July 4, 2024 • 33 mins
The best of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show Hour 1.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you for listening. This is the best of with
Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This is the area in the polls where I think
Biden has the greatest weakness, the biggest differential in terms
of a top issue, who would you support Trump or Biden?
Immigration is the achilles heel on policy, at least of
this Biden administration. Some of you might just argue time
(00:28):
and age are Biden's achilles heel. But the bigger challenge here,
I think for Democrats across the board, because this effects
also the perception of Democrats that are running in congressional races.
Immigration is a disaster in or Biden, far worse by
the numbers than it was under Obama in his first
four years, not even close. Actually Obama was just beginning
(00:51):
to break the dam. Biden has completed that work. This though,
I thought was particularly interesting. One thing you have, who
is it that does the great work for Fox newsplay
who's always down at the bordersion? I think it was
Bill Malugian who shared out immigrants outside of San Diego
(01:13):
illegals crossing from this was on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I still have to call it.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I know we're supposed to call it x but that's
twitter to me, India, the illegals coming from India, Yemen,
all over Asia, Mexico and beyond. So, like I've been saying,
it's one hundred and sixty countries that illegals have. Basically,
illegals are coming from everywhere except Western Europe pretty much.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
That's how That's one way that you could say it.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I mean, so maybe a few very small, like wealthy
emirate kind of places in the Middle East, Western Europe.
I mean, they're not They're not coming from Japan. I mean,
there are a few wealthy countries they're not coming from.
But they're coming from everywhere else, and they're going to
continue to pile into the country.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
That's not going to change. I thought this was really interesting.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Clay CBS faced the nation, which is still supposed to
be what people who don't actually want to learn or
know anything about politics but want to pretend they're informed.
Apparently they tune in to watch the show and not
of the numbers they used to.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
The CBS host had this poll.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
She seemed distressed by this that sixty two percent, sixty
two percent of respondents want illegals deported. This has cut
five plays.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Sixty two percent of Americans favored deporting all undocumented immigrants.
So Homeland Security says that President Biden has already deported
or repatriated more people in the past year than any
year since twenty ten. And then, depending on the details
of what's talked about on the campaign trail, some of
what mister Trump talks about could be illegal. It doesn't
(02:53):
seem practical in some sense to round up children. And
then we know that the courts have questioned whether where
local authorities would have the ability to do it, and
federal authorities don't have the resources. So what exactly do
people think they're supporting.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
We are in a different era in which a lot
of folks say the system as.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
A whole is not working. No, no, no, no, we're
not We're not gonna play that game again. This system
is broken.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
No, people are breaking the law. This would be like saying, hey,
Walmart in San Francisco is going out of business. Our
private property system is not working, Clay, No, people are
stealing from it. We need to stop them from stealing
from it. Actually, it's not that the private property system
isn't working, it's that people are violating and breaking the
laws of that system. That's what's happening with our immigration laws.
(03:42):
I also think it's interesting this is the only time
I've ever heard somebody who's a Democrat, clearly Margaret Brennan Democrat.
This is the only time I've heard them say the
federal government doesn't have the resources too.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Oh okay.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
The federal government, according to Democrats, has the resources to
take care of everyone's health care, to pay for you know,
eight all over the world, to pay for the Ukrainian
war against We have money for everything except enforcing our
borders and deporting people who come here. That's that's quite
a quaint. This is going to be if Trump wins, Clay,
(04:15):
I'll just put this out there, the single biggest this
will be the Donnybrook, if you will, of the Trump administration.
Does he keep this promise. I'm gonna tell you right now,
if he doesn't keep the promise on deportations, you're gonna
get a moderate Trump presidency and lots of photos of
Kim Kardashian in the Oval office.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I'm just telling you.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Well, I think the problem is gonna be he's only
got four years and they know it. That's why they
let ten million people in. Because they're gonna bog him
down in the courts. The minute he starts trying to
enforce his his relocation, his his his his huge amount
of deportations that would have to occur, they're gonna sue
(04:57):
and they're gonna try and bog him down and keep
him from doing it. That's the reality, and that's why
it's not a four year solution. And I think a
lot of people out there need to understand this. Trump
is great. I hope Trump wins in twenty twenty four.
Democrats are thinking decades. They're thinking long into the future
(05:17):
when they're letting these ten million people in because you
know it's gonna happen. A lot of them are gonna
get married, and they're gonna have kids, and then their
kids are citizens, and the opportunity to remove all of
these illegal immigrants is going to get more challenging the
longer they stay in the country.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And they know it.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
And to your point, think about where we are. If
you go to New York City right now, it's difficult
to get a hotel room because they have given, with
your tax dollars, so many migrants the opportunity to stay
in three and four star hotels that it's hard to
find a hotel to stay in in New York City
(05:57):
right now during.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
The summer, twenty percent of hotels are for illegals. Twenty
person about how twenty five? Think about how much that.
Imagine if where you are, in your town or your city,
the housing market got twenty percent tighter. Guess what home
prices would go up a lot. Oh, and there's also
the reality of how many illegals are actually taking jobs
in this country, and how many illegals are getting houses
(06:18):
in this country, renting houses particularly. You don't hear a
lot about that, but that's another factor that's making cost
of living more expensive for those who are already here.
But Clay, I wouldn't let truck. I wouldn't let it
off so quickly with the you know it's the court. Yeah,
you're absolutely right. The courts are going to try to
stop him. You'll have Ninth Circuit judges who do universal injunctions.
(06:38):
Trump just needs to say no. He's going to say,
you don't you know, you don't have the authority for
a universe.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
You can't.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Actually this is executive authority. And then the Supreme Court
has to step in and you don't have to get
all the illegals out. But if you show everybody that
you can get a million out in the first year,
you know what changes all the people coming? And then
sure people, you can get a million out the second year,
you know what changes all the people coming.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
I mean, otherwise, why is Trump promising to do this?
Speaker 5 (07:04):
Well, I think it's the right choice, and it is
the right decision, and Stephen Miller is going to work
I've at twenty hours a day if he gets the
opportunity to do this, and it is one hundred percent
of the right choice. I just want people to understand
this doesn't get solved in four years. The Democrats are
trying to plan so that in twenty forty five, when
(07:24):
they allow all these people to suddenly become citizens and vote,
that your vote is diluted in many of these places.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Fortunately, we will all be dead from climate change then,
so I'm not worried about it.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
I would also add this, because we're history nerds. Has
any country ever been more welcoming of people breaking its
law than the United States is right now? Is there
any precedent historically for ten million illegal people coming into
(07:56):
this country and being put in three and four star hotels?
