantastic, but I didn't even watch a
2:31single minute. I haven't seen anything.
2:33We will get into that stuff later because I know many of you will start
2:36groaning, rightfully so, if we talk Oscars instead of Iran because this is actually important.
2:40The Oscars is only worth talking about because it is so clearly unimportant now.
2:44It's pretty funny. All right, let's look at where we are with this.
2:46First of all, Clay, straight of Wormuz, Caroline Levitt spoke out about where the administration
2:51is on this one. This is cut one from the White House.
2:55Listen to where things stand.
2:56Yes, the president is speaking with our allies in Europe and also many of our
3:01partners in the Gulf and Arab world to encourage them to step up, to do
3:06more, to open the Strait of Hormuz.
3:10And our NATO allies especially need to step up.
3:13Look, President Trump has been very frank with our friends in NATO for a very
3:16long time. He got them to increase their defense spending up to 5 percent.
3:21And now he's calling on them to do the right thing because, again, the United
3:24States of America is leading the way not just to support and protect our American
3:29assets and bases in the Middle East, but also to defend Europe in the Middle
3:33East and the rest of the world from the rogue Iranian regime from obtaining a
3:38nuclear bomb. Clay, the anti -Trump media very happy with, so far, places like Germany
3:45putting out very clear statements, saying things like, this is not our war.
3:49We did not start it.
3:50We are not getting involved in it.
3:53Trump administration still trying to get more allies outside of the immediate allies in the
3:58region on board. How do you think this is going?
4:00I mean, we're starting to get into how do you think this is going territory
4:03and how long is this going to keep going?
4:06I think it's gone incredibly well, and I understand people out there.
4:11I finished my book in North Africa, which I encourage everybody to read.
4:17I encourage more history reading.
4:20I had a lot of time here.
4:21I read the Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson, huge biography over the weekend.
4:26So I've just been basically reading down here in Florida.
4:31And I think there is an expectation that military attacks cost no lives and are
4:41immediately successful, or you're going to now attack people for being involved in them.
4:47And look, we've lost 13 lives.
4:50I wish that there had not been any loss of life at all.
4:53But I think relative to what we have accomplished, that is a cost that I
5:00think if the United States had been modeling this, they would have said, hey, we
5:05expect for Iran to be more successful than they have been in terms of implementing
5:10casualties. And again, that doesn't mean that you want or don't think casualties are significant.
5:15It's just in all of this buck, you model out what we did in Iraq.
5:20There were thousands and thousands of casualties of a very significant nature.
5:24And I would argue we had a pinprick of the immediate success that we have
5:30seen here. I actually think that if necessary, we should say we talked about this
5:35and then we saw the attacks on the Karge Island.
5:38We talked about this on Friday.
5:40I actually think putting boots on the ground on Karge Island and letting Iran know
5:46we now control all of your oil is not an awful choice.
5:50And I understand some people out there get nervous about this, but I don't think
5:55Iran has any ability to strike back really against us.
5:59I think if you look at what we have done in terms of interdicting the
6:05drones and the missiles that Iran has has been able to fire, we're down 90
6:11or 95 percent in their capability.
6:13They have just been firing them scattershot.
6:16There's been very limited success rates.
6:19And if you think that the way Iran responded to this doesn't make you think
6:24even more, boy, I'm glad they don't have nuclear weapons because they've been so haphazard
6:29and so reckless in the way that they've used the weaponry that they do have.
6:33I actually think if you had to give a grade and I know we're still
6:38in the early days of this a couple of weeks in a I suspect and
6:44I suspect that this has always been the plan, Buck, that the expectation was they
6:48would be done before President Trump went to China.
6:52And I still feel like that is likely to be the case.
6:56And so Iran knows now that we can strike them at any point in time,
7:01that we can kill anybody in their country that we decide to.
7:04There are now stories coming out that nobody has any idea where Mojtaba Khamenei is.
7:09He may be gay. You threw it in there pretty fast.
7:14I thought you were going to you were going to really make a thing of
7:17this because we're now at the place where he may not be alive.
7:21And Trump was apparently briefed on Mojtaba was considered to be a bad leader to
7:32follow up for Khamenei by his dad, by his own father.
7:36And it is believed that Mojtaba is gay.
7:40Yes, not not that there's anything wrong with that.
7:43But in Iran, that that could be an issue.
