CLAY: Come the holidays, Buck, we are gonna be out for some time. We really haven’t missed hardly any shows, I don’t think, since we started on June 21st and we’re having an incredible time, but we obviously want to spend some time with our families around the holidays. I’m down in Houston today, and we are obviously experiencing the World Series.

We’ve got a big Houston Astro fan on the line right now. That is Michael Berry, and he is going to be one of our guest hosts going forward certainly during the holidays. Michael, we’re excited to have you as a part of the family. Thank you for having me on your show earlier today down in Houston. We can’t wait to share the golden microphone with you.

BERRY: You’re very kind to say that, Clay, and hello, Buck. But your listeners do need to know that you are in Houston, Texas, your host city, and you wore a Dale Murphy shirt into my studio, but you carried it off well ’cause you quoted Davey Crockett seamlessly, effortlessly — it was perfect — so you restored yourself.

Good start for the Braves! #chopon #letsgobrandon pic.twitter.com/vYlOtxUuJA

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 27, 2021

CLAY: (laughing) No, it’s outstanding. We’re looking forward to having you sitting in with us. I know you do a great show down in Houston. For your perspective, has the Biden administration been far worse than even you could have contemplated it being?

BERRY: It has. I thought it would be Obama 2.0, but things were not this bad under Obama. You know, being in Texas — obviously here in Houston now — the border crisis hits us harder than any other state, even more so than California. We’re seeing it in our crime. Arizona and California are seeing it, but we’re seeing it in our crime rates. We’re seeing it everywhere, and that is worse than I think it’s ever been.

And we have some CDP directors who are saying the same thing. The supply chain disruption and the portion of blame that he deserves for that? Absolutely. Now we’re making gender equality into the biggest issue, when that’s the least important thing to anybody in the country.

Yeah, it’s absolutely worse, and I think the country is demoralized. He’s a mush brain, he’s demented, and we all know it. That’s not an insult. It’s a fact. And so I think it’s leaving a lot of people feeling like this sort of morass, it’s the malaise of Jimmy Carter all over again but worse.

BUCK: Michael, it’s Buck, man, been a fan for a long time.

BERRY: Thank you.

BUCK: Thank you for hanging out with us here and we know this audience is gonna love to get a chance to hang with you a whole lot more when you’re stepping up to the EIB mike. I’ve never been to Houston, by the way, and now I realize I got you and I got my buddy Jesse Kelly down there. So I’m gonna have to come to one of your sporting events or something Clay Travis style. I’m gonna come down there and watch some of the professional athletes do their things and really I just want an excuse to eat Houston barbecue, just want to say that.

BERRY: It is the best barbecue, and I’m also a big fan of yours and Jesse Kelly is one of my best friends in the whole wide world. I gotta tell you, he and I have been bouncing back and forth with this idea of hosting a Houston event for media personalities that we really like — the cool kids — and then the whole point of this is to exclude the people that wish they were invited and weren’t. But if you would come down and keynote that, that would be fun as hell.

BUCK: We would love to do that. KTRH Houston, which we know is your home station and what we’re talking to you on now for a lot of folks, for a lot of folks listening is just a fantastic Heritage radio station. We love that Houston audience. So, Clay, I think we got a plan that’s unfolding here in real time. We got maybe the Mar-a-Lago show with Trump. We got the Houston show with Jesse and Mr. Michael Berry.

But I do promise every day, Michael, that we make sure that we bring everybody up to speed on all the latest news. I’m just wondering. Did you see Attorney General Garland right now testifying on Capitol Hill and getting some heat from some Republicans, particularly about the memo that went out to the parents?

BERRY: Yeah.

BUCK: We’ll be talking later on in the show about a Minneapolis school board meeting it will be on later in the show for sure, where they’re obviously parents speaking out. Do you see any of that stuff in Texas? Does that stuff fly in Houston.

BERRY: We now do we have school board elections going on right now and that was a big subject this morning I gotta tell you school board elections were not a very glamorous thing in the past. Buck you’ve been at this for a long time. You’ve been talking to these listeners for a long time, and you know as well as I do, as I often, say the two things that you can’t mess with or you will get the independent — especially the independent southern voter.

They way you get suburban mommy out to vote against you is you mess with their guns and most importantly you mess with their kids. You can raise taxes, you can invade foreign countries, you can do all sort of other things. But when you mess with their kids — and I gotta tell you, that has people energized. You’re seeing people showing up at school board meetings, and they’re hopping mad.

And guess what? It’s not just older white folks anymore. You’re seeing young blacks, you’re seeing young Hispanics, you’re seeing young Asians. You’re seeing people with thick accents that have never been to these types of events before and they are mopping mad because they are mama bear and papa bear and it’s a basically thing. This level of increased engagement and activism? It’s really exciting to see, I think. I think it’s a great time in that sense.

CLAY: Michael, how important has Greg Abbott’s executive order about vaccine mandates been in the state of Texas, and how are people responding to it, in your experience?

BERRY: Well, the state of Texas is quite unlike most of the union but probably Tennessee and the state of Texas share more than any other two states, even probably more so than Florida. I mean, Davey Crockett was from Tennessee as was Sam Houston. But it’s made a big difference. But Greg Abbott didn’t lead on that. Greg Abbott follows. He’s not Ron DeSantis; he’s not Donald Trump.

He’s a follower, and when he saw how popular DeSantis was… He has designs on the White House. When he saw how popular DeSantis was for doing that, he followed a month or so later because he had to. The business community here dragged him kicking and screaming. This is a business-first state. This is why people are relocating here — and to Tennessee — to build their businesses, to find jobs, to find work, more so than anything else.

It’s economically conservatively driven, and we wanted our businesses back open. We don’t believe in mandates. This is a state of independence, right? We were our own country. We were our own nation. This is why folks like Davey Crockett came here. This is why we fought the Alamo. We were an independent frontier spirit. Don’t mandate anything.

BUCK: Michael Berry, everybody. We’re gonna be hearing more from him on the EIB in the future. He’s gonna be one of our guest hosts coming up this holiday season, and obviously the folks in Houston area know and very much enjoy his daily show. Michael, thanks so much for being with us, man. We appreciate it. We’ll talk to you again soon. I love that event idea, by the way. Clay and I are coming down. We’re gonna do it.

BERRY: You’re in.

CLAY: A hundred percent.

BERRY: Thank you.

BUCK: Thanks so much.