Hour 1 - The Great GOP Postmortem

Clay Travis (0:00)

Welcome in Clay and Buck Monday edition of the program. I hope all of you had fantastic weekends. We are here to take you into another week. Basically, it is a circular firing squad of blame as the fallout from Tuesday's disastrous midterms for Republicans continues. We've got a Chinese spy scandal surrounding Nvidia and Jensen Wong. We have President Trump sitting for a 60 Minutes interview. Dave Chappelle, comedian with a joke, not really even a joke, just an insult about Charlie Kirk's assassination. And Stephen Miller, as we told you at the close of Friday's show, is going to begin officially today his tenure as the new Chief of Staff of the White House. So many different angles out there to discuss. Buck, I think the biggest story by far though is a continued analysis of why did Democrats win, Republicans lose. And I spent some time over the weekend just looking at the raw numbers. This was the second highest turnout in the midterm elections in 100 years. The highest turnout was 2018 in the first midterm of President Trump. Here's the deal. Republicans just didn't show up, like in the same numbers as Democrats. And we can get into all of the analysis of why that is. But in 2018, in the midway point of the first Trump term, there were Democrat successes, but nowhere near what happened in the midterms here. And I went back and I think I shared some of this on Friday, but just looked at the number of votes, for instance, that Texas Governor Greg Abbott got in 2018 and in 2022

And Buck, he got 100,000 more votes in 2026 than he got in 2022

He won by 10 points in 2022 These are all midterms that the Texas Governor cycle is on. So it's never the presidential cycle. And yet the Democrat turnout was just through the charts, off the charts. And by the way, it wasn't as high though as 2018

So what happened in 2018 was Republican enthusiasm helped to rebut the blue wave. In 2026, Republican voters did not show up, and Democrats did. And sometimes it's as simple as there was an enthusiasm gap, and we were not able to even produce the same turnout that we got in 2018, to say nothing of the number of people who stayed home who voted in 2024

Buck Sexton (3:07)

Look, this was also addressed by President Trump in a pretty lengthy, I watched the whole thing, 60 Minutes interview with Ross Dalfit. And credit to Ross, I actually thought he did a really good job in the interview. Clay and I would both attest to the fact that Trump is a great interview, but a complicated interview because he weaves, right? He goes all over the place, and he will steamroll an interviewer, even an interviewer trying to be respectful if you're not able to move with him very quickly. He covers a lot of ground. I thought Ross did a good job, and they did cover a lot of ground. One of the things that came out, Clay, in that interview was the president just straight up saying, yeah, it was Iran and people upset about the gas.

So we can stop with this like, but it was really tariffs. No, Trump voters did not stay home because of tariffs. That's not what happened. Now, when I say that's not what happened, well, there are some, sure, of course. But if you're trying to identify the core reason for the worst wipeout really since Watergate, I mean, if we're actually look at where this happened, a generational smackdown, if you will, in a midterm election, it's now you can say you love the Iran war decision, you would do it. Trump also said he would do it again, to be fair to what he was discussing there.

But he has now claimed, JD has now claimed, Iran played a very large role in this debacle for us, and now we have to climb out of this. So people, to your point about the crash out, those who were shouting at others, how dare you say this is Iran, it's everything but Iran, that is coping, that is not true. Now maybe Iran was still worth it, the president said he would totally do it again. That's a valid argument to make. But Iran raised the price of gas, the price of gas pissed people off, they were already annoyed about the high cost of living, and we received, like I said, an absolute electoral repudiation. Now we'll talk about the move forward on all this, but in the meantime, meaning the next steps, Clay, we got a US. Senate and House of Representatives still in Republican hands. They better get to things right quick. They better be moving fast on some of this.