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Clay and Buck

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CDC to Change Definition of “Fully Vaccinated”?

22 Oct 2021

CLAY: Just now the CDC came out and said they’re going to potentially have to change their definition of what “fully vaccinated” is —

BUCK: Of course.

CLAY: — for people who are gonna be getting the boosters. In other words, you’re not eventually fully vaccinated if you got your two-shot regimen, you’re gonna not count. You’re gonna have to get the boosters.

BUCK: At some point it does become exhausting when we keep saying, this is what they’re going to do, and then all the Fauciites say, no, we’re not, no, we’re not. And then a month or two or three later they do the thing that we have said here on the show they’re going to do because we understand the nature of what they are and what they want. And then they turn around and say, yeah, but whatever, shut up and do it. That’s basically the continuous argument.

And there’s a reason why they won’t admit where things are going because this is so much now driven by politics and they’re hoping to do everything incrementally so people don’t notice that they, one, have been told things that are untrue, right? If you tell people things that turn out to be untrue a few months later, that is a little bit easier to spin than if you tell them one thing one week and the other thing the next week. But, Clay, if we’re gonna now say booster, the reality is that if you are not fully vaccinated after two of these shots, there is no such thing ever as fully vaccinated except on a temporary basis, meaning you are vaccinated for now. We are heading toward forever shots.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: There’s no reason to believe otherwise. In fact, more likely than not we’re heading toward need to keep getting the shots and maybe the shots will become less effective over time, not more effective.

CLAY: It’s gonna be the flu shot. And we don’t call it, I know some people out there gonna, it’s not called the flu vaccine in common parlance. We call it the flu shot ’cause it doesn’t work a hundred percent effective. This is the covid shot. Not the covid vaccine. It’s the covid shot.

By the way, we’ve been talking about the challenges going on. Maybe we’ll hit this in a little bit because Joe Manchin, we need to discuss this later in the show, Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders have been going toe-to-toe over what’s gonna happen in the budget reconciliation bill. And I’m not sure, Buck, that there’s actually going to be anything that happens ’cause Manchin has said for a while now, hey, I’m fine just doing nothing for several months. And Bernie Sanders wants six trillion. Joe Manchin said he’s comfortable with zero. And so, Buck, this drama, I know they were hoping to close it out kind of and announce they have a deal, but in his town hall Joe Biden announced that there was now not going to be a tax increase ’cause Senator Kyrsten Sinema has been opposed to it for corporate, individual, and capital gains taxes.

So they’re scrambling to trying to figure out how to pay for this thing. And I don’t recall think they know the answer, and I’m not sure they’re gonna be able to get to an agreement by October 31st, which is the new deadline about a month later than the original deadline.

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Jonathan Isaac on Why He Opposes Vaccine Mandates

22 Oct 2021

BUCK: We have Jonathan Isaac with us. He is a professional basketball player in the NBA for the Orlando Magic. He has refused to get the covid shot under orders from the NBA. Jonathan, thanks for being with us.

ISAAC: Appreciate you, fellows. Thank you for having me.

BUCK: So, please. Your initial comments on this we played on the show. We thought you made such a reasonable, rational case for why you should not be forced to do this as a young, you know, ultra-competitive and elite athlete. Tell everybody out there, why are you taking this stand? Why do you not want to be forced to get the shot?

ISAAC: Well, it’s not really about me per se. You know, there isn’t a mandate right now from the league or, you know, I’m just blessed to be in Florida where there’s not a mandate; so, you know, I took into account, you know, me personally like I said I’m healthy, I’m okay, I’m not afraid of covid, you know, based on the age-group and having it already in the past. And so this is for the people who are, you know, mandated, feeling like they have to choose between what their job is saying, what the government is saying and, you know, their livelihood, and I don’t think it’s right, I don’t think the government has grounds for it. And I think, as you said, it’s an overreach. And so, you know, I’m standing for those people and trying to be a voice to say that it should be everybody’s free choice and doing so.

BUCK: But Jonathan, for example, if you were to play — like, could you play the Brooklyn Nets with your current status? You said there’s no league-wide mandate, but are there certain places where they wouldn’t allow you to play because of your status? How does that work?

ISAAC: So the, like, San Francisco and New York, those mandates aren’t delegated to visiting players. So as crazy as that sounds, you know, Kyrie won’t be able to play and anybody else that’s in those cities, but, you know, visiting players who are unvaccinated will.

CLAY: That’s kind of wild. I didn’t know that, Jonathan. Thanks for letting us know. This is Clay. I appreciate you coming on the show.

I shared your video — I know many people did — explaining your logic on why you did not believe that as someone who already had covid you should not need to get the covid vaccine. I’m curious. What was the reaction overall in the league? Did you hear from executives? Did you hear from players? I’m not asking you for who those specific people are. But I bet you got a lot of positive feedback. I’m sure you get negative as well. But what was the reaction to that viral video of you talking about your decision?

ISAAC: Well, I mean, there was some, you know, pushback on Twitter, you know, negative comments, but it was overwhelmingly positive with everybody that was sharing it. You know, I’ve had a couple conversations with different guys in the league, you know, who felt the same way. Even if they got the vaccine themselves, they thought that, you know, it should be everybody’s free choice, and they stood with my decision and doing so. So, you know, a little bit of negative, but definitely the overwhelming majority was positive.

BUCK: Is there any concern that the NBA may try to push for especially, as we get into the winter months here, the Biden administration has this allegedly — we talk about this a lot here, Jonathan — and we’re speaking to Jonathan Isaac, by the way, of the Orlando Magic, professional basketball player. There’s supposed to be any company that has over a hundred employees has to have either weekly testing or the shot. That hasn’t been officially ruled out yet. Do you think that there may be some kind of mandate from the NBA or even from different teams in the NBA? How is this gonna play out?

ISAAC: So the way that I understand it is everything that goes into effect has to be agreed upon by the players association and the NBA itself. So the only way that there could be a mandate for NBA players — and I’m not sure if I’m right on this — but the players and the players association would have to agree on it, you know, for our collective bargaining agreement. And so only if the players were to say, we are comfortable with a mandate, would it be possible.

CLAY: Jonathan, I believe I heard some of these crazy rules that still apply to you because you are unvaccinated. For instance, you can play the game with your teammates but you can’t eat with them? Is that correct? And what are the rules that are applied that probably to you seem pretty illogical given the fact that you’re playing basketball on the court with your teammates?

ISAAC: Yeah, I mean, that’s correct, you know, I will be able to play, I’m able to practice, I’m able to interact with my teammates on those levels but, you know, leaving my hotel room for anything that’s not considered essential or a team activity is not allowed. You know, visitors, any visitors outside of, like, family, I would have to, you know, check that out with the team and they would have to be tested or whatever. So there are some, you know, to me restrictions that don’t completely make sense given that I am able to play and given that — you know, the studies are showing that immunity from natural immunity is on par and if not better than vaccination immunity. And so I think when taking that into account there shouldn’t be, you know, necessarily restrictions, you know, on players that are unvaccinated that had the virus already.