7:46Now, to be fair, this is also probably successful intelligence propaganda, even if it were
7:53not true, because I would imagine most Iranians who are religious do not want a
7:58gay Ayatollah. Just tossing it out there doesn't seem to me like Iran is a
8:04very progressive country when it comes to gay rights.
8:07I'll just I think that's a fair assessment.
8:09Their robes may get much more fashionable.
8:13They you know what I'm saying?
8:14There could be some upside here.
8:15This is a great point.
8:17Like we could have a rainbow Iranian, you know, burqa.
8:25That would be glorious. The decor of the Tehran palace probably going to get a
8:31whole lot nicer. Music, music probably going to improve.
8:34I'm just going to say I'm just saying there's going to there's some real upside
8:38here that Mojtaba's detractors may not see.
8:42That would just be very possible, depending on whether or not this this rumor is
8:47is true. But back to the realities here of the Iran conflict.
8:54I think that this is going to drag.
8:56I believe that this will be over before April Fool's.
9:00That's my sense right now.
9:01So I think it'll be this month and this month only.
9:04And what's going to happen is Trump is going to wake up.
9:07We're going to find a way.
9:09The biggest challenge I think right now is to get ships going back to the
9:12Strait of Hormuz. And as much as we've decimated the infrastructure of the Iranian military,
9:20you don't need to have much.
9:21An oil tanker across a choke point like this is not a hard thing to
9:26hit for any military outfit.
9:29So once we get the boats flowing through again, I think Trump's going to wake
9:35up and say, OK, we taught them a lesson, mission accomplished.
9:38We'll talk to them at some point in the future about when they're willing to
9:41be a normal country. And that'll be that.
9:43I think that's where this is most likely heading.
9:46You've noticed you're hearing nothing about some spontaneous uprising, some opposition taking over.
9:52Regime change is not even in the discussion really right now.
9:55It's just not. I'm not seeing anything about it, not hearing anything about it.
9:59Yeah. And again, this is the question we've asked.
10:01And I do think it's a significant one.
10:03Leave aside the fact that the gay Ayatollah may be in charge.
10:07Um, I think there's a real question about whether he's alive.
10:12And I would continue to echo the questions that we asked last week, which is
10:17to what extent are they using him as a figurehead to try to protect other
10:22people who may be actually making decisions in Iran?
10:24Trump's talking about it right now.
10:26Let's go to him live for a few minutes.
10:27You can hear from the president himself.
10:29Go live. Go to it.
10:30A wonderful group of very, very smart, talented patriots at this table.
10:38Our powerful military campaign to end the threats posed by the Iranian regime continued in
10:46full force over the past few days.
10:49They have been literally. obliterated the air force is gone the navy is gone uh
10:58many many ships have been sunk they're war fighting ships but i guess they didn't
11:03know how to use them and uh anti -aircraft is decimated their radar is gone
11:10and their leaders are gone other than that they're doing quite well they've been a
11:16terror for 47 years and now i guess the world through the united states with
11:25the help of israel is uh is doing what should have been done many years
11:31ago should have been done many years ago since the beginning of the conflict we've
11:36struck more than 7 000 targets across iran and these have been mostly commercial and
11:44military targets we've achieved a 90 reduction in their ballistic missile launches and a 95
11:52reduction in drone attacks the missiles are trickling in now at very low levels because
12:01they don't have too many missiles left we've also attacked the manufacturing plants where the
12:09places where they manufacture the missiles and the drones and that's going on today we
12:14just hit three of them today and it's getting very hard for them to manufacture
12:20more than 100 iranian naval vessels have been sunk or destroyed over the last week
12:27and a half that has to be some kind of a record additional strikes continue
12:32to launch from all directions every single hour and as you know we attacked cog
12:39island and knocked it knocked it literally destroyed everything on the island except for the
12:45area where the oil is i call it the pipes we left the pipes we
12:51didn't want to do that but that we will do that we can do that
12:54on five minutes notice it'll be over but for purposes of someday rebuilding that country
13:03i guess we did the right thing but it's uh it may not stay that
13:07way just one simple word and the pipes will be gone too but it'll take
13:11a long time to rebuild that we are aggressively dismantling a rent defense industrial base
13:18and ability to rebuild its missiles and drone capability is getting down to close to
13:24zero and we're hammering their capacity to threaten commercial shipping in the strait of hormos
13:31with more than 30 mine laying ships destroyed we hit to the best of our
13:38knowledge all of their mine laying ships now they can put them on other types
13:41of ships i guess and drop them in but we don't know that any have