That's paid for or with your tax dollars and my
tax dollars. Has this ever happened now? It also is
not unique to the United States. We should mention this
many different European countries, they just had their votes. Many
different European countries, including France, Italy, Spain, have moved very
(08:20):
far to the right because just as here we are saying, hey,
this is fundamentally changing the way that this country is organized,
just as we are dealing with this, many people in
Europe are raising the same issues because they have much
smaller populations, they're much less wealthy countries. One of your
stats that I Love You gave on the show was
(08:42):
England would be a poorer state than Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Perfectly, it would be the fifty first wealthiest state in
the United States. Had tip David Harsani for his book
Eurotrash for that state for that stat.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Which is pretty remarkable because I think a lot of
people think of England as a very wealthy country.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
And posh, no, actually poorer than Mississippi. And we love
the Mississippi. You're not throwing shade a Mississippi, but you
don't think of Mississippi is fancy and pash and rich,
richer than the fresh.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
But so their standard of living is lower than ours
on average, and their quality of life is being impacted
in a major way by illegal immigration there. And it's
a pinprick of the numbers that we're getting here.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Clay I, when I was in the government, I had
meetings with the security services in Sweden back in I
don't know the like two thousand and eight time frame,
and when I saw the numbers of how many, particularly Iraqi,
but many Middle Eastern refugees they were bringing in. I
just remember sitting there looking at these guys, like, you're
(09:43):
changing your country. You understand that, right, Like you can't
take a million when you only have ten or fifteen
million people. Yeah, and you take in a million people
from another country at once where you know, a few countries, Syria, Iraq,
they were a handful of them. You were dramatically changing
the polity, like the political union, the political entity that
you live in. They are finding this out now the
(10:04):
hard way. Oh, you know, we'll just like everyone will
learn the language and we'll all get along. And no,
that's actually not what happens, especially when you take in
so assimilation. Assimilation is based in the requirement that the
new arrivals figure out how to be productive and work
within the existing system and adapt to the existing system.
(10:24):
If you bring in millions, if you bring in millions
at once, here's a stat for everybody. They won't tell
you this in other places. I think the Irish from
you know, my great grandparents on one side were Irish
immigrants to Brooklyn. Right, potato, straight up potato famine, no potatoes.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
They had problems.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
I think from eighteen forty to nineteen twenty there were
four million Irish immigrants that came to America in almost
a century. Yeah, yeah, okay, eighty years four million Irish. Now,
I know the population you know was lesser them, but
still it's eighty years, four million. We've taken in ten
million from all over the world who don't speak English
(11:06):
in four years.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
This is unprecedented. The people who say, look at the
poem on the statue of.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Liberty are morons. They are lying to you. This has
never been done before. A third of the people who
came here during those big waves of migration, you know,
when America was a signing a shining city in a hill,
went back home because there was no welfare, because there
was no system to just a hard life. Stuff read
a hard life. Go see what it was like for
(11:34):
Italians and Jews and Irish in the tenement Museum on
the Lower East Side. They were burying family members, including
their children, like stacks of wood during typhoid outbreaks, and
nobody cared. They were living eight to a room. Nobody cared.
They were drinking filthy water. There was no four star
hotel and free meals paid for by the taxpayer, culturally appropriate.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Meals for wherever you are from all over the world.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
What's happening now is nothing like the immigration that this
country dealt with before. First of all, because that was legal.
We were saying, come, we will bring you in come
through our ports of entry. So that's the huge difference.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
But just also the scope and scale of.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
It and the realities of the immigrants once they were
here is entirely different.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
And this is why you have all these libs. I mean,
they're the worst people in America, whether.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
They're you know, hosting you know, CBS Morning show or
whatever that thing was, you know, Clay. They send their
kids to schools that are ninety five percent upper middle
class white kids. They go to the Hamptons or Nantucket
on the weekends. They live in entirely white enclaves of
different cities or you know, coastal areas, and the only
interaction they have with the llegals is to pay people
(12:47):
off the books, often to do menial labor or work
for them. And the people who are actually trying to
make a living as welders, as truck drivers, as you know, nurses,
as they have to and then they have to deal
with this influx of all these illegals into their schools,
into their communities, into their emergency rooms. And the people
(13:07):
that watch you have the CBS Morning Show, they turn
their nose about them. How racist of you? Do not
want hoardes millions and millions of people to break our
laws and come here illegally. That's why I thought the
Martha's Vineyard flight was absolutely perfect, amazing When Desanta sent
whatever it was, fifty one people to Martha's Vineyard and
they declared an emergency and deported all those people almost
(13:30):
immediately out of Martha's Vineyard.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
That's all it took. And I mean we talked to
Greg Abbott about this last week.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
We could just remember they were like, no, no, we're
so excited they're here. Make sure they got on the
military transport to get out of here.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
They try to declare the national emergency.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
And then people were walking around Martha's vineyard because they
have all those you know, those little window signs where
it says we welcome all people of all. You know,
it's like, except actual legal immigrants on our island.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
They've got to go, and they've got to go immediately.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
What do they say, We don't have anywhere to keep them.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 5 (14:06):
The super richest, whitest place on the planet just about
gets illegal immigrants, which everybody's supportive of fifty of them,
and the entire island falls apart because it's impossible to
actually be able to house and take care of them there.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
You know that.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I will say there are some there are some Democrats
who are like that. They're the true left wing vanguard,
and they want to push massive rezoning of the of
the suburbs so that you can no longer have these
rich suburb rich suburban areas of cities where all the
nice schools are and everything else. They're going to work
to make sure that there's a lot of low income
(14:44):
housing built there and the other point is to specify
that federal dollars have to go toward the building of
low income housing Section eight housing housing where illegal immigrants,
for example, are going to congregate in not just generally
in suburbs, in wealthy suburbs, because that's where the great
schools are, in the great services, and it bubbles up
(15:06):
from time to time, and the Democrats just try to
just try to, you know, smother it with a pillow
as fast as they can, because if you, if you know,
you look at someone like like Margaret Brennan on the
CBS show whatever, she lives her entire life surrounded by
you know, rich people go to the same kinds of
schools and everything else. And then when somebody who's you know,
(15:27):
when when a young man who's black or Hispanic, who's
an American is saying, you know, I can't make the
kind of wages I need to the job market's not
gonna marry, she says, well, don't blame the illegals.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
That would be racist.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
I always remember this, Georgetown still doesn't have a metro stop.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
They always say it's because of like the earth can
handle it or something.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
But I think the neighborhood, they think can handle it.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
That's what they didn't want. Yeah, the earth can't handle it.
There's no way to get a subway, you know what
I mean, like the land there's some problem with I guess.
I mean, I've made that walk a lot from GWU
up to Georgetown where it's the only place you can't
ride the subway in and all of DC. They couldn't
have put it above ground. Oh, it's really interesting how
the richest people managed to avoid the subway.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Coming out to.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Him, you're listening to the best of Clay Travis and
Buck Sex.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
Join now by the host of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe.