CLAY: No doubt. I don’t know if you’ve paid much attention to it, but Canada where the Raptors are, where theatrically you would play at some point during the season, I believe, has said that if an unvaccinated player leaves the hotel, that they are subject to criminal charges. Have you paid attention to that? How wild and crazy is that? Has there been any discussed inside the team about it?

ISAAC: I did see that. That hasn’t been any discussion inside the team but, yeah, it’s just crazy. You know, it doesn’t make, you know, logical sense and, you know, with so much going on and the American people having to deal with so much and obviously that’s in Canada but the sheer just craziness and lunacy that’s wrapped around covid and, you know, you have a lot of people necessarily to blame in the situation. I don’t think the media has done a great job of protecting the American people with information and trying to be truthful to help American people all over the world get a fair shot at making a the discussion for themselves that is ultimately now affecting, you know, families and, you know, jobs and stuff.

BUCK: Jonathan, where do you think this goes next? I mean, for the league, you said the union representing you guys has to agree to it. But do you feel like there are even more players who, if their hand was forced, so to speak, in some way, whether it’s from the federal mandate pushing down the NBA or however it comes out, that there are or more like you, essentially, in the league who are just like, I’m not gonna go with this, I’m not gonna do this, but we haven’t heard from them yet?

ISAAC: Yeah. I mean, so I wouldn’t be 100 percent sure. You know, at the end of the day, you know, what they’re saying, you know, mandates make people go and get vaccinated; so I’m sure if there was, you know, added pressure, you know, something might change. I’m not sure if everybody would stay with the conviction that they have, but it should be everybody’s free choice. I would hope so. But we would have to come together and have a conversation about what we wanted to do moving forward, but it would be to me very unfortunate if, you know, the players in any situation are forced or coerced into changing their minds on what they wanted to do.

CLAY: John, your knowledge on covid as you talk about natural immunity and studies and all of these things is very impressive. You obviously also recognize how poor the media has done to share much of that knowledge that you have been able to acquire. How did you aggressively seek out the information to educate yourself and end up with the opinions that I think are a hundred percent factually accurate but a lot of people aren’t willing to do that work? How and why did you sort of dive into the rabbit hole of all this information?

ISAAC: The “how” would be just all over the place, to be honest, you know, good people may frown upon this but, you know, Twitter and social media and just watching what everybody is saying. But I would say the “why” was for me all of this started when the Rolling Stone article had came out.

So Rolling Stone had approached me through the team about, you know, talking about my unvaccinated status. And I shared with them the exact same thing I went on to share on Monday and my words were completely twisted, my words were completely misrepresented in the article, and I was like, what is going on? That’s crazy. You know with so much craziness going on and then people are dying, you know, you would think that they would want to do a good job of sharing how it is that I felt. And then I’m like, okay, this is bigger than a vaccine, this is bigger than basketball. This is about protecting the American people from, you know, what this thing snowballs into. So I went into even more of, you know, trying to understand things and understanding that the media hasn’t done a great job, you know, of protecting us. That’s my “how” and “why.”

CLAY: Jonathan, last couple of questions here for you. And I appreciate. This has been fantastic. You can follow Jonathan. I’ll tweet out or I already did his Twitter handle if you want to share your thoughts on the interview with him. You stood for the national anthem in the bubble last year and then shortly thereafter you tore your ACLU and a lot of people took shots at you and tried to connect those two decisions. I want to ask you about that or get your thoughts. And then, secondly, I don’t know if you’ve seen Enes Kanter come out as he has against China, speaking out aggressively against the basically genocide that’s going on in China. Many NBA players have been outspoken but they haven’t necessarily been outspoken about China. Your thoughts on both of those things.

ISAAC: I mean, for me, my decision to stand in the bubble came from a place of just personal experience. You know, seeing everything that has happened in the world, that’s happening in the world, the division, the white, black, you know, everything that’s going on. And I know are for myself that Jesus Christ has been the foundational change in my life. He’s become the most important thing and the best thing that has ever happened to me and I wanted offer that as a solution to the problems that we’re seeing, that if we would all humble ourselves and recognize that listen to the we all fall short, we all have wrong in this, no one is greater than the other, no sin is greater than the other, and a lot of times it comes down to whose sin is most visible is the one that we attack. And so, you know, that’s the position that I wanted to give out. And I felt like I did that.

The ACL being torn, it happens. And I know that God has a plan for my life. Me and my decision to stand, stopped when I was there when I stood. You know, whatever happened after that is whatever anybody wants to make it but I’m okay, I’m getting back, I’m working hard.

And honestly on the China thing, I don’t have, you know, enough insight on, you know, what’s going on. I wish I did, to comment, but I don’t. And so, you know, if there are players that are speaking out and that understand what’s going on over there, then, you know, then kudos to ’em.

CLAY: That’s really great, Jonathan, by the way, being willing to say, hey, that’s not my level of expertise is something that very few people do. We tried to that on the show when we’re not experts on something. We appreciate it, my man.

BUCK: Jonathan Isaac of the Orlando Magic. Thank you for being with us, sir. We appreciate it.

ISAAC: Thank you, fellows. Thank you so much.

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SCOTUS Will Hear Challenge to Texas Abortion Law

22 Oct 2021


BUCK: We have breaking news for you right now, and this — implications of this are big, and this is going to be something that we are all talking about and focusing in on in 2022 because it’s probably about June that we’ll be hearing what the final decision is on this. But the Supreme Court — this is the breaking news — will hear arguments over Texas’s heartbeat law on November 1st. The law will remain in effect for the time being.

You have right now some of the most direct challenges to abortion at the state level since Roe v. Wade was decided, and you can imagine that this will create a tremendous amount of thrill fighting next year over — from the pro-life movement to the pro-abortion movement — and this could create enormous ramifications that will not just affect the country and its laws, its morality, but also the midterm elections. I’m sure this is going to be a major issue when it comes to fundraising mobilization of the grassroots organizations on both sides of this and the astroturf organizations like Planned Parenthood and all the rest of them. So, Clay, how do you think this is going to go? Right now the law in Texas remains in effect. There’s also that Mississippi heartbeat bill. What do you see happening?

CLAY: If I were trying to read the tea leaves here, I think what happens is if they allow the Mississippi law, which correct me if I’m wrong, Buck, but I think Mississippi’s law bans abortions after 15 weeks. Am I right about that? Maybe we can look that up to be sure. And the Texas law potentially six weeks. So I think they will argue that there is a new standard based on health for when the viability of a fetus can be concerned. Am I right about 15 weeks?

BUCK: Yeah, 15 weeks is the Mississippi law passed in 2018. All abortions after 15 weeks prohibited in the state of Mississippi.