13:44even been dropped in we're not sure that any have been that's a big negative
13:48for them if they do it it's a form of suicide but uh we don't
13:53know that they have dropped any in but we've uh we've hit all 30 of
13:58their ships and destroyed them they're all at the bottom of the sea we strongly
14:03encourage other nations whose economies depend on the strait far more than ours you know
14:08we get less than one percent of our oil from the strait and uh some
14:14countries get much more japan gets 95 percent china gets 90 percent many of the
14:19europeans get quite a quite a bit south korea gets 35 percent so we want
14:26them to come and help us with the strait uh we have it in very
14:31good shape the countries i said we've already taken care of iran but now uh
14:36because of the fact that literally a a single terrorist can put something in the
14:41water or shoot something or shoot a missile a small missile and it's fairly close
14:45range because it is a tight area and which is one of the reasons you
14:50know they've always used that as a weapon iran has always used that as an
14:55economic weapon and we're going to come back here in a second to bring you
15:00the highlights of what trump is saying but you notice they're straight of whore moves
15:03that is that is the focal point that is what we're looking at for today
15:07imagine this scenario and how frustrating it is you have a tax refund coming from
15:12the irs you get your paperwork on time you file your return weeks later you
15:15get a letter from the irs stating they've already received your return and sent the
15:20refund how is that possible well because cyber hackers are stealing info and illegally filing
15:24returns with your name but their ad but their address to get the refund ahead
15:28of you every year irs can expect as many as a million tax returns are
15:33filed by cyber criminals this year is no different if you're the victim of identity
15:36theft it's up to you to prove that to the irs so it's really important
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16:1540 off terms apply you ain't imagining it The world has gone insane.
16:22Reclaim your sanity with Clay and Buck.
16:25Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
16:30Welcome back in. Clay, Travis, Buck, Sexton's show.
16:34President Trump addressing the media right now.
16:37We'll continue to keep updates on that.
16:39In the meantime, President Trump has also just posted this.
16:43Susie Wiles, the chief of staff of the White House, and the person who led
16:48President Trump's campaign in 2024, I'm reading from President Trump's post, has been diagnosed with
16:55early -stage breast cancer, has decided to take on this challenge immediately.
17:01She has a fantastic medical team.
17:03Her prognosis is excellent during the treatment.
17:05She will be spending virtually full time at the White House, and he says that
17:12that is an incredible testament to her and tells you everything you need to know
17:15about her. Susie is one of my closest and most important advisors, tough and deeply
17:20committed to serving the American people.
17:22She will soon be better than ever.
17:24Melania and I are with her in every way.
17:26Look forward to working with her on many big and wonderful things happening for the
17:30benefit of the country. But I do think this is significant, Buck, because, I mean,
17:35first of all, everybody should be praying for Susie Wiles as she is dealing with
17:40breast cancer. I would imagine it's going to be very difficult for her to keep
17:44up the same schedule because, in general, the White House schedules are incredibly difficult in
17:51terms of hours and stress.
17:54And for those of you who have ever gone through any form of chemotherapy, you
17:57know what that takes away from you.
18:00And so we will keep you updated on that, but certainly she's in our prayers.
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18:53Eriehome .com slash clay. I think that this conflict will certainly come to the end
18:57in the next few weeks.
18:59Could be sooner than that, but the conflict will come to the end in the
19:01next few weeks, and we'll see a rebound in supplies and a pushing down of
19:06prices after that. But yes, we were very aware that we would have short -term
19:10disruption. We would cause a little bit of increased prices on Americans.
19:14Prices today are still far below what they were in the Biden administration, where they
19:18were begging, bartering, and bribing Iran to behave better.
19:23We had $5 gasoline in the middle of the Biden administration.
19:26We hope we don't get there this time, but at least this increase in gasoline
19:30prices is for something that's going to change the geopolitical situation in the world forever.
19:37So there you have Energy Secretary Chris Wright laying out a few things.
19:42One, the timeline that the White House, Trump himself, has been hammering, and I just
19:47said that I think that that's probably going to be the timeline, which is a
19:52few weeks from now. I think it's going to be two weeks or less.
19:56We'll see. But there's an artificial disruption in supply that is happening right now because
20:01of that. Energy Secretary sounds like he's confident that supply will come back online, prices
20:07will start to drop from there.
20:08That is certainly the hope, and I think that that is very possible.