He has done a phenomenal job, writer, narrator, producer, Emmy
Award winning best selling author, and that's a lot of
that's a lot of aspects out here.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
Mike.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
We appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 5 (16:31):
And we were talking about it a little bit earlier,
and I was even reading, i think at the Wall
Street Journal recently a story about people who are younger
in their twenties starting to embrace plumbing.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
And hemryting lay away.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, it's how gen z is becoming the tool belt generation.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Are you optimistic, Mike that a lot of people are
maybe stepping into jobs that they didn't foresee twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
People being interested in.
Speaker 6 (16:59):
Well, it's a little early for a victory lap, although
I'd love to take one. We've been at this for
sixteen years now, you know, trying to challenge the idea
that the best path for the most people is the
most expensive path educationally, and also trying to shine a
light on about ten million open positions right now, very
few of which require a four year degree. These jobs
(17:20):
require training, vocational education, trade schools, and so forth. So
it's a bit like pushing a boulder up a hill,
or maybe turning around a tanker, you know, in the
middle of the ocean. Pick your metaphor, but it takes
a long time to challenge those kinds of stigmas and
stereotypes that surround the trades. This article got my attention,
(17:42):
and everybody on my social pages all tapped me on
the shoulder and said, look, this is really encouraging. You know,
it's not what a lot of people expect gen Z
to do, right. This is the generation that is most
often targeted, is lazy, entitled, and spoiled and all this
other stuff. But it's like they got the memo and
(18:05):
they've looked around and they've seen a lot of diplomas
hanging on a lot of walls and concluded quite rightly
that it's not necessarily an indication of what you've learned.
It's an indication of what you paid. It's a receipt
right and one point seven trillion dollars in student loans
is no joke. And gen Z doesn't want any part
of it. They want to learn a skill that's in demand,
(18:27):
and I think that's good news.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Hey, Mike, where do people who are thinking about this?
It's like, how you know, if you're somebody who's let's
say you're eighteen, you're senior in high school and you're
considering it, what are the some of the pathways? I mean,
is it just applying to trade school? There are apprenticeship programs,
and how do people learn more about, for example, what
would be a particularly in demand trade in their area,
(18:50):
or particularly high paying trade in their area, what are
the resources?
Speaker 6 (18:54):
Well, you can't possibly screw up by learning how to weld.
Bolding is like the gateway into the skilled trades. My
foundation has trained hundreds of welders. We've helped a couple
thousand people get the training they need to start whatever
trade they're into. So, to answer your question, microworks dot
(19:15):
org shameless plug all kinds of information on my site,
along with a million dollars right now we're giving away
next month in scholarships for trade schools. But there's so
many ways to go buck, I mean, they're certainly community
colleges and their obvious trade schools all over the place.
A lot of big companies today have their own internal programs.
(19:37):
You know, when we took shop class out of high
school forty years ago, we really kind of unleash the kraken,
you know. That decision removed from view so many vocations,
and so we went through a period where a lot
of millennials didn't even get a look at what work
looked like on that side of the workforce anyway. So
(20:00):
it's been a long road back. But the resources are
all over the place. Companies are falling over themselves to hire,
the opportunities to get training are everywhere. I'm I can't
overstate it. It's been one of the great unreported stories
in my lifetime, the skills gap, ten million open jobs,
(20:20):
all that opportunity sitting around. At the same time, we've
been told you're screwed if you don't get a four
year degree. It's literally the opposite.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
I think that's so important, Mike, because you mentioned the
one point seven trillion dollars in student loan debt. Let's
say there's an eighteen year old who's listening to us
right now, and as options are, I can take out
tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get an
English major, nothing wrong with that degree, which is not
necessarily going to lead me towards being better at any
(20:52):
particular profession. Or I can go start being a plumber
at eighteen or nineteen years old. You're stacking tens of
that thousands of dollars in assets, and you're starting off
when the college kids coming out at twenty two or
twenty three, in tens of thousands of dollars in debt,
you could have tens of thousands of dollars in savings.
How much do you think people are now recognizing that?
(21:15):
And are people still not aware of how much money
there is out there in plumbing or elect doing electrical
work or all these other things you mentioned welding. What
else would you tell people that there is abundant opportunity
n if they'll just go grab it.
Speaker 6 (21:29):
Electricians. Electricians are in super short supply. Plumber, steam fitters, pipefitters,
heating and air conditioning guys. I mean, I can't even
tell you. If you're not making six figures and you're
in that space, you're either just getting started or you're
unwilling to go to where the work is. But even then,
I mean, the work is pretty much everywhere. The trap
(21:51):
clay in your question is really the reason that I'm
not in politics. I can't. I'm sure there are some
eighteen year olds listening right now, but I don't know
who they are. I don't know what their skills are.
I don't know what their attitude is. Right, and so
much of what our elected officials do, and unfortunately, what
(22:13):
guidance counselors do is they paint with a really broad brush,
and you wind up hearing from a lot of people
who have a certain amount of influence that this is
what your kid should do, or this is what you
should do. And I think it's that tendency to talk
in platitudes and paint with a broad brush that's brought
us to the place where we are right now. We're
(22:33):
still a country of individuals and your kid, your eighteen
year old kid might very likely be wired in a
profoundly different way than mine. So I'm kind of stingy
with advice in terms of telling groups of people what
to do. But you can't ignore the big trends. You
can't ignore ten million open positions right now. You can't
(22:54):
ignore You want to hear some really horrible math. The
number that scares me more than one point seven trillion
student loans is five every year for every five tradesmen
who retire to replace them. Now, that's been gone on
for over a decade, and when you start to just
extrapolate that out, what you realize real fast is this
(23:17):
is not just a conversation about companies who are struggling
to recruit talent or kids who are struggling to find
a path to prosperity. This is a conversation about how
long Clay Travis and bucksex and want to wait for
a plumber when they need one, or an electrician. Every
single person listening to this has skin in the game,
(23:38):
because every one of your audience members shares my addiction
to smooth roads and affordable electricity and indoor plumbing and
a long list of other stuff that we've been taking
for granted long before Dirty Jobs went on the air.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
You know, my uncle is a tradesman and a locksmith,
like a skilled locksmith with the specialty stuff for you know, corporations.
And my brother in law is actually a welder. Carrie's
brother is a welder, and one thing I hear from
both of them is they just don't have the time
to do all the jobs that people want them to do,
which is not a thing you often hear from that
MANYFOLI like, there's so many offers to do different work
(24:14):
in different places.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
That they can't get to it all.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
So, Mike, I mean, I'm experiencing that for my own
you know, extended family, what they're seeing out there.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I'm just wondering to what degree.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Also, when you're you know, you're the CEO of Mike
Roworks Foundation, you're encouraging young people to go into this,
but you know, entrepreneurship, small business ownership.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I mean, it's been my experience from.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
People I know, some of who have become very successful
business owners that a lot of them start by working
for a business in the trades.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
And this is this is part of the sort of
the disaster scenario. When we took shop class out, we
also impacted not just the skilled workforce, but the the
entrepreneurial gene. The path to a small business so often
begins with the mastery of a trade. I mentioned welding before,
(25:06):
because you know, I know people who are underwater welders today.