CLAY: So I think what they may try to do to say, hey, we’re not overturning Roe v. Wade — this is my read on the Roberts court — is that they will disallow Texas, and so politically they give something to the pro-choice people and they give something to the pro-life people right? This is what I think will happen. What John Roberts wants is incrementalism. That’s my best bet.

Now, it’s also possible they sync these cases in some way and they say, hey, individual states have the right to make decisions about abortions inside of their states. There is now no longer federal protection for Roe v. Wade so you’re not necessarily ending abortions but you’re throwing it back to the states and arguing that this is a case that they should have never taken.

BUCK: So Roe creates a federal constitutional make-believe but it’s unfortunately been real in terms of the way it’s been implemented. It’s not actually in the Constitution and everyone knows that so they’ll create that right. So you think that they’re going to essentially allow states to start to pare back at that, quote, unquote, right?

CLAY: I think the most likely outcome is —

BUCK: I think they’re striking it down; so —

CLAY: I think Mississippi, they will say it’s legal, but that Texas went too far, and they will then argue that there is some new standard for how Roe v. Wade is implemented in the twenty-first century. That’s my bet.

BUCK: I think for the first time in 50 years we could sight Roe go down. I think that’s what the court is in terms of the makeup ’cause Roberts will try to save it. I don’t think Roberts will be able to save it.

CLAY: My point is I don’t know why they would take the Texas case if they were going to strike it down. Why not go ahead and strike it down with the Mississippi case? So my thought is that there is an attempt — and I’m not sure whether it’s gonna be successfully or not — to sort of — to end up with both sides having to feel like they got some win while in general abortion is restricted more. You say Texas is unconstitutional the way they did it. You say Mississippi is permissible and you continue to fight that battle.

BUCK: And there will be probably be more actually of a Planned Parenthood v. Casey issue than a Roe issue perhaps when you’re looking — because Planned Parenthood v. Casey, right? Makes it essentially impossible to — there’s all these additional affirmative rights to abortion.

CLAY: The whole thing is a disaster of a decision, right? Regardless of what your political beliefs are, it is an untenable legal argument.

BUCK: It created a right that doesn’t exist in the Constitution but also there’s no other right like it. We have a right to bear arms. There’s millions of laws out there — not millions — but a lot of laws out there about guns — everybody has restrictions on all rights. The only right that has no restrictions is abortion so I think this court is gonna say, hmm. There’s a problem here, folks. But we’ll see. That’s a big one. November 1st it’s coming up soon we’ll hear those arguments, those will be very close to listen to.

CLAY: I just don’t know why they would take both if they were gonna hundred percent strike it down. I could be wrong. I think they’re gonna try to finesse the needle here.

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Enes Kanter Doubles Down on China Criticism

22 Oct 2021


CLAY: Enes Kanter, who is a Boston Celtics player, knows all about what it is to not have freedom because he is from Turkey and his family has been imprisoned. There is a warrant for his arrest out over political commentary. He is not able to return to his home country, and he has decided to become I think the first NBA player to speak out against China’s treatment of its people. Yesterday we talked about him discussing the dictatorship that exists for the Tibetan people. Today he just posted a video going directly after China’s treatment of the Uyghur people, demanding that China end slave camps. Listen to this.

ENES KANTER: There is a genocide happening right now, right now as I speak this message. Torture, rape, forced abortions, and sterilization. Family separation. Arbitrary detentions, concentration camps, political reeducation, forced labor. This is all happening right now to more than 1.8 million Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region in north and western China.

CLAY: This is potentially monumental. And for some of you out there you might be saying, why should I care what an athlete says about China? Well, first of all, almost no athlete had been willing to say anything at all about China. China has already pulled Boston Celtics games off of all of its distribution in the country. They have pulled all old Celtics games. They are pulling Celtics paraphernalia off the shelves.

And what’s going on here is we have gotten used to a corporate hierarchy, whether it’s Disney to make sure that their movies get in Chinese theaters, whether it’s Apple to make sure that they can sell the iPhone to Chinese citizens, that there will be no criticism that is allowed of China at all. I even saw, Buck, an interesting write-up about James Bond, we were talking about this I think earlier this week, there’s never been a negative Chinese character in James Bond in like the last 20 years. There’s always a Russian, there’s always some eastern European evildoer.

There’s never a negative association at all with China for fear that they would not then allow the movie to air in their country. And what’s happened is, initially China said, hey, if you’re gonna be in our country, you’re gonna have to play by our rules. But as Chairman Xi’s ambitions have grown, he is now trying to make the world play by Chinese rules. And that’s a significant growth in terms of what the demands of China are. And so many of these athletes out there who want to denigrate America, who want to tear us down, who want to say that America is an awful place have been unwilling to address what Enes Kanter just said, the genocide going on in China.

In fact, Buck, there are NBA players with Chinese shoe deals that the Chinese shoe companies are bragging that their shoes are being made with slave labor from Xinjiang cotton. In other words, we really legitimately have a slavery situation where NBA players’ shoes are being made with cotton from slave labor, and those players are making millions of dollars.

BUCK: Right. What this exposes — right. This exposes that they’re very quick to jump on an attack because they get a lot of social media plaudits for it, NBA players, professional athletes across several leagues will go after police, right? We’ve seen this with LeBron James. We’ve seen this with other players who all of a sudden be very big on either the defund the police movement or talking about systematic police violence or systemic racism in policing or whatever the hashtag may be on any given day.

Even though as we had Heather Mac Donald on what was it, last week, she said was it five or nine, I can’t remember, single digits the number of unarmed black men who have been killed in America this year by police. I mean, to say that this is a national, urgent issue is just a lie the same way that saying that, you know, when CNN claims that a prescribed drug is actually a drug that, you know, is crazy to take, you can say it’s an urgent issue, but based on the numbers it’s absurd to make that claim.

So they’ll speak out against law enforcement in this country and expect to be considered brave, but in China where the NBA does have influence because the Chinese people love watching American professional basketball, right? There’s real the resonance. They won’t speak out. And why? They’re not worried, right? It’s not like any of the NBA players are gonna get thrown in prison for this. They’re not taking some huge risk. Just money. They want the money. They want access to the Chinese market. And this is why in so many ways our cold war with China, which is really what we’re in now, I think people are recognizing that, in some ways more pernicious, more undermining than what we faced with the Soviets because they have entangled themselves deeply into the American economy and into American cultural institutions. I mean, when, you know, Maverick can’t have a Taiwanese patch on the back of his jacket in a movie because he doesn’t want to upset China, you got a problem on your hands.

CLAY: No doubt. And the irony here, of course, is, or the hypocrisy, I guess, more accurately stated, NBA players would play games in China, but they wouldn’t go visit the White House to celebrate winning a championship. So they would shut up and dribble for Chairman Xi and do whatever China requested of them, remember, LeBron James came out and even criticized America’s First Amendment after Daryl Morey, one of the general managers in the NBA, said that he supported Hong Kong freedom. And, by the way, Hong Kong doesn’t have freedom anymore because we just allowed Hong Kong to be taken over. And I think what’s significant here in so many levels is, what is the NBA gonna do now?

