BUCK: I wanted to start off with ten airlines CEOs — ten airline CEOs — have written a letter to Joe Biden, specifically citing the drop in cases and the different period of time now with regard to the covid situation and how there needs to be an end. April 18th, I think when it expires, the mask mandate for interstate travel.

So Amtrak, planes, you name it. Ten airline CEOs are coming out to say — have written this and signed this letter to the Biden regime. Clay, they’re saying, look, we’re in a different place now. There are some fascinating parts to this. They had over 6,000 unruly passenger incidents last year; over 70% of those are mask issues, meaning passengers getting agitated about this.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I just want to put out there, there are two aspects of this policy that have always just shown us how stupid it is. One, it is not a mask-up policy. It is officially — and you hear this when the announcement comes out — a mask-up-between-bites policy. There’s zero science by this, and then there’s the filtration systems on the plane. Do you think the Biden administration will finally take its hand off the throat, off of the face of the American people when it comes to flying?

CLAY: Well, so let’s break this down for everybody. Remember, this was set to expire on March the 18th, and then the Biden administration extended it for at least another month. So, it goes till April 18th now, and I think a lot of these CEOs from the airlines… Remember, the Southwest CEO and the American Airlines CEO under oath in Congress testified that their filtration systems rendered it far safer to be on an airplane, for instance, than almost anywhere else that you could be.

I think this is significant, Buck, because I just want to run through the ten different airline CEOs: Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Atlas Air Worldwide, Delta, FedEx (obviously FedEx has, I think, more planes than anybody in the world for the package delivery), Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, United, UPS, and then somebody from Airline for America. So this is about as extensive…

If you fly on a domestic air travel, in the United States, the CEO of your airline that you are flying most frequently, probably came out and said, this is a mindless; it doesn’t make any sense. They wrote a direct letter to Biden, and they laid out the fact that data… I mean, again. I know the Democrats claim to be the Party of Science. But they have all sorts of different protocols, and they basically just laid all the data out of why they are completely unnecessary as it pertains to mask mandates going forward.

Now, here’s the question, Buck: Will Joe Biden, as we get prepared for this April 18th date — ’cause he already extended it for a month, on March 18th. Will this have impact? Because I’ll tell you this. When we wrote about it at OutKick, the site traffic on this is monumentally massive. Because lots of places, frankly, aren’t going to cover it. This should be, to me… You tell me how I’m wrong on this.

I don’t know how this isn’t front-page news. If you’re just being honest about what news is, for the New York Times, for the Washington Post, I don’t know how it’s not being covered by CNN and MSNBC. To get ten airline CEOs to all write a letter to the president laying out why there’s no basis whatsoever to justify a mask mandate? Here’s the other thing I would say: I would call on these CEOs, to rescind all of the bans of the people that were banned over mask mandates.

Because look, you talk about 70% of them, of the airline issues. You know, Buck. You travel. It’s high stress. A lot of times, you have a kid with you. You’re worried about making your flight. You’re probably trying to get somewhere on time. And then a flight attendant comes by and is sort of constantly chirping at you about “Make sure your mask is above your nose.”

BUCK: It’s moronic. It’s moronic.

CLAY: You can see why people every now and then chirp back, and then those conversations accelerate where both sides get angry, right? You can see how this happens.

BUCK: Yeah. This is how you also knew that Fauci was a fraud very early on. Because to say that masks keep you safe on a plane, where the air is cleaner than effectively anywhere else because of the things they have on the plane.

CLAY: Because of the filtration system, yes.

BUCK: No one disputes that science. Let’s be clear.

CLAY: Yeah. That’s right.

BUCK: No one says that the airline CEOs don’t know what they’re talking about, when it comes to the air filtration systems on their plane. So that is not in dispute. But beyond that, as I said, the mask-between-bites policy meant there was always an arbitrary and capricious nature of the enforcement of this.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: It was did the airline attendant happen — and bite, I know we have airline attendants who listen to us. They’re great patriots. They’re awesome people. I’m not talking about you. If you’re one of the people who were like, “Sir, would you mind? Other passengers might flip out.” There were those people, and I experience that, and I get it. They want to keep their jobs.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They didn’t want complaints about them, about the airline attendant not enforcing it. But then there were the people. I will never forget. I had a male airline attendant tell me — and he yelled at me. “Your mask is too thin, sir! Put on a different mask,” and I’m looking at this guy like, “You are a true moron and a fascist. Do you realize that?” I wish I would have said that within, but they would have kicked me off the plane. This shows how stupid it was the entire time, and I think it’s important, Clay, and it should be a bigger new story, and I’m glad that Outkick — OutKick.com.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I’m glad that OutKick is doing huge traffic on it because people need to know, we need normal now.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: We don’t need the continuation. This is the version… This is like the frisking of granny from Oklahoma in her wheelchair as a possible suicide bomber risk on the airplane. Remember that? You saw those videos. This is the equivalent policy of making veterans strip down and have the TSA imbecile checking to see if a veteran’s prosthetic is maybe smuggling a weapon on to the plane. This is crazy. It was never smart. It was never rationale. It was never reasonable. And the Biden administration. This is a really interesting moment, Clay. How are they going to say the science is with with them on this? What is the argument even?