They make three hundred thousand dollars a year. I know
others who are tig welders, you know, who are making
one hundred grand. And I know some who are making
less than that and are basically punching a clock. But
the most interesting cohort are the welders who hired another welder,
(25:28):
or more likely, hired an electrician and some hvac guys
and then bought a couple of vans and started a
mechanical contracting company. Those guys are everywhere, and they are
the engine of our economy, and their success stories aren't
told nearly enough because they start by doing something that
so many parents have come to believe as a vocational
(25:51):
consolation prize. I don't want my kid to be a welder.
The hell you don't, man. I can give you example
after example, just a quick sidebar. I don't know if
you'll remember this but I saw you ten years ago.
I think you were filling in for Beck and you
did a story on one of my favorite stories of
(26:12):
all time. Nobody talks about it today, but it was
a message to Garcia. It was a story about initiative,
and it's a story about work ethic, and it's a
story about the willingness to cheerfully take hold of a
thing and lift. That's part of this conversation too. And
my foundation we award work ethics scholarships because we're not
(26:34):
just looking to fill an existing hole. We're looking to
find people who are willing to show up early, stay late,
take a bite of the crap sandwich, cheerfully, volunteer for
whatever task is at hand that's still for sale, that
still works. And if gen Z is the cohort that
steps up to do that with the tool belt and
(26:55):
a new understanding of what a good job is, God.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
Bless them, Mike. Last question for you. You mentioned parents are grandparents.
How much encouragement do you see from them? And I
know there's a lot of people out there that are
worried their kids are not working hard enough, maybe they're
not making great grades in school, but they do have
that work ethic, and they're trying to find a way.
I think most people have no idea that you can
make six figures doing a lot of these jobs. Do
(27:20):
you think parents and grandparents are making their kids aware
enough of that opportunity as well, or do you think
they've been sold the idea that only success comes from
the pathway of college. You can't do anything else.
Speaker 6 (27:33):
Again, I hate to paint with a broad brush, but
the short answer is yeah, by and large, we have
an idea in our head about what a good job
looks like. And look, most parents also want something better
for their kids than whatever they had. The problem is
what is better? Right? I mean, we get to decide
(27:53):
how much debt is good. We get to decide if work,
for instance, is the proximate cause of our unhappiness. There's
a very popular narrative in this country right now that
says that it is. That's why you'll see support for
Bernie Sanders thirty two hour work week.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Crazy.
Speaker 6 (28:12):
But if you believe in your heart that the reason
you're unhappy is because you're working too much, or if
you believe, like genuinely believe in your heart that you're
going to be happy when you retire, then you've bought
into an existing narrative that is in fact persuasive, And
it's persuasive because it's mirrored constantly in sitcoms and movies
(28:35):
and advertisements. We are surrounded by this idea that work
is the enemy, and that you're a failure if you're
a parent, if you don't get your kid into a
proper school. So yeah, I would say to parents who
believe that you might be right. Maybe your kid is
exactly wired to do all of those things, but you
(28:56):
might be wrong. Put all the options on the table,
have an on conversation about the realities of debt and
the advantage of learning a skill that's in demand. My
final thought is, you know this. I'm holding my cell
phone in my hand right now and I'm looking at
it because that is a liberal arts education and it's free.
(29:17):
All the information I learned when I was in school
in nineteen eighty four is right there. Man, if you're
curious and you really want to learn whatever, whatever floats
your boat, you can watch a lecture on it right
now for free at MIT or Brown or Yale.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
It's all there.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
Learn a skill first, master a trade, go to work,
get rich.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
You're listening to the best of Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Welcome back into.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Clay and Buck.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I wanted to just take a moment here to commemorate
one of the great moments in the history of Western
American cinema. I would say my favorite movie to this
day of all time. Despite all of its flaws, and
(30:11):
I am familiar with all of the flaws, I don't care.
I love it anyway, Clay Braveheart was released twenty nine
years ago this week. I cannot believe it has been
almost thirty years since Braveheart came out. It is a
great historical epic, although for history I think you'd probably
(30:32):
have to give it a c. It's a Scottish movie,
almost entirely filmed in Ireland, where people in the thirteenth
century are dressed like they're in the eighteenth century. There's
a lot of stuff with it that does but I
don't care. I love it anyway. Is it one of
your favorites? Do you celebrate it?
Speaker 5 (30:52):
What?
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Do you think?
Speaker 5 (30:53):
It's fantastic? And you know the history on this better
than me. If they had gotten all the history right,
would the movie have been worse. It frustrates me when
the historical accuracy would not actually fundamentally alter the movie itself,
and they still screw it up. So would the movie
(31:14):
still have been good if they had gotten everything historically accurate,
or at least within the bounds of historical accuracy, right,
I mean, I the only the only quibble that I
really have is I think they could have done. I've
seen the actual site because I've been to the Wallace Monument,
because obviously I'm a weirdo for this stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
You want to talk, you know, when we went to Scotland.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yeah, when I was in Scotland with Carry, I was like, honey,
we're going to the William Wallace Monument, which I think
is just full of Americans. By the way, I think
all the Americans who go to Scotland are like, hey,
w William Wallace Monument.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
And so we showed up there.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
But you can see from the top of it the
actual site of a wall of Sterling Castle, which is
an amazing uh historical site itself, and then Sterling Bridge
where it would.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
Have been a bend in the river and.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
They ambushed the forces of Edward the longshanks Edward the
second There it was not as it was shown in
the movie, which was kind of like a cavalry charge
and all the rest of it.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
But Clay, to.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Your point, it is so awesome. I don't care. And
there are some movies where the Rock is absurd and
there are huge holes in the movie The Rock with
Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage, but I don't care because
it's so awesome.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
I thought you were going to tell me when you
started that prelude that you were celebrating the fortieth anniversary
of Roadhouse being released, because.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Did you see that story?
Speaker 5 (32:36):
No, I think yesterday was the fortieth anniversary of the
release of the Patrick Swayze epic Roadhouse, and I legitimately,
as you were running through your description, I thought always
gonna be telling me about Roadhouse.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
This is all about Roadhouse, another very entertaining movie that
maybe is objectively absurd, but still great, and so I
would put it in that category.