Because the NBA has said, hey, we want to be an activist, politically outspoken league. We want to be the woke league of all American sports. They had the slogans on their jerseys, everybody refuses to stand for the national anthem, all of those things, okay? So what happened now when Enes Kanter who, by the way, we’ve reached out to invite onto the program, when Enes Kanter speaks out and says that these things are all true, that we have genocide going on in China, are other NBA players going to support him? Is the league going to issue some sort of statement? And how is China going to respond to these continued statements? Because it took one tweet for them basically to shut down the league overseas. I think the NBA is in a really tough spot.

And to your point yesterday, I think it was, Buck, and I think it was a good one, the major difference between China and the Soviet Union back in the day, in addition to the lack of economic entanglement, there was nobody in 1983 being, like, hey, you know what? Good for Russia. Right? There was nobody bowing down, that I remember, in, like, pop culture to Russia back in the day.

BUCK: It’s been very clear for a long time that the Soviets were a military and political competitor. But we didn’t really believe once you got into the seventies, the eighties that economically speaking their system, I mean we could all see, people were being honest about it, knew that their system was cracking and it was eventually going to fail economically. China’s economic system is not failing. It’s a competitor to us.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Right? They act with, it’s an authoritarian state that acts under some market principles to pursue profit. It’s really state-controlled capitalism. And, at some level. And so we have multiple challenges from the Chinese Communist Party that people I think are just waking up to now. And then when you add to this, I mean, China has a billion people, right? Population matters. Population matters.

CLAY: To your point for that movie diplomacy, Top Gun won the Russians are the villains, right? Spoiler alert for anybody who hasn’t seen the first Top Gun yet, that’s how that movie ends, right? Going head-to-head —

BUCK: Actually never really make it all that clear but I think you’re supposed to think that they’re the Russians.

CLAY: Okay.

BUCK: The Soviets.

CLAY: Your point, they won’t even let a Taiwan lapel be on Maverick’s jacket. It’s not like the Chinese are the bad guys in Top Gun 2. They won’t even allow the existence of Taiwan’s flag on the jacket for Maverick.

BUCK: Did you see the Red Dawn remake? I believe it’s North Korea that invades.

CLAY: Oh, okay. So that would be a real surprise.

BUCK: Right. Like you think about this —

CLAY: Dealing with famines?

BUCK: Who’s — the original red down it was obviously the Soviets, right? They had a very large army, very large country and our biggest competitor. The new Red Dawn we make I believe, I believe it’s north, I gotta check on this.

CLAY: That’s an amazing list. They can’t even feed their people and they’re gonna fly all over the world to invade America? It seems unlikely.

BUCK: I’m pretty sure that’s how it went down. I gotta check on that one. But I will also say if you want to see what happens when the U.S. bows down too much to the Chinese market in film, watch that Matt Damon movie Great Wall for five minutes. It may be the first movie ever made. Just tell you, it is so bad, it is so bad that you’ll be absolutely shocked when you watch it, when you try to check it out.

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Joe Biden’s Predictably Calamitous CNN Town Hall

22 Oct 2021

CLAY: We begin with the calamitous town hall between CNN and Joe Biden. And, by the way, CNN, we need to talk about this later in the show, Buck. CNN has doubled down on the fact that they claim they did nothing wrong with the Joe Rogan horse deworming stories that they flagellated for, what, weeks surrounding his covid announcement until Dr. Sanjay Gupta went on and said, yeah, that was not accurate, we should have done it. Well, CNN issued a statement on that. We will discuss that in the near term.

But first, here are some of the cuts that I think are standing out and creating news from the town hall that Joe Biden did. First of all, in typical Joe Biden fashion, he completely forgot what he was talking about. Anderson Cooper had to rescue him. Listen to this.

BIDEN: With 40% of all products coming into the United States America on the West Coast go through Los Angeles and — uh — and uh — uh and — what am I doing here?

COOPER: Long Beach?

BIDEN: Long Beach. Thank you.

CLAY: I mean, Anderson Cooper rescued him. That is one of many times where Joe Biden just doesn’t know what’s going on. We continue to point out the argument that Democrats are in real danger on the most — and there’s a lot of problems Joe Biden has — it’s about the border. How about Joe Biden saying he hasn’t had time to visit the southern border?

BIDEN: I’ve been there before and I haven’t — I mean I know it well. I guess I should go down. But the — but the whole point of it is I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to get down. I’ve been spending time going around looking at the $900 billion worth of damage done by — by hurricanes and floods and weather and traveling around the world. But I plan on — now, my wife, Jill, has been down. She’s been on both sides of the river. She’s seen the circumstances there. She’s looked into those places. You notice you’re not seeing a lot of pictures of kids lying on top of one another with — you know, with — with — with, you know, looks like tarps on top.

BUCK: I don’t even know what he’s mumbling about. I mean, you really get to a point, Clay, where you feel like the people that think they’re so smart and wise who hated Trump so much, who told us that Joe Biden was going to unite the country and be a great president or even a good, even a passable president, they should be ashamed. I think they actually look at this with some degree of glee. We could even make, they say, Joe Biden president, and you couldn’t stop us. I mean, I think they view this as an exercise of their power on the left because when you see how he actually interacts with people in a live setting like this, this is the president of the United States? This guy has the nuclear codes? Really?

I understand people say Donald Trump, his tweets were mean sometimes or they have these different things. You know, Trump was a guy who was a force of personality who could do two-hour live rallies that would get a crowd as fired up as they were at the University of Alabama became you took me to. I mean, people were absolutely enthralled. He had a vision. He had a purpose. There was an understanding of what he was trying to accomplish day in and day out. Joe Biden, it’s just muttering Sleepy Joe nonsense from somebody who really seems like he should be spending more time playing bingo. It’s just ra eality. And the fact that the media just skips past this, like, they pretend that we can’t all see this. This goes to show you, we’re suffering from a plague of leftist dishonesty.

CLAY: That whole answer on the border, how about the fact that he said his wife had been there, which does not make any sense.

BUCK: Yeah, who cares? Oh, Dr. Jill Biden, maybe she was telling about her PhD education.

CLAY: The first lady went there? I mean, like, how is that an argument? And also he spent 50 days in Delaware since he got elected president, if I’m not mistaken. I think that’s the number. Somebody can shoot me the actual number — I was reading 50 days that he’s been willing to go there. My point is it’s not that hard to take a trip to the border. We’re not talking about why he hasn’t been to Australia. We’re not talking about why he hasn’t been to China, somewhere where you have to make a legitimately long trip. Buck, from D.C. to the border is a two and a half, 2:45 flight for Air Force One. I mean, he could easily go to the border, visit there, turn around and come back in the same day with no difficulty at all, easier than lots of peoples’ daily commutes, Joe Biden could hop on Air Force One and go down to the border. The fact he hasn’t been there is because he doesn’t want to draw attention and force, to your point, dishonesty, it’s almost impossible for the media to fail to cover the border if Joe Biden takes them to the border.