20:14Clay, the question that we look at now, though, is what exactly the end state
20:24here is supposed to look like?
20:26It's starting to feel more and more like the destruction of Iran's military and then
20:35just walking away and saying, we can do that again if we want to, is
20:40the goal here. There is not really much talk of regime change.
20:44John Fetterman, the senator, weighed in on this one and the state of things in
20:49Iran. This is cut three.
20:51Listen to Senator Fetterman. I largely agree with what the president said, that Iran has
20:56essentially been defeated. And why don't the Western medias just demand that Iran provide proof
21:04of life of the Ayatollah?
21:06Because I think the Iranians are doing kind of like a weekend at Ayatollah's and
21:12they're trying to pretend this guy is functional or even alive at this point.
21:16And I think we just call them out and realize that they're a nation that's
21:19been effectively defeated and they don't have any leadership.
21:23They're unwilling to even provide proof to refute that.
21:27Overall, I think it's entirely appropriate to remind the world that if you want their
21:32oil, you know, you need to help us to reopen the straits.
21:37Weekend at Ayatollah, as he says, Clay.
21:39Maybe he's a listener. We need to, at Producer Alley, do we have an invite
21:43recently that we've given to John Fetterman?
21:46I don't know if we have.
21:47We should. extend one uh to him as well to come on the program because
21:51he's making a lot of sense and the most recent data that i've seen buck
21:55says that fetterman now is more popular with republicans in pennsylvania than he is with
22:02democrats uh so we should definitely reach out to him producer ali will and invite
22:07him on the program um as you were hearing president trump buck uh you're talking
22:12about like what are the long -range goals he said that based on the numbers
22:16we have seen a 95 reduction in iran's drone attacks and a 90 reduction in
22:24their missile attacks and he said quote they don't have many missiles left at this
22:30point and so essentially they are wiped out and i think the question is who
22:36is their leader um we said earlier that there were reports there's actually been two
22:40reports one is that the uh mojtaba had to go to europe for months to
22:50be treated for impotence so that he could have children just leaving it here for
22:56a moment now they're saying that he was gay is it possible that the impotence
23:02just was with the women uh my point on this is i think more and
23:09more there is a likelihood that he is unable to be leader and that they
23:15are just using him as a figurehead now buck i don't know if you saw
23:19this there's even some reports that he's not in iran that he is potentially in
23:24russia that he may be in china that he may be in a different country
23:30right now and that iran is using him as a figurehead we still have not
23:34heard his voice we haven't seen any video from him at all they released a
23:39statement they showed up for a celebratory uh raising ascension i guess of him to
23:46the leadership of iran and danced around with a cardboard cutout of him none of
23:51these things inspire confidence that he is okay and i wonder again you used to
23:56do all this analysis i'm sure there's how many people do you think are working
24:00in the cia right now on whether little mo is still alive like if a
24:06thousand like how many people are looking at every single aspect of evidence out there
24:12and writing up reports on this how big would that group be right now you
24:16think i mean it's i don't say it's thousands a lot it's a lot of
24:19people that are going to be pouring over all of the different collection that the
24:23intel agencies have access to to try to figure this out uh but again even
24:29if he's let's say he's dead okay so what so then what right it is
24:35that the next step still is not clear we don't have an opposition that looks
24:41like they're willing to take over and we haven't heard about any so -called moderate
24:45from within the existing governance uh infrastructure of iran that could maybe be a more
24:53moderate future for the country so i just feel like we're we're gonna we're taking
24:58away all the ayatollah's toys are blowing up all their stuff we are killing thousands
25:02of their soldiers in this process i might add people don't really talk about that
25:05but there are there are people on these ships there are people operating these trucks
25:09and these man pads and such so we are we are just to know when
25:14people say it's not really war we're blowing up thousands of their soldiers this is
25:17a war let's let's always make sure that we have that obligation to speak truthfully
25:23about this stuff it's not a boots on the ground all in war but it's
25:27a war uh if somebody was doing this to us we would certainly think of
25:30it as a war so we're in a in a short -term war with iran
25:34a conflict and and i think that we're gonna like i said trump is going
25:40to wake up one day and look at the look at the numbers and the
25:44charts and everything else and say all right we've we've punished them enough now let's
25:49see if they want to be more reasonable going forward i will add i don't
25:54think they will be more reasonable going forward this is the other part of this
25:57right this is this is an intractable problem it's like dealing with north korea everything
26:01that you would think would work on a country that has even the most baseline
26:08reason morality all these kinds of things if you look at it from the perspective
26:11of well of course they should do that because we would do that no it's
26:15not how they do things it's certainly not how they do things in iran and
26:18from a leadership perspective and uh you know i think everyone should just gauge their
26:23expectations with this in mind there's no opposition faction that has emerged we're not seeing
26:29any protests on the streets or anything like that at all and yeah i think
26:34trump's going to wrap this up we're going to say their military is essentially gone
26:37and we'll see what he will say and i mean this like a quote trump
26:40will be like we'll see what happens that's going to be where this ends i
26:45look the message that we have sent to iran is first of all we got
26:48to figure out who the leader is and i think it's not a surprise that
26:52they don't want us to know who the leader is because they're aware that we
26:55could kill whoever the leader is and we have established that that is the fact
26:59um i think one of the challenges going forward for iran will be they now
27:04know that we can take out their leadership whenever we want and so how do
27:09you stand up in any way to uh to anyone uh to anyone in the
27:14united states or even Israel with that knowledge.