Speaker 5 (32:59):
Also just remains eight uh set with Jake Gillenhall, if
I remember correctly, down in Key West
Speaker 3 (33:05):
As you can't you can't remake a classic like that
one
Thank you for listening. This is the best of with
Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This is the area in the polls where I think
Biden has the greatest weakness, the biggest differential in terms
of a top issue, who would you support Trump or Biden?
Immigration is the achilles heel on policy, at least of
this Biden administration. Some of you might just argue time
(00:28):
and age are Biden's achilles heel. But the bigger challenge here,
I think for Democrats across the board, because this effects
also the perception of Democrats that are running in congressional races.
Immigration is a disaster in or Biden, far worse by
the numbers than it was under Obama in his first
four years, not even close. Actually Obama was just beginning
(00:51):
to break the dam. Biden has completed that work. This though,
I thought was particularly interesting. One thing you have, who
is it that does the great work for Fox newsplay
who's always down at the bordersion? I think it was
Bill Malugian who shared out immigrants outside of San Diego
(01:13):
illegals crossing from this was on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I still have to call it.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I know we're supposed to call it x but that's
twitter to me, India, the illegals coming from India, Yemen,
all over Asia, Mexico and beyond. So, like I've been saying,
it's one hundred and sixty countries that illegals have. Basically,
illegals are coming from everywhere except Western Europe pretty much.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
That's how That's one way that you could say it.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I mean, so maybe a few very small, like wealthy
emirate kind of places in the Middle East, Western Europe.
I mean, they're not They're not coming from Japan. I mean,
there are a few wealthy countries they're not coming from.
But they're coming from everywhere else, and they're going to
continue to pile into the country.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
That's not going to change. I thought this was really interesting.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Clay CBS faced the nation, which is still supposed to
be what people who don't actually want to learn or
know anything about politics but want to pretend they're informed.
Apparently they tune in to watch the show and not
of the numbers they used to.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
The CBS host had this poll.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
She seemed distressed by this that sixty two percent, sixty
two percent of respondents want illegals deported. This has cut
five plays.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Sixty two percent of Americans favored deporting all undocumented immigrants.
So Homeland Security says that President Biden has already deported
or repatriated more people in the past year than any
year since twenty ten. And then, depending on the details
of what's talked about on the campaign trail, some of
what mister Trump talks about could be illegal. It doesn't
(02:53):
seem practical in some sense to round up children. And
then we know that the courts have questioned whether where
local authorities would have the ability to do it, and
federal authorities don't have the resources. So what exactly do
people think they're supporting.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
We are in a different era in which a lot
of folks say the system as.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
A whole is not working. No, no, no, no, we're
not We're not gonna play that game again. This system
is broken.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
No, people are breaking the law. This would be like saying, hey,
Walmart in San Francisco is going out of business. Our
private property system is not working, Clay, No, people are
stealing from it. We need to stop them from stealing
from it. Actually, it's not that the private property system
isn't working, it's that people are violating and breaking the
laws of that system. That's what's happening with our immigration laws.
(03:42):
I also think it's interesting this is the only time
I've ever heard somebody who's a Democrat, clearly Margaret Brennan Democrat.
This is the only time I've heard them say the
federal government doesn't have the resources too.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Oh okay.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
The federal government, according to Democrats, has the resources to
take care of everyone's health care, to pay for you know,
eight all over the world, to pay for the Ukrainian
war against We have money for everything except enforcing our
borders and deporting people who come here. That's that's quite
a quaint. This is going to be if Trump wins, Clay,
(04:15):
I'll just put this out there, the single biggest this
will be the Donnybrook, if you will, of the Trump administration.
Does he keep this promise. I'm gonna tell you right now,
if he doesn't keep the promise on deportations, you're gonna
get a moderate Trump presidency and lots of photos of
Kim Kardashian in the Oval office.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I'm just telling you.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Well, I think the problem is gonna be he's only
got four years and they know it. That's why they
let ten million people in. Because they're gonna bog him
down in the courts. The minute he starts trying to
enforce his his relocation, his his his his huge amount
of deportations that would have to occur, they're gonna sue
(04:57):
and they're gonna try and bog him down and keep
him from doing it. That's the reality, and that's why
it's not a four year solution. And I think a
lot of people out there need to understand this. Trump
is great. I hope Trump wins in twenty twenty four.
Democrats are thinking decades. They're thinking long into the future
(05:17):
when they're letting these ten million people in because you
know it's gonna happen. A lot of them are gonna
get married, and they're gonna have kids, and then their
kids are citizens, and the opportunity to remove all of
these illegal immigrants is going to get more challenging the
longer they stay in the country.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And they know it.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
And to your point, think about where we are. If
you go to New York City right now, it's difficult
to get a hotel room because they have given, with
your tax dollars, so many migrants the opportunity to stay
in three and four star hotels that it's hard to
find a hotel to stay in in New York City
(05:57):
right now during.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
The summer, twenty percent of hotels are for illegals. Twenty
person about how twenty five? Think about how much that.
Imagine if where you are, in your town or your city,
the housing market got twenty percent tighter. Guess what home
prices would go up a lot. Oh, and there's also
the reality of how many illegals are actually taking jobs
in this country, and how many illegals are getting houses
(06:18):
in this country, renting houses particularly. You don't hear a
lot about that, but that's another factor that's making cost
of living more expensive for those who are already here.
But Clay, I wouldn't let truck. I wouldn't let it
off so quickly with the you know it's the court. Yeah,
you're absolutely right. The courts are going to try to
stop him. You'll have Ninth Circuit judges who do universal injunctions.
(06:38):
Trump just needs to say no. He's going to say,
you don't you know, you don't have the authority for
a universe.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
You can't.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Actually this is executive authority. And then the Supreme Court
has to step in and you don't have to get
all the illegals out. But if you show everybody that
you can get a million out in the first year,
you know what changes all the people coming? And then
sure people, you can get a million out the second year,
you know what changes all the people coming.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
I mean, otherwise, why is Trump promising to do this?
Speaker 5 (07:04):
Well, I think it's the right choice, and it is
the right decision, and Stephen Miller is going to work
I've at twenty hours a day if he gets the
opportunity to do this, and it is one hundred percent
of the right choice. I just want people to understand
this doesn't get solved in four years. The Democrats are
trying to plan so that in twenty forty five, when
(07:24):
they allow all these people to suddenly become citizens and vote,
that your vote is diluted in many of these places.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Fortunately, we will all be dead from climate change then,
so I'm not worried about it.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
I would also add this, because we're history nerds. Has
any country ever been more welcoming of people breaking its
law than the United States is right now? Is there
any precedent historically for ten million illegal people coming into
(07:56):
this country and being put in three and four star hotels?