BUCK: Right. There’s a traveling press corps with him; so there will be photos of him. There will be a whole focus on it. And the Democrat policy right now is to make sure that people focus on it as little as possible. We keep saying this remind everybody. We see the numbers of illegals and say, this is lawlessness, this is of — a systematic, intentional violation of U.S. sovereignty at the U.S.-Mexico border that’s going on day in and day out in unprecedented numbers. Democrats are saying, “Oh, this is great. How soon can we get an amnesty and sign all these people up to vote Democrat and vote for bigger government, higher taxes, more socialism?” But the only way they can’t get there is if enough Americans — not gonna be all — but if the 60% or so of the American people who want there to be some kind of border security and some kind of law and order down there recognize how systemic this problem has become, then the Democrat policy becomes a challenge. That’s why Joe Biden won’t go down there.

People say, “Oh, well, he can, you know, he doesn’t need to see the fence,” or whatever. No, it’s to meet with Border Patrol members, to meet with the people that are dealing with this day in and day out ’cause I’ve done this several times, and all they’ll tell you is: We are overwhelmed. The cartels do whatever they want in terms of importing drugs at this point. We can’t stop the flow of illegal migrants. We can’t stop the flow of fentanyl that killed 90,000 Americans — most of it was fentanyl — last year. And it’s not gonna get any better. It’s only gonna get worse.” Well, if you get a sound bite of Joe Biden talking to the border patrol and tell him that, it’s pretty tough for Biden to then say, you know (impression), “We’re making progress and, you know, no joke.”

CLAY: Well, not only that, where the president goes dictates what he thinks is important. That’s the entire purpose of the presidential bully pulpit. When the president goes on the road to try to sell any sort of legislation or to campaign for someone or anything associated with those kind of travel decisions, it is a clear shining light on what he believes is important. And what we were saying — and I think this is — this is the reason they’re not going — is because, as you point out, there’s an entire White House traveling press corps. And if the White House traveling press corps goes to the border, it’s impossible for them not to report on the border, and the border is by far the weakest of many weak issues for the Biden administration right now. And they are desperate to pretend it just doesn’t exist.

He also said, “Hey, you’re not seeing any of these pictures of kids like being mistreated.” Yeah, because the media stopped covering it when they couldn’t blame Donald Trump. AOC isn’t showing up dressed all in white in a parking lot with her hand outstretched crying in a photo-staged op because it’s not Donald Trump’s responsibility now. Remember when they found out that the Obama administration was responsible for the “cages,” in quotation mark, that wouldn’t tried to blame Trump for, these stories just kind of started to vanish.

And remember Trump had the border solved. That’s what’s so frustrating about this, Buck. It’s not only that we’re in a disastrous, worst-ever border crisis maybe in any of our lives; it’s that it was not an issue when Trump was in office, he had solved it.

BUCK: The illegal immigration flow had found, because of the structure of some U.S. laws, particularly around asylum, had found a way to get around the legal immigration system, had found a bad faith mechanism to stay in the United States illegally, indefinitely. And it was being exploited. To your point about Trump fixing it, the Trump administration looked and said, whoa. This is a problem. They didn’t make those laws, pass those laws that were being exploited in that way. But they figured out that if you changed the incentive structure — and that is what the Remain in Mexico program did — so you can still apply for asylum.

You can apply for asylum. And, by the way, if you really deserve it, if you’re going to be, you know, executed for your political stance if you go back to Cuba or Venezuela or Chile or Vietnam or, you know, name your country, right? Okay. That’s asylum. But you don’t get to pretend that’s who you are to stay in the United States and then just hope you get lost in the system and Democrats won’t do interior endorsement. “Remain in Mexico” means you stay on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border and you have to wait until your hearing, and when you go for the hearing, guess what? If you don’t qualify for asylum, you’re immediately subject to deportation back across the border.

The Biden administration did not like that this was fixed; so they unfixed it. And this is why — to your point about how we had figured out what the issue was here — they said, “Hold on a second. We want the incentive for illegals to come across to be what it was.” And they’d say, “Oh, it’s a humanitarian thing” and Biden says “It’s not who we are.” I mean, if we had a real press corps, they would ask why do we turn anyone away? This is a question I always ask Democrats who do AOC, “Oh, I’m crying and I’m touching the fence,” and the big tears and everything. Who doesn’t get to stay? That’s the question they never have an answer for.

CLAY: And how does it ever end? That’s the question. If you don’t have a border, millions and millions of people are going to continue to come here, and they’re never going to leave. So how do we exist as a functional country when we don’t have a border, which is the existential question that Trump initially in 2016 ran on.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Joe Biden showed last night that he has no sympathy for, does not see any reasonableness when he looks at those who don’t want to get the shot. Mind you, if you are a young minority who do not get the shot, somehow this doesn’t apply to you. Joe Biden’s disdain is only for the white male Trump supporter or just the Trump supporters out there who don’t want to get the shot, which, of course, is not everyone who’s it is not getting the shot but doesn’t matter because that’s the narrative. But Biden has — this came across last night the CNN town hall — a disdain for anyone who will not get the shot. Looks down upon them and even thinks that they’re basically a murderer.

BIDEN: Two things that concern me. One are those who just trying to make this a political issue — freedom. “I have the freedom to kill you with my covid.” I mean, come on, freedom. Number one. Number two, the second one is that, you know, the gross misinformation that’s out there.

BUCK: Look, Joe Biden’s a moron. I mean, honestly. He’s just ain’t very smart man. And it’s nice that I can actually say this without, you know, getting shut down by Twitter or Facebook or something. He’s not a very smart guy. That’s a really disgusting thing for the president of the United States to say. I know he thought he was being funny or something. It’s not funny. It’s not funny at all.

CLAY: Also his data is not accurate. And I just want to keep hammering this home. Last night my wife makes fun of me ’cause I’ll be sitting in bed just kind of looking through all the covid data. I get some people have more exciting pre-bedtime routines. Mine is I look at all the most recent covid data. And if you look at what’s going on in England and if you look at what’s going on in Maine and if you look at what’s going on in Vermont, Buck, 70%, over 70% of the people dying in England right now are double vaccinated.

The idea that Joe Biden is selling to the American people and which he tried again last night at that CNN town hall to argue if everybody was vaccinated covid would go away, this whole idea that we have a pandemic of the unvaccinated, it’s not true. It’s just a lie. He is selling a bill of goods. The vaccine offers some limited amount of protection for a relatively short period of time, and then its efficacy fades in a hurry, which is why we have boosters. We may have boosters that we have to get for years into the future. But when you are selling an artificial bill of goods, which he is, Buck, to the American public, the blowback on this whenever people come to realize what the data is actually showing is going to be staggering, and it’s going to destroy the Biden administration.