CLAY: There isn’t. It’s a great question, and I don’t know how they respond to this. I mean, I understand Biden is overseas right now with NATO. But I hope that there are White House media that will hold him accountable and ask him, “Given the science — you claim that you are the Party of Science — there’s no way…” Again, I think this is wildly significant. That all ten CEOs have signed this letter together. And the reason why I think they’re doing it together is, it makes it harder to argue and pick and pull apart one of them for the other of them.

And, remember, Buck — we have to give credit — there are a lot of different airline pilots now, who have filed a lawsuit arguing that the CDC doesn’t have the authority to continue to implement this policy as it pertains to air travel. And also, I think it’s significant that the Senate, by a 57 to 40 margin, if I’m not mistaken, which given where we are at 50-50 era, where there’s almost no bipartisanship… Remember Mitt Romney was the only Republican who voted against the mask mandate being lifted?

BUCK: Yup.

CLAY: This is pretty significant, when you put all that together, and I wish that we could get a case accelerated to the Supreme Court, because in the same way that they struck down the vaccine mandate as exceeding the authority of OSHA, I think there is an argument that after two years, the CDC has exceeded their authority to continue to roll this mask mandate as it’s being removed everywhere else.

BUCK: See, I go back and forth, because on the one hand, I want the stupid policies to end. There is an urgency to that, because the further we go to the end destination here of actual normalcy, the harder it will be for them, because they want to. Right now, they’re preparing for next fall. As we always said, “Oh, he doesn’t take the virus seriously!” this summer. They’re idiots, and they act like no one can remember anything.

We have to get to total normalcy now, so that it makes it harder for the pendulum to swing back to lunacy. Fauci is not done. There is going to be this whole effort, and I think that’s why the mask mandate on the planes is such an important fight for us to have. And I also think, Clay, we’re seeing more and more people recognize — It’s slow, but it is growing — what were we made to do this whole time?

What is wrong with these Democrat politicians and the stupid things that they said? Because you know what I’m hearing? “Oh, well, we learned a lot during the pandemic. A lot of things changed!” That wasn’t their attitude even a few months ago. A few months ago, it was, “We got it all right. We knew exactly! Fauci is a genius.” Now you’re starting to hear, “Yeah. There were some lessons learned.” Oh-ho, yeah, there were. Oh, yeah, there were. So how these things end is the point I was trying to make. I want them to end, but I want them to end because people realize that they never should have happened in the first place.

CLAY: That’s important. And also, don’t allow this to be one of those things where you swing back and forth. Right? When we end the mask mandate on airplanes, I want to drive it into the ground so that it never comes back, because the data tells us — just go ahead and start this segment of the show — in the summer, the hotter it is (in the South, Florida in particular, other places in the South) — cases go up. July and August is when covid has typically surged in Texas, in Georgia, in Tennessee, all over the South.

Because if you remember last year, Buck, right before football season, Fauci was like, “Oh, there’s no way we’ll be able to play football season without cases skyrocketing,” and then as the temperature starts to decline and people spend more time outside, guess what happens? Covid dries up in the South and it moves to the North where when it starts to get cold, everybody goes inside. It’s so clear what’s going to happen.

And what’s happened the first two years is, every time this occurs, “Oh, there’s a reason why this is happening is because Florida doesn’t take covid seriously enough. Ron DeSantis is killing everyone!” It may be more aggressive this year, Buck, because it’s an election year and the governorship is up in Florida. So they may even try to sell that crap even harder this year, than they have in the past two years.

BUCK: Yeah. They’ll do everything they can, to make it seem like the best governor — when it comes to record, fact, and reality in America, during the pandemic — Ron DeSantis in Florida is the worst.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: (sarcastic) “He was awful. Everybody died in Florida, don’t you realize?” No. It turned out that’s not the case. In fact —

CLAY: We survived the winter of death. Everybody listening. Congratulations!

BUCK: People are moving to Florida.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Nobody is moving to Los Angeles and San Francisco right now after the pandemic after what they’ve seen.