That's paid for or with your tax dollars and my
tax dollars. Has this ever happened now? It also is
not unique to the United States. We should mention this
many different European countries, they just had their votes. Many
different European countries, including France, Italy, Spain, have moved very
(08:20):
far to the right because just as here we are saying, hey,
this is fundamentally changing the way that this country is organized,
just as we are dealing with this, many people in
Europe are raising the same issues because they have much
smaller populations, they're much less wealthy countries. One of your
stats that I Love You gave on the show was
(08:42):
England would be a poorer state than Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Perfectly, it would be the fifty first wealthiest state in
the United States. Had tip David Harsani for his book
Eurotrash for that state for that stat.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Which is pretty remarkable because I think a lot of
people think of England as a very wealthy country.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
And posh, no, actually poorer than Mississippi. And we love
the Mississippi. You're not throwing shade a Mississippi, but you
don't think of Mississippi is fancy and pash and rich,
richer than the fresh.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
But so their standard of living is lower than ours
on average, and their quality of life is being impacted
in a major way by illegal immigration there. And it's
a pinprick of the numbers that we're getting here.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Clay I, when I was in the government, I had
meetings with the security services in Sweden back in I
don't know the like two thousand and eight time frame,
and when I saw the numbers of how many, particularly Iraqi,
but many Middle Eastern refugees they were bringing in. I
just remember sitting there looking at these guys, like, you're
(09:43):
changing your country. You understand that, right, Like you can't
take a million when you only have ten or fifteen
million people. Yeah, and you take in a million people
from another country at once where you know, a few countries, Syria, Iraq,
they were a handful of them. You were dramatically changing
the polity, like the political union, the political entity that
you live in. They are finding this out now the
(10:04):
hard way. Oh, you know, we'll just like everyone will
learn the language and we'll all get along. And no,
that's actually not what happens, especially when you take in
so assimilation. Assimilation is based in the requirement that the
new arrivals figure out how to be productive and work
within the existing system and adapt to the existing system.
(10:24):
If you bring in millions, if you bring in millions
at once, here's a stat for everybody. They won't tell
you this in other places. I think the Irish from
you know, my great grandparents on one side were Irish
immigrants to Brooklyn. Right, potato, straight up potato famine, no potatoes.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
They had problems.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
I think from eighteen forty to nineteen twenty there were
four million Irish immigrants that came to America in almost
a century. Yeah, yeah, okay, eighty years four million Irish. Now,
I know the population you know was lesser them, but
still it's eighty years, four million. We've taken in ten
million from all over the world who don't speak English
(11:06):
in four years.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
This is unprecedented. The people who say, look at the
poem on the statue of.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Liberty are morons. They are lying to you. This has
never been done before. A third of the people who
came here during those big waves of migration, you know,
when America was a signing a shining city in a hill,
went back home because there was no welfare, because there
was no system to just a hard life. Stuff read
a hard life. Go see what it was like for
(11:34):
Italians and Jews and Irish in the tenement Museum on
the Lower East Side. They were burying family members, including
their children, like stacks of wood during typhoid outbreaks, and
nobody cared. They were living eight to a room. Nobody cared.
They were drinking filthy water. There was no four star
hotel and free meals paid for by the taxpayer, culturally appropriate.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Meals for wherever you are from all over the world.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
What's happening now is nothing like the immigration that this
country dealt with before. First of all, because that was legal.
We were saying, come, we will bring you in come
through our ports of entry. So that's the huge difference.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
But just also the scope and scale of.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
It and the realities of the immigrants once they were
here is entirely different.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
And this is why you have all these libs. I mean,
they're the worst people in America, whether.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
They're you know, hosting you know, CBS Morning show or
whatever that thing was, you know, Clay. They send their
kids to schools that are ninety five percent upper middle
class white kids. They go to the Hamptons or Nantucket
on the weekends. They live in entirely white enclaves of
different cities or you know, coastal areas, and the only
interaction they have with the llegals is to pay people
(12:47):
off the books, often to do menial labor or work
for them. And the people who are actually trying to
make a living as welders, as truck drivers, as you know, nurses,
as they have to and then they have to deal
with this influx of all these illegals into their schools,
into their communities, into their emergency rooms. And the people
(13:07):
that watch you have the CBS Morning Show, they turn
their nose about them. How racist of you? Do not
want hoardes millions and millions of people to break our
laws and come here illegally. That's why I thought the
Martha's Vineyard flight was absolutely perfect, amazing When Desanta sent
whatever it was, fifty one people to Martha's Vineyard and
they declared an emergency and deported all those people almost
(13:30):
immediately out of Martha's Vineyard.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
That's all it took. And I mean we talked to
Greg Abbott about this last week.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
We could just remember they were like, no, no, we're
so excited they're here. Make sure they got on the
military transport to get out of here.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
They try to declare the national emergency.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
And then people were walking around Martha's vineyard because they
have all those you know, those little window signs where
it says we welcome all people of all. You know,
it's like, except actual legal immigrants on our island.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
They've got to go, and they've got to go immediately.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
What do they say, We don't have anywhere to keep them.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 5 (14:06):
The super richest, whitest place on the planet just about
gets illegal immigrants, which everybody's supportive of fifty of them,
and the entire island falls apart because it's impossible to
actually be able to house and take care of them there.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
You know that.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I will say there are some there are some Democrats
who are like that. They're the true left wing vanguard,
and they want to push massive rezoning of the of
the suburbs so that you can no longer have these
rich suburb rich suburban areas of cities where all the
nice schools are and everything else. They're going to work
to make sure that there's a lot of low income
(14:44):
housing built there and the other point is to specify
that federal dollars have to go toward the building of
low income housing Section eight housing housing where illegal immigrants,
for example, are going to congregate in not just generally
in suburbs, in wealthy suburbs, because that's where the great
schools are, in the great services, and it bubbles up
(15:06):
from time to time, and the Democrats just try to
just try to, you know, smother it with a pillow
as fast as they can, because if you, if you know,
you look at someone like like Margaret Brennan on the
CBS show whatever, she lives her entire life surrounded by
you know, rich people go to the same kinds of
schools and everything else. And then when somebody who's you know,
(15:27):
when when a young man who's black or Hispanic, who's
an American is saying, you know, I can't make the
kind of wages I need to the job market's not
gonna marry, she says, well, don't blame the illegals.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
That would be racist.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
I always remember this, Georgetown still doesn't have a metro stop.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
They always say it's because of like the earth can
handle it or something.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
But I think the neighborhood, they think can handle it.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
That's what they didn't want. Yeah, the earth can't handle it.
There's no way to get a subway, you know what
I mean, like the land there's some problem with I guess.
I mean, I've made that walk a lot from GWU
up to Georgetown where it's the only place you can't
ride the subway in and all of DC. They couldn't
have put it above ground. Oh, it's really interesting how
the richest people managed to avoid the subway.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Coming out to.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Him, you're listening to the best of Clay Travis and
Buck Sex.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
Join now by the host of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe.