BUCK: I think that this is why they’re scrambling right now. I mean, they’re just trying to get as many people to get these boosters as fast as possible because the longer that there is a gap here in protection, the more clear it will become that all this rhetoric they used about, “Oh, you’re murdering people ’cause you didn’t get the shot.” Really? Because if you see the vaccination numbers and you see the number of people that are in the hospital and that are dying from covid in this winter season go up dramatically, including the vaccinated, what does that mean about the stories that we’ve been told all along? How can we look at them and say that they are to be taken seriously, Biden, Fauci, all the rest going forward?

CLAY: It’s all a lie, and it’s exploding on them. And I think our friend Alex Berenson has been correct that they know this and they’re hoping that the boosters are gonna save them in winter and by the spring the natural seasonality of viruses will decline. I think that’s really what they’re hoping.

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How Does Dr. Fauci Get Away With It?

22 Oct 2021

Be sure to listen daily to Rush’s Timeless Wisdom podcast here or on iHeartRadio. It’s absolutely essential information from America’s Forever Anchorman.

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EIB 24/7: Clay & Buck’s Stack of Stuff

22 Oct 2021

  • Daily Wire: Report: Manchin Uses Thumb, Forefinger, To Tell Bernie How Much Money For Social Spending Bill
  • Breitbart: Biden: Police, Emergency Responders Should Be Fired if They Won’t Get Vaccinated
  • New York Post: Pain at the pump: Biden admits ‘I don’t have a near-term answer’ for high gas prices
  • New York Post: CNN Biden town hall dominated by questions from Democrats
  • Daily Wire: Biden Appears To Mock Those Who Reject Vaccine Mandates Because They Believe In ‘Freedom’
  • HotAir: Flip flop: Biden declares openness to “fundamentally alter” the filibuster
  • Gateway Pundit: Bumbling Joe Biden Struggles to Spit Out Answer on Gas Prices — Begs Saudi Arabia to Bail Out US after His Actions Caused US Prices to Skyrocket
  • PJ Media: Logistics Crisis Will Lead to Long-Term High Prices, Ports Council Chair Warns
  • Daily Caller: CNN’s Townhall Crowd Audibly Giggles As Biden Becomes Confused Mid Sentence
  • FOXNews: Tens of thousands of migrants gathering on southern border ahead of ‘Remain-in-Mexico’ restart, sources say

  • Bloomberg: Biden Says He Doesn’t See Votes to Raise Tax Rates in Deal
  • Bloomberg: Biden Races Clock and Holds Few Tools in Supply-Chain Crisis
  • ABC: Gas hits $7.59 a gallon in CA town
  • Wall Street Journal: Santa Claus Is Coming—But He’ll Skip Some Stores
  • Breitbart: Rep. Nicole Malliotakis: Vaccine Mandates Drive ‘Supply Chain Shortage,’ ‘Inflation’
  • New York Post: This week in Whoppers: WaPo’s partisan ‘fact-checking,’ NY magazine’s hit on Sen. Sinema and more
  • HotAir: CNN sneers: Joe Rogan deserved our false report about him taking horse dewormer to treat COVID
  • New York Post: Fauci’s agency admits it funded gain-of-function work in Wuhan: What else are they keeping from us?
  • PJ Media: Five Reasons Not to Vaccinate Your Kids From COVID
  • Federalist: NBA’s Jonathan Isaac: Standing For The National Anthem Was About Conviction
  • Daily Wire: Florida Surgeon General: Data Supporting School Mask Mandates ‘Very Weak,’ Masking Is ‘Parent’s Decision’

  • JustTheNews: Superintendent in Virginia’s Loudoun Co alerted school board day of assault in gender fluid bathroom
  • Daily Caller: Teacher Trainings From Education Company Founded By Garland’s Son-In-Law ‘Suffused’ With Critical Race Theory
  • New York Post: Nearly three-quarters of US worried about what schools teaching: Poll
  • Washington Post: Biden to campaign with McAuliffe in home stretch of Virginia governor’s race
  • HotAir: State Dept: We know of 363 American citizens still abandoned in Afghanistan
  • PJ Media: Don’t Let Democrats Turn the U.S. Into Europe
  • Santa Fe New Mexican: Sheriff’s office: Alec Baldwin discharged prop gun that killed crew member, wounded director
  • Daily Wire: Putin Warns Wokeness Is Destroying The West: It Happened In Russia, It’s Evil, It Destroys Values

  • Recent Stories

    Clay Talks Biden and Harris Phoniness with Hannity

    22 Oct 2021

    Clay stopped by Hannity — along with Fox News Contributor Lisa Boothe — to discuss the pair of utterly inauthentic videos put out by the Biden-Harris White House to celebrate the veep’s 57th birthday.

    Recent Stories

    Sen. Blackburn: Remove Dr. Fauci for Lying to Congress

    21 Oct 2021

    CLAY: We bring in now Senator Marsha Blackburn of my home state of Tennessee. Senator Blackburn, thanks for taking time to join us in a busy week on Capitol Hill. And I want to start with you here. I know we got a lot to get into. But Dr. Fauci, based on the NIH’s own statement that came out this morning, it appears that he lied in front of Congress. At a minimum, he should have to retract much of the testimony that he has given by gain-of-function research involving covid. Do you agree with that prognosis, that analysis that I just provided? And what should happen to Dr. Fauci based on this latest NIH statement?

    SEN. BLACKBURN: Well, Clay, he should immediately be put on leave because of what he has done; and then he should be required to go back to the committee under oath and to correct the record under oath. Now, of course, I think that Dr. Fauci is one of those that should be removed because when we were saying early on we need to investigate this lab, he came out in defense of that lab.

    CLAY: That’s right.

    SEN. BLACKBURN: And now we understand why. He was in favor of keeping that quiet, why he didn’t want us investigating the lab, why he didn’t want us to look at the partners they have in some of this research.

    BUCK: Senator Blackburn, it’s Buck. I want to know what you think of the testimony today. I know you haven’t watched all of it, you’ve got other things you have got to do but you have Merrick Garland, the attorney general on Capitol Hill, responding to some pretty upset GOP members of Congress over the letter he put out from his office stating essentially that parents who are speaking out at these school board meetings about, particularly critical race theory, but other issues as well are possible domestic terrorists or insurrectionists. What do you make of it?

    SEN. BLACKBURN: Well, of course this was completely inappropriate. And moms and dads going to a school board meeting to question people that are elected and a school system that is paid for with taxpayer dollars. Some of these school boards are so arrogant and out of touch, they have forgotten that they do not work for the teachers union. They work for the people of that jurisdiction who have elected them and put them on that school board. And if you want to know why there is pornography or sexual assault or why there is critical race theory or the 1619 Project or why their children are being forced to wear masks, you have every right to go and petition your government and ask those questions. And if those individuals don’t want to answer the questions, then they ought to be resigning.

