Hour 1 - We Have to Save the Country 

Clay Travis (0:01)

Welcome in to the Friday edition of Clay and Buck. We hope all of you are having a great start to your early weekend, and we want to take you into the weekend. Positive news in the economy, 165,000 jobs reportedly added in October, driving down the overall unemployment rate to 4.1%, which most people will say is close to full employment since, I don't know, the lowest it can possibly go that I've ever seen Buck is in the high threes. So we are down now to 4.1% in October. We will talk a little bit about that, I am sure. But the big story remains the continuing fallout from Tuesday's wipeout from the Democrat Party in favor of the Republican Party. Counting still going on in two Senate races in Mississippi and in Alaska with Democrat candidates holding very small tenuous leads in both of those races.

It is down to a tiny pinprick of voters in both of those places with 54 seats in the Democrat camp. And it remains to be seen if they can take it to 55 and or 56 The fake Dan Sullivan, as we told you may well be the case, is right now the margin in Alaska. The party that claims that they care so much about election integrity has managed to put themselves in position to potentially steal a Senate seat in Alaska by getting voters, 3,600 of them, at least so far, to be confused when it comes to that overall voting. But what I would say is what we told you would likely be the case, which is almost immediately true, the midterms happen, verdict is rendered, even though it was a stomping. The turn to 2028 has already occurred. There have been reports that have been shouted down that Marco Rubio is thinking about stepping down as Secretary of State to run for president. So far, that has not been proven true, and Rubio and his team have said that is not true. What is true, Buck, is that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, fresh off the state of Florida, is remaining red, even in potentially the worst electoral environment for Republicans since Watergate.

Fresh off of those results, we have got a super interesting situation that is developing where Ron DeSantis, untethered, because he will soon be out of office in January, is teeing off.

And the latest target for Ron DeSantis was Vivek Ramaswamy, the failed Republican gubernatorial candidate in Ohio. DeSantis, unprompted basically, just took a 2x4 to Vivek. Listen.

Ron DeSantis (3:01)

How bad did they beat Vivek like a drum? Now part of that was Vivek, quite frankly. I don't know why they would have pushed him to be the candidate there. My mom's from Youngstown. Ohio is a working class state, very blue collar. You know, Vivek, he's like a tech guy, did this Alzheimer's drug and he wants to bring in people, foreign worker on visas. That is not the type of person that's going to sell. And I know he shot himself in the foot. I know he did a lot of other stuff to make it a real landslide against him. But even with that, it's like, you know, you've got to meet the voters where they are in some of this stuff. I think we would have done better in Ohio had we had a candidate that was more representative or more in tune with the interests of kind of these blue collar people that make the backbone of Ohio. But they got blown out there.

Clay Travis (3:51)

Okay. Ron is going to run.

We talked yesterday. I'm even more convinced after seeing this clip buck. I'm even more convinced that Ron might be the first guy to actually jump in the race.

Donald Trump (4:04)

I think that's true. It's not stunned me.

Buck Sexton (4:05)

I think that's true. A few things here. First of all, what Ron is doing is showing that he feels unleashed right now, because a lot of people would have quieted.

It gets a little frustrating, because people want to have it both ways. You criticize in a primary a candidate, and you're being unfair, or you're suppressing. You criticize a candidate in general on the Republican side, and you're hurting us, even if you're criticizing the messaging. Not like they're a terrible candidate, but I think they should do this. You're hurting us. Shut up. And then, when we have an absolute disaster, you see a lot of people that say, where were you before? OK, so we can't do the childish thing of having it every way and no way.

Vivek, anybody who listens to this show knows, I thought Vivek was a terrible candidate. OK, I told you to go vote for him. I said go vote for him. It was obvious why he was a terrible candidate. And here's why Ron DeSantis is bringing this up now. It's not petty. It's because he thinks there should be accountability. Why was Vivek the candidate for Ohio, and not David Yost, who is the popular and successful attorney general in that state? Donald Trump liked Vivek. Why did Donald Trump like Vivek? Because Vivek kissed his ass in the primary for 2024 The weirdest thing I've ever seen in a presidential election, other than Joe Biden's dementia, he spent all this time talking about how he wanted Donald Trump to be his mentor while he's president. It was bizarre, guys. It was bizarre. And that's that.