He has done a phenomenal job, writer, narrator, producer, Emmy
Award winning best selling author, and that's a lot of
that's a lot of aspects out here.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
Mike.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
We appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 5 (16:31):
And we were talking about it a little bit earlier,
and I was even reading, i think at the Wall
Street Journal recently a story about people who are younger
in their twenties starting to embrace plumbing.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
And hemryting lay away.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, it's how gen z is becoming the tool belt generation.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Are you optimistic, Mike that a lot of people are
maybe stepping into jobs that they didn't foresee twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
People being interested in.
Speaker 6 (16:59):
Well, it's a little early for a victory lap, although
I'd love to take one. We've been at this for
sixteen years now, you know, trying to challenge the idea
that the best path for the most people is the
most expensive path educationally, and also trying to shine a
light on about ten million open positions right now, very
few of which require a four year degree. These jobs
(17:20):
require training, vocational education, trade schools, and so forth. So
it's a bit like pushing a boulder up a hill,
or maybe turning around a tanker, you know, in the
middle of the ocean. Pick your metaphor, but it takes
a long time to challenge those kinds of stigmas and
stereotypes that surround the trades. This article got my attention,
(17:42):
and everybody on my social pages all tapped me on
the shoulder and said, look, this is really encouraging. You know,
it's not what a lot of people expect gen Z
to do, right. This is the generation that is most
often targeted, is lazy, entitled, and spoiled and all this
other stuff. But it's like they got the memo and
(18:05):
they've looked around and they've seen a lot of diplomas
hanging on a lot of walls and concluded quite rightly
that it's not necessarily an indication of what you've learned.
It's an indication of what you paid. It's a receipt
right and one point seven trillion dollars in student loans
is no joke. And gen Z doesn't want any part
of it. They want to learn a skill that's in demand,
(18:27):
and I think that's good news.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Hey, Mike, where do people who are thinking about this?
It's like, how you know, if you're somebody who's let's
say you're eighteen, you're senior in high school and you're
considering it, what are the some of the pathways? I mean,
is it just applying to trade school? There are apprenticeship programs,
and how do people learn more about, for example, what
would be a particularly in demand trade in their area,
(18:50):
or particularly high paying trade in their area, what are
the resources?
Speaker 6 (18:54):
Well, you can't possibly screw up by learning how to weld.
Bolding is like the gateway into the skilled trades. My
foundation has trained hundreds of welders. We've helped a couple
thousand people get the training they need to start whatever
trade they're into. So, to answer your question, microworks dot
(19:15):
org shameless plug all kinds of information on my site,
along with a million dollars right now we're giving away
next month in scholarships for trade schools. But there's so
many ways to go buck, I mean, they're certainly community
colleges and their obvious trade schools all over the place.
A lot of big companies today have their own internal programs.
(19:37):
You know, when we took shop class out of high
school forty years ago, we really kind of unleash the kraken,
you know. That decision removed from view so many vocations,
and so we went through a period where a lot
of millennials didn't even get a look at what work
looked like on that side of the workforce anyway. So
(20:00):
it's been a long road back. But the resources are
all over the place. Companies are falling over themselves to hire,
the opportunities to get training are everywhere. I'm I can't
overstate it. It's been one of the great unreported stories
in my lifetime, the skills gap, ten million open jobs,
(20:20):
all that opportunity sitting around. At the same time, we've
been told you're screwed if you don't get a four
year degree. It's literally the opposite.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
I think that's so important, Mike, because you mentioned the
one point seven trillion dollars in student loan debt. Let's
say there's an eighteen year old who's listening to us
right now, and as options are, I can take out
tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get an
English major, nothing wrong with that degree, which is not
necessarily going to lead me towards being better at any
(20:52):
particular profession. Or I can go start being a plumber
at eighteen or nineteen years old. You're stacking tens of
that thousands of dollars in assets, and you're starting off
when the college kids coming out at twenty two or
twenty three, in tens of thousands of dollars in debt,
you could have tens of thousands of dollars in savings.
How much do you think people are now recognizing that?
(21:15):
And are people still not aware of how much money
there is out there in plumbing or elect doing electrical
work or all these other things you mentioned welding. What
else would you tell people that there is abundant opportunity
n if they'll just go grab it.
Speaker 6 (21:29):
Electricians. Electricians are in super short supply. Plumber, steam fitters, pipefitters,
heating and air conditioning guys. I mean, I can't even
tell you. If you're not making six figures and you're
in that space, you're either just getting started or you're
unwilling to go to where the work is. But even then,
I mean, the work is pretty much everywhere. The trap
(21:51):
clay in your question is really the reason that I'm
not in politics. I can't. I'm sure there are some
eighteen year olds listening right now, but I don't know
who they are. I don't know what their skills are.
I don't know what their attitude is. Right, and so
much of what our elected officials do, and unfortunately, what
(22:13):
guidance counselors do is they paint with a really broad brush,
and you wind up hearing from a lot of people
who have a certain amount of influence that this is
what your kid should do, or this is what you
should do. And I think it's that tendency to talk
in platitudes and paint with a broad brush that's brought
us to the place where we are right now. We're
(22:33):
still a country of individuals and your kid, your eighteen
year old kid might very likely be wired in a
profoundly different way than mine. So I'm kind of stingy
with advice in terms of telling groups of people what
to do. But you can't ignore the big trends. You
can't ignore ten million open positions right now. You can't
(22:54):
ignore You want to hear some really horrible math. The
number that scares me more than one point seven trillion
student loans is five every year for every five tradesmen
who retire to replace them. Now, that's been gone on
for over a decade, and when you start to just
extrapolate that out, what you realize real fast is this
(23:17):
is not just a conversation about companies who are struggling
to recruit talent or kids who are struggling to find
a path to prosperity. This is a conversation about how
long Clay Travis and bucksex and want to wait for
a plumber when they need one, or an electrician. Every
single person listening to this has skin in the game,
(23:38):
because every one of your audience members shares my addiction
to smooth roads and affordable electricity and indoor plumbing and
a long list of other stuff that we've been taking
for granted long before Dirty Jobs went on the air.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
You know, my uncle is a tradesman and a locksmith,
like a skilled locksmith with the specialty stuff for you know, corporations.
And my brother in law is actually a welder. Carrie's
brother is a welder, and one thing I hear from
both of them is they just don't have the time
to do all the jobs that people want them to do,
which is not a thing you often hear from that
MANYFOLI like, there's so many offers to do different work
(24:14):
in different places.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
That they can't get to it all.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
So, Mike, I mean, I'm experiencing that for my own
you know, extended family, what they're seeing out there.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I'm just wondering to what degree.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Also, when you're you know, you're the CEO of Mike
Roworks Foundation, you're encouraging young people to go into this,
but you know, entrepreneurship, small business ownership.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I mean, it's been my experience from.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
People I know, some of who have become very successful
business owners that a lot of them start by working
for a business in the trades.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
And this is this is part of the sort of
the disaster scenario. When we took shop class out, we
also impacted not just the skilled workforce, but the the
entrepreneurial gene. The path to a small business so often
begins with the mastery of a trade. I mentioned welding before,
(25:06):
because you know, I know people who are underwater welders today.