27:17I'll also point this out.
27:19There are reports, and I think this is super significant, and it has not been
27:23talked about enough. There are reports that Saudi Arabia's leader is calling President Trump and
27:30saying, keep hitting them. This is MBS.
27:34He is the leader, 43, 44 -year -old, relatively young leader of Saudi Arabia, the
27:40crown prince there, who has effectively taken on the power.
27:43This is not a United States and Israel against the Middle East war.
27:48The Middle Eastern powers, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, the ones that actually have developed
27:55and functional economies, they're all saying, hit Iran.
28:00What I think is going to be the legacy that comes out of this is,
28:04with Iran neutered, with Iran without any significant weaponry, I think the UAE, Bahrain, all
28:13of these different places, including Saudi Arabia, Buck, are going to sign on, Saudi Arabia
28:18in particular, who has not done it yet, to the Abraham Accords, and we're going
28:22to see a level of peace start to emerge in the Middle East that, frankly,
28:26we haven't seen in generations.
28:28And that peace is not going to be based on Arab versus Jew.
28:32It's going to be based on countries that want to have functional, growing economies and
28:38countries that don't. The real part that I think has to be galling to Iran
28:43is, if you study Middle Eastern history, Iran was one of the economic powers of
28:49this region for hundreds of years.
28:52Now they've been overwhelmingly surpassed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the UAE, certainly Israel.
29:00And if you're a proud, educated member of Iran's, you know, middle class, which is
29:07fairly substantial, don't you have to look around and ask what you've gotten for the
29:13last 47 years? Do you feel like, hey, life is better now than it was
29:17before the Islamic Republic came into power?
29:19The one thing they sold, Buck, was we are a military power and we can
29:24punch above our weight. And they just got completely defanged in almost no time at
29:29all. What have you actually gotten that's positive after 47 years?
29:33This is one of the very sad but true things about authoritarian regimes and why
29:39they're so intractable. They can rely on the phobia of the population, the extreme fear
29:48of the population. Who wants to be the person, Clay, from the Iranian educated classes,
29:54you know, not part of the government infrastructure, who ends up the first one dangling
30:00from a crane by their neck in the neighborhood?
30:03It's very tough. Yeah. People have families, people want to live, they don't want to
30:08die. And, you know, you're thinking about this, where does this go?
30:12This was one of the huge problems we had in Afghanistan, was even the Afghans
30:16who were brave enough, and there were many of them to fight alongside Americans at
30:20different times against the Taliban.
30:23They were like, you guys, you guys aren't going to leave us at some point.
30:26You have our back, right?
30:27And then what do we do?
30:27You're going to stay and you're going to, you're going to make sure that this,
30:30we're in this fight till the end, right?
30:32Yeah. You can imagine with the Iranians right now, okay, we're blowing up the military.
30:37There's still a lot of bad guys with AK -47s and probably, you know, scimitars
30:41or something like it, machetes walking around the neighborhood.
30:44And this is, what are we offering on that?
30:47And the answer is, not a whole heck of a lot.
30:50So I don't see this changing, this on -the -ground reality changing in any meaningful
30:54way, which just means that we're in a little bit of, like I said, the
30:57mow the grass phenomenon with the Iranian military.
31:00We're going to blow up all their stuff.