    CLAY: Senator Blackburn, a lot to get into, as I said when we started this interview, but you recently visited the border. We now know 1.7 million people have crossed the border, which is a record going back all the way to 1986 and there’s some unique circumstances associated with 1986. So for many people listening to right now border crossings the highest level of their lives.

    BUCK: Illegally.

    CLAY: What should happen. Yeah. What should happen with Secretary Mayorkas, and what did you see when you were at the border?

    SEN. BLACKBURN: Well, we thought we were going to have Secretary Mayorkas in front of us today but he has covid and did not want to testify by remote and virtually for us today. But what I saw was a lot of chaos and confusion. There’s a Border Patrol that want to do their job. The Texas highway patrol and the National Guard have stepped up under Operation Lone Star in order to protect that border. You’ve got Border Patrol that were very concerned about the Haitian migrants, the 60,000 that are headed towards that southern border. And they were very specific in their conversations with me. And, of course, I’ve been going down there now for over a decade. When I had legislation, I was working with them to deport the criminal illegal aliens. And what they’re seeing is a lot of uptick, not only in the humanitarian crisis with the trafficking of individuals, the criminal element is just much more aggressive.

    You know, there are shootings on the Mexican side of the border. They have not shot at our National Guard and highway patrol and CBP yet. They also are very concerned about all the got-aways and the amount of drug trafficking, human trafficking, the bad element that do not want to be apprehended. And that has picked up. There are hundreds of thousands of got-aways that are getting through that border.

    And I said, “Tell me what you need us to do first.” And they said, look. This situation is fixable. And that is their term. They said first go back to building the wall. That was a huge help. They’ve asked for it for decades. President Trump moved forward on it. Second, put Remain in Mexico back in place and catch-and-release so that people are not just apprehended, put on a plane to your community, told to show up in court two years later. And then allow them to exercise Title 42 so that people who are HIV-positive, people that have covid, people that have measles are not going to be put on those planes and moved into the country’s interior. And those are things that as they say if you do this and if you enforce the rule of law, we can keep this country safe.

    But right now we don’t know what is coming across the border when it comes to weapons or drugs or traffickers. We don’t know if there are people that are known terrorists in the got-aways, because we don’t really know who it is that is coming in. And you know, one thing that was so interesting, when I was leaving McAllen I met with a TSA agent. They have set up a special screening process to screen these individuals coming in to the country illegally because they do not have documentation. So they have a special screening line for them so that they can put them onto commercial flights.

    BUCK: We’re speaking to Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Senator, the bill that the Democrats and the Biden White House wants to get through, the massive reconciliation bill, $3.5 trillion of spending, the additional trillion of infrastructure and who knows what else, it has stalled out for now, so much so that yesterday Clay and I were talking on the show about reports that Senator Manchin caught in the middle of all this, your colleague, may decide to perhaps leave the Democrat Party. I’m wondering if you could just shed some lightly on where does the whole process with this massive Biden agenda bill stand, and what do you think about the reporting on Senator Manchin of West Virginia?

    SEN. BLACKBURN: Well, first, the reporting on Senator Manchin, I’ve not discussed this with him personally. I don’t see him changing parties. I do think that there are several in the Democratic Party that would like to conduct themselves in a more independent framework simply because they don’t agree with what is happening in the Democratic Party. And a big part of that is this massive spending bill. And of course last week we heard that they were so frustrated they couldn’t get the three and a half trillion, which is, which is really five trillion, across the finish line; so they were gonna pare it back, keep all of the programs, put ’em in as pilot projects or as one-year programs, but make them mandatory so that then in following years you have to fund these programs.

    So you would see all of this increase in the welfare state, government pushing to take control of your kids, your health care, your bank account, they would still move forward with that, move forward with the Green New Deal, move forward with what they’re wanting to do with Medicare and Medicaid. It’s just they would do it for a shorter period of time and say, “Look. We got our wish list down. We can pay for this with one and a half trillion dollars.”

    CLAY: Senator Blackburn, last question for you, and I appreciate your time. I saw you tweet out about this, and I know we discussed this before. Enes Kanter, who is a basketball player for the Boston Celtics, came out and said, among other things, that — I think everybody, almost, listening to us would agree with him — that Chairman Xi in China is a brutal dictator and that the people under his thumb deserve freedom. As a result, China has pulled Boston Celtics games off television inside of their country. Do you hope to see other NBA players speak out like Enes Kanter did against China, and do you support him fully in his commentary?

    SEN. BLACKBURN: Yes. You know, we have really been surprised with how some of these American corporations — the NBA, Apple, and others — kowtow to the communist Chinese. And this just shows you if you are not in complete agreement with them, then they are going to cut you off.

    And look at what they are doing. Chairman Xi of course he is a brutal dictator. Look at the genocide that they’re carrying out on the Uyghurs. Look at how they treat the Tibetans. Look at what they have done to the Hong Kong freedom fighters. Look at how they are terrorizing Taiwan, continuing to fly those fighters across Taiwan. We know what they are doing. Look at what they did last week with testing out hypersonics and beginning to say, “USA, we can hit the homeland.” Look at how they have partnered up with the Taliban there in Afghanistan so they can get that land route. I just think the more people realize that the Chinese Communist Party is a bad actor, they are not a competitor, they are not an ally, they are an adversary. They want to be globally dominant by the time we get to the middle of the century. And we have to push back. So for Enes Kanter, good on him for going after the Chinese Communist Party.

    BUCK: Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Senator, we really appreciate you being with us. Thank you so much.

    SEN. BLACKBURN: You got it. Take care.

    Recent Stories

    DeSantis, Abbott Lead Pushback Against Vaccine Mandates

    21 Oct 2021


    BUCK: Let’s start with the good news from Florida as of today. I was very excited to see this. Clay, we have a member of the Florida State legislature. What Texas has done is say at the executive level, no vaccine mandates period. That means the same way your business cannot discriminate on the basis of race, can only serve some customers, you know, there are some things that states cannot or can allow, depending what we’re talking about, businesses to do. And looks like in Florida they’re going through the legislative arm instead of just the executive branch. Governor DeSantis announced a special session to pass legislation to protect Floridians’ medical freedom and right to earn a living. Florida is fighting back against unjust mandates. That was the tweet from Representative Anthony Sabatini of Florida this morning. Clay, this is the pushback, my friend.

    CLAY: It’s what we need to see. And we have talked a lot about this in the context of federalism and the good fortune that we have that Republican governors have existed at all in this country because if they didn’t we might well be Canada or Australia and have been locked down for much of the past year with no recourse because everybody would have been out there trying to do the same thing, right? And so as you break this down and start to analyze it, it is a really big and strong and monumental and important thing that Governors Abbott and, certainly, DeSantis are doing. And the way that this is going, I believe, is going to end up in a massive battle, legally.