They make three hundred thousand dollars a year. I know
others who are tig welders, you know, who are making
one hundred grand. And I know some who are making
less than that and are basically punching a clock. But
the most interesting cohort are the welders who hired another welder,
(25:28):
or more likely, hired an electrician and some hvac guys
and then bought a couple of vans and started a
mechanical contracting company. Those guys are everywhere, and they are
the engine of our economy, and their success stories aren't
told nearly enough because they start by doing something that
so many parents have come to believe as a vocational
(25:51):
consolation prize. I don't want my kid to be a welder.
The hell you don't, man. I can give you example
after example, just a quick sidebar. I don't know if
you'll remember this but I saw you ten years ago.
I think you were filling in for Beck and you
did a story on one of my favorite stories of
(26:12):
all time. Nobody talks about it today, but it was
a message to Garcia. It was a story about initiative,
and it's a story about work ethic, and it's a
story about the willingness to cheerfully take hold of a
thing and lift. That's part of this conversation too. And
my foundation we award work ethics scholarships because we're not
(26:34):
just looking to fill an existing hole. We're looking to
find people who are willing to show up early, stay late,
take a bite of the crap sandwich, cheerfully, volunteer for
whatever task is at hand that's still for sale, that
still works. And if gen Z is the cohort that
steps up to do that with the tool belt and
(26:55):
a new understanding of what a good job is, God.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
Bless them, Mike. Last question for you. You mentioned parents are grandparents.
How much encouragement do you see from them? And I
know there's a lot of people out there that are
worried their kids are not working hard enough, maybe they're
not making great grades in school, but they do have
that work ethic, and they're trying to find a way.
I think most people have no idea that you can
make six figures doing a lot of these jobs. Do
(27:20):
you think parents and grandparents are making their kids aware
enough of that opportunity as well, or do you think
they've been sold the idea that only success comes from
the pathway of college. You can't do anything else.
Speaker 6 (27:33):
Again, I hate to paint with a broad brush, but
the short answer is yeah, by and large, we have
an idea in our head about what a good job
looks like. And look, most parents also want something better
for their kids than whatever they had. The problem is
what is better? Right? I mean, we get to decide
(27:53):
how much debt is good. We get to decide if work,
for instance, is the proximate cause of our unhappiness. There's
a very popular narrative in this country right now that
says that it is. That's why you'll see support for
Bernie Sanders thirty two hour work week.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Crazy.
Speaker 6 (28:12):
But if you believe in your heart that the reason
you're unhappy is because you're working too much, or if
you believe, like genuinely believe in your heart that you're
going to be happy when you retire, then you've bought
into an existing narrative that is in fact persuasive, And
it's persuasive because it's mirrored constantly in sitcoms and movies
(28:35):
and advertisements. We are surrounded by this idea that work
is the enemy, and that you're a failure if you're
a parent, if you don't get your kid into a
proper school. So yeah, I would say to parents who
believe that you might be right. Maybe your kid is
exactly wired to do all of those things, but you
(28:56):
might be wrong. Put all the options on the table,
have an on conversation about the realities of debt and
the advantage of learning a skill that's in demand. My
final thought is, you know this. I'm holding my cell
phone in my hand right now and I'm looking at
it because that is a liberal arts education and it's free.
(29:17):
All the information I learned when I was in school
in nineteen eighty four is right there. Man, if you're
curious and you really want to learn whatever, whatever floats
your boat, you can watch a lecture on it right
now for free at MIT or Brown or Yale.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
It's all there.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
Learn a skill first, master a trade, go to work,
get rich.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
You're listening to the best of Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Welcome back into.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Clay and Buck.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I wanted to just take a moment here to commemorate
one of the great moments in the history of Western
American cinema. I would say my favorite movie to this
day of all time. Despite all of its flaws, and
(30:11):
I am familiar with all of the flaws, I don't care.
I love it anyway, Clay Braveheart was released twenty nine
years ago this week. I cannot believe it has been
almost thirty years since Braveheart came out. It is a
great historical epic, although for history I think you'd probably
(30:32):
have to give it a c. It's a Scottish movie,
almost entirely filmed in Ireland, where people in the thirteenth
century are dressed like they're in the eighteenth century. There's
a lot of stuff with it that does but I
don't care. I love it anyway. Is it one of
your favorites? Do you celebrate it?
Speaker 5 (30:52):
What?
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Do you think?
Speaker 5 (30:53):
It's fantastic? And you know the history on this better
than me. If they had gotten all the history right,
would the movie have been worse. It frustrates me when
the historical accuracy would not actually fundamentally alter the movie itself,
and they still screw it up. So would the movie
(31:14):
still have been good if they had gotten everything historically accurate,
or at least within the bounds of historical accuracy, right,
I mean, I the only the only quibble that I
really have is I think they could have done. I've
seen the actual site because I've been to the Wallace Monument,
because obviously I'm a weirdo for this stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
You want to talk, you know, when we went to Scotland.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yeah, when I was in Scotland with Carry, I was like, honey,
we're going to the William Wallace Monument, which I think
is just full of Americans. By the way, I think
all the Americans who go to Scotland are like, hey,
w William Wallace Monument.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
And so we showed up there.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
But you can see from the top of it the
actual site of a wall of Sterling Castle, which is
an amazing uh historical site itself, and then Sterling Bridge
where it would.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
Have been a bend in the river and.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
They ambushed the forces of Edward the longshanks Edward the
second There it was not as it was shown in
the movie, which was kind of like a cavalry charge
and all the rest of it.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
But Clay, to.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Your point, it is so awesome. I don't care. And
there are some movies where the Rock is absurd and
there are huge holes in the movie The Rock with
Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage, but I don't care because
it's so awesome.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
I thought you were going to tell me when you
started that prelude that you were celebrating the fortieth anniversary
of Roadhouse being released, because.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Did you see that story?
Speaker 5 (32:36):
No, I think yesterday was the fortieth anniversary of the
release of the Patrick Swayze epic Roadhouse, and I legitimately,
as you were running through your description, I thought always
gonna be telling me about Roadhouse.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
This is all about Roadhouse, another very entertaining movie that
maybe is objectively absurd, but still great, and so I
would put it in that category.
Speaker 5 (32:59):
Also just remains eight uh set with Jake Gillenhall, if
I remember correctly, down in Key West
Speaker 3 (33:05):
As you can't you can't remake a classic like that
one
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