31:01And now whatever they do also, if when they get enough stuff back, meaning military
31:06capability or even just paramilitary capability, terrorist capability, essentially, if they decide to hit us,
31:12they'll be like, well, yeah, you guys blew up all of our ships and all
31:14of our stuff. And, you know, you can see how this is going to go,
31:17right? We're not, we're not in a place where you, I like, you are more
31:22optimistic about the long -term prospects here than I, I'm very optimistic about Venezuela and
31:26have it all along to be clear.
31:27Very optimistic. I think it was the right move, a great move.
31:31Iran, I'm still sitting here like, I want to see what the, I think I
31:34know what the end state is and we can go back and play this in
31:37a few weeks. It's going to be Trump saying, all right, we destroyed their military.
31:40We showed them what's up.
31:42Maybe we'll talk in the future.
31:43That's it. I think that's where this is heading.
31:46I don't see it heading some other way.
31:48I think it's one, yeah, this is an interesting conversation.
31:51I'm optimistic only in the sense of it's one thing for Israel to do well.
31:56It's another thing for the United States to do well.
31:58A lot of times it's when people who are similar to you that start doing
32:03well, where you really start to question the decision -making that you have embraced, right?
32:09It's one thing if Elon Musk gets richer.
32:12It's another thing if a guy you went to school with is suddenly a billionaire
32:15and you're looking around saying, wait a minute, what did he do?
32:17We haven't made the same grades, everything else.
32:20Iran's neighborhood, the Middle East, a lot of these countries are thriving.
32:23Yeah, they used to look down on Saudi Arabia.
32:26They used to look down on Qatar.
32:27They used to look down on Bahrain, all these countries, and they used to think,
32:32hey, those guys are backwoods.
32:35And now all those countries are thriving.
32:37The people are rich. They're building huge, incredible edifices all over those countries.
32:43And meanwhile, Iran keeps falling further behind.
32:46And I do wonder how much looking at your neighbors and how much success they're
32:50going to have makes the antagonism and the anger more prevalent in Iran.
32:54That's one of the things that I just keep coming back to.
32:56It's one thing, again, U .S., Israel, they've already been always been richer.
32:59But now what about the people used to be better than?
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34:31Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
34:33Telling it like it is.
34:35Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
34:40Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show.
34:42We are rolling through the Monday edition of the program.
34:46I was, it will play a couple of cuts.
34:49I haven't honestly hardly seen anything from the Oscars, but I did, when I saw
34:53this story about, uh, the argument that Mojtava Khamenei is gay, I definitely started thinking
35:03there's HBO is going to make a gay Ayatollah show.
35:07And it's, it's going to be like as a serious, as a serious show or
35:12as a, oh yes, no, it's like a serious show.
35:15I could see like HBO.
35:16I mean, somebody should do like a mock -up of like a funny version of
35:20this, like the gay Ayatollah, which probably wouldn't be called the gay Ayatollah, but I
35:24could a hundred percent see them doing a story from like inside of Iran.
35:31And although they, the Muslims might be willing to kill them for doing it.
35:34So maybe that would be the reason that they don't do it.
35:36Uh, but it definitely feels like a spin on, uh, We got a caller who
35:41wants to real quick, wants to weigh in on this one.
35:44Uh, which one is it?
35:45Justin in New Jersey, go for it.
35:47Yeah. Clam bucks. So I got two quick ones for you.
35:50Uh, first, of course, they're hiding the Ayatollah.
35:54I mean, the Democrats hit Joe Biden for four years.
35:57So that's not surprising. And second, Clay, you have a layup right here.
36:02How are you not calling it the gay Ayatollah?
36:04It's right on the silver platter for you.
36:06It's good. I'm going to take it.
36:08The gay Ayatollah. And again, there's nothing wrong with being gay.
36:11Um, probably a little bit being wrong with, uh, being the leader of Iran and
36:16being gay in the minds of the Iranians.
36:18I welcome considering that they'll execute gays in Iran as part of the regime.
36:22It would be a little bit of a weird deal for the actual guy in
36:26charge of all that to be gay.
36:28That is indeed. So, uh, hopefully the gay Ayatollah is, uh, is doing well.
36:33Um, and, uh, we will continue to break down the latest on Iran.
36:38President Trump, you know, I know for sure, by the way, you know, you know,
36:41for sure the Ayatollahs do not have a good sense of humor.
36:46These are not, these are not funny guys that much.
36:48I can assure you. Yes, that is very much.
36:50So this is an I heart podcast guaranteed human.