    Let me say this too. It’s important for people like us with substantial audiences to keep hammering a fact which is an inconvenient truth that most will not discuss. Florida yesterday had the lowest rate of covid in the contiguous United States. Only Hawaii yesterday, according to New York Times data, had a lower rate per capita of covid infection than Florida.

    BUCK: Clay, we have to find out how Governor Ron DeSantis managed to spread the covid everywhere else in the country. He must control the seasons.

    CLAY: And it’s also important — and this is why I would love to have Dr. Fauci — and we need to get to basically Fauci being proven to be a liar, Rand Paul being proven correct based on an NIH statement during the course of today’s show. But, Buck, Vermont, which is one of the most vaccinated states in the entire country — nobody is covering this — is consistently setting every day new highs in covid. Over 90% of adults in Vermont are testing positive for covid, despite 90%of people being vaccinated new highs are being set in covid cases. And the question that Dr. Fauci and everybody of his ilk should have to answer is one that I bet Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas would like to ask as well: If everybody being vaccinated eliminates covid, how do you explain Vermont? There is no explanation.

    BUCK: They’re still clinging to “It’s only the unvaccinated.”

    CLAY: Which is untrue.

    BUCK: Which is not correct, right? So this is where there’s a little bit of a panic, I think, among the establishment, the medical establishment. I would also note that, you know, Clay, we here on this show were pushing for protection against private sector mandates, maybe even had a discussion with a governor from another state who did not seem interested and wanted to give a phony, pseudo-constitutional lecture on how a state cannot do what in fact the states of Texas and now Florida will be doing because when you understand the nature of what the left is trying to accomplish here, you can see their next moves. It was pretty clear that they were going to be using the private sector to force people to get the shot. And I also think, in addition to the businesses that are doing it, people are now seeing — and I’m not saying — I hate the, “Oh, they’re coming for your children.”

    CLAY: Yeah.

    BUCK: There will be blue states that are mandating your 6-year-old get the covid vaccine. It’s going to happen within 90 days. They’re going to be mandating it.


    And so now people are saying, okay, so what do we do? We’re gonna sit around and give each other, you know, give each other pats on the back because we’re small government or whatever while everyone’s being forced to get the shot or get fired or have to take all these extreme measures that the government’s mandating. So Florida and Texas leading the charge holding line. Remember, Florida’s not — there are other redder states that are not being as courageous on this issue. Florida is, you know, a little red, but it’s not that red. So to get the Florida legislature moving behind this and to take this action so that people won’t lose their jobs over this is slowing some real courage on the part of the Republican legislators and also Governor Ron DeSantis there. I wish it would be mirrored in some of the redder states.

    CLAY: Well, it should be mirrored in every state that has the opportunity to do this because at a minimum we are headed for a Supreme Court review of how do we determine the legality here? Can the federal government — which by the way, Buck, I want to keep emphasizing, they still haven’t promulgated their officials rules. They announced that they were going to do it, but the OSHA requirement on covid vaccination for any company that has over a hundred employees, that still hasn’t happened. And so I continue to believe that not only do you need to stand up to it because it makes it clear this is gonna be a legal battle, but I think the Biden administration is aware that that might be a legal battle they lose. And so they’re trying to drag out the implementation of these covid vaccine requirements, the mandates from the federal government as long as they can so that hopefully — I really think it’s this — they are hoping they can say, “Hey, so many people went ahead and got vaccinated that now we don’t have to implement a federal mandate. We still think individual companies should do it, but we’re gonna back off.” They’re gonna give us a carrot after threatening to hit us with a stick.

    BUCK: Absolutely. And you start to look at this, Clay, can the federal government mandate that every household in America has to buy a firearm? I mean, under the expansive approach that the Democrats seem to take here of the Commerce Clause and the federal government in this case using OSHA but, you know, where does this stop and start? If you don’t leave certain things to states only, we often talk about federalism here on the show, then you just have a D.C.-based super legislature and states are effectively irrelevant. There are things that should be left to the states, and health is overwhelmingly one of them, especially when it comes to things like quarantine powers and safety regulations and things of that nature. States have a tremendous leeway with that. They have plenary powers. Florida and Texas recognize that.

    CLAY: Yeah, and so this is a little bit of a complicated legal dynamic, but I do think people should be aware of this. By trying to have OSHA mandate it, what would end up being the dispute is, does OSHA have the authority to mandate a federal vaccine? And it’s different than, for instance, if the Congress tried to mandate it. I think there’s a lot of people out there if you want to have that debate and if you want to go into the House and you want to go in the Senate and you want the federal government to trying to mandate under legislative power. But what they’re trying to do is put this under the OSHA regulatory regime which is the same thing, Buck, that was found to a certain degree to be unconstitutional because, remember, when we go back to the eviction moratorium that the Supreme Court shut down, that was not a federal legislation. That was also under the CDC, and they found that it exceeded the scope of the CDC’s authority to keep evictions from occurring as a public health matter. Similarly, I think it’s likely that the agency and regulatory states of this regulation being promulgated underneath OSHA is not going to be permissible, whereas if they went to Congress and the House and the Senate said we’re gonna do this, that would be a stronger case.

    BUCK: This is because the bureaucracy has become the fourthly and unelected branch of our government, in many ways more powerful than, more intrusive than even what you get from the legislative branch and the judiciary and the elected executive branch in the sense that you actually have members of Congress and the president — well, the president obviously and then members of Congress are part of the legislative. But the point here being you’re not supposed to be living at the whim of the EPA or —

    CLAY: Unelected officials.

    BUCK: — the OSHA or HHS. HHS is a massive institution in America now. And when they say things like, “Oh, but it’s private businesses making these decisions,” the federal government behind the scenes because of Medicare and Medicaid and all these different HHS regulations and reimbursements calls the shots in the hospital system. People don’t understand. It’s not as simple as — I’ve got a lot of Libertarian friends. They have not been particularly helpful in this fight against covid because they keep thinking there’s some neutral space here that we’re defending when really we’re just taking artillery rounds all the time.

    CLAY: Yeah.

    BUCK: The other side does whatever they want. And I think Florida and Texas, to bring it all back, are making the right move by at least. They gotta try to defend these basic rights. You know, to your point about how the courts play this out, Clay, we’ll see. But beyond that, timing here really matters. Even delaying it 60, 90 days, maybe six months, might mean the difference between a really onerous and aggressive mandate going into effect. Because once the needle goes into your arm it’s done and this is why back in August I felt so vociferously about taking action in red states. And I have a feeling some other red states may be taking action. But I will not getting any apology notes from my governors I have a feeling too.

    CLAY: Here’s the other thing I think procedurally that you hit on that’s so important: timing. There are a lot of companies out there in Texas and Florida that may not want to take this vaccine mandate but need a fig leaf. They need a cover, legally, to be able to argue where they are not doing it. DeSantis and Abbott now have given them that fig leaf. And I think we need that in many other states, as many as we possibly can.

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