CLAY: I just want to hit this AOC angle, right? So you’re in Miami Beach where AOC is, and for those of you who didn’t see it over the weekend, AOC flees her home district of New York during the holidays, goes to the free state of Florida, is out maskless at many different public events — and by public events, I mean they’re open to the public and she’s in a restaurant or she’s in a bar or whatever. And, by the way, I don’t begrudge that.

Obviously, that should be the standard. But you can’t have 2-year-olds in your home district of New York required to wear masks and then — because you are fortunate enough to be able to hop on a plane and go down to Miami and have your holiday — you don’t have to wear masks. It’s very easy and I think it should be paramount among people who are in the public sphere like you or me to hold people in public office and public life in general accountable to follow the rules that they would propagate upon everything else themselves.

If Republicans are mad they can’t date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet.

Ya creepy weirdos https://t.co/Z7bZCgXpWJ

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 31, 2021

And so, the criticism of AOC I think is entirely valid because it is emblematic of a hypocrisy. If it’s unsafe for you to be without a mask in a public restaurant or a public venue, then why are you doing it in Florida and traveling for your vacation to do it when you’re not allowing your own constituents to do it? AOC responded, Buck, by saying that this criticism was born of sexual frustration on behalf of Republicans. A couple things here.

One, can you imagine if Donald Trump had responded to criticisms from Democrats by saying these are just criticisms from Democrats ’cause I’ve got a hot wife and most of them have ugly wives and they are sexually frustrated in their lives. The world would have come undone if Trump, who does have a really good-looking wife, had said that criticism of him was born from sexual frustration from his critics. They would have lost their minds.

Second part. Why is it that that statement can be made by AOC — who, by the way, is good-looking for a politician. She’s not good-looking for an actress or good-looking for a public celebrity figure on Instagram or something like that. She is good-looking for a politician. Why can she just use the fact that she’s good-looking as a shield to deflect her from all valid criticism, and how in the world can Democrats even allow that to be a standard? Because they’re talking all the time about “privilege.” Is hot girl privilege not a thing? Does AOC just get to argue, “Hey, I’m really good-looking and that’s why my critics are upset”? This, to me, is a crazy story that happened that most people just totally allowed to pass.

BUCK: You see all the actions of these Democrats who are some of the most vocal proponents of lockdowns, and really it’s a virtue-signaling extravaganza for a lot of people, the whole, the mask wearing and the Democrats are the, “Oh, we’re so serious about this.” They do this in public because the neurotics in the Democrat Party, who also just because there’s an overriding godlessness within the Democrat Party…

I will just say it and the replacement of traditional faith with climate change belief and these other religion replacements. They can’t even allow themselves to comprehend that we’re all going to die and that actually there’s nothing the state can do to keep you alive forever. But putting that aside for a moment, you see with AOC, you see with so many of these politicians, they’re not as scared of covid as they pretend to be in public.

CLAY: Yes!

BUCK: And this keeps happening, whether it’s Mayor Bowser in D.C. or it’s London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco. You go through all these names. Nancy Pelosi getting her hair down in the salon with the mask down. All this stuff, you keep seeing it, and it’s so very obvious to people. But I really do think that we’re going through a period of mask mental illness with the Democrat base, because they’ve become addicted to the fear of the insurrection, the fear of Russia collusion and the fear of covid.

All of these things are used to manipulate people in ways — really it’s classic brainwashing. It is a cultlike mentality because, Clay, new information is rejected. Break your ties to people that don’t go along — the unvaccinated, of course. If you look at the way they bring people into cults and a lot of the Democrat response to data and fact and reason in the era of covid, it aligns. It’s actually quite similar.

CLAY: Yeah, and what’s really frustrating is just the failure to hold people to a basic standard of your public and private life should in many ways reflect your authentically held beliefs. To your point, the real lesson here is the people that were constantly screaming, “You’re in danger from covid” don’t actually believe what they’re screaming. And it’s not a difficult proposition, by the way, for AOC.

Even if she is not the most astute politician of all time, when you take a vacation to Miami and you decide to gallivant about without wearing a mask — again, while you are requiring 2-year-olds in your own district, while you are supporting the idea that 2-year-olds should have to wear masks — that hypocrisy is so rank. And then when you get criticized for it, to fall upon the idea that you are good-looking and that’s why people are criticizing you is next level dishonest!

BUCK: One of the problems of someone like AOC is that she has an outsized influence in the national conversation because of social media and because a lot of dumbest leftists are of this generation that supports AOC. They don’t know anything. So her ignorance almost becomes a calling card of sorts. It’s, well, she just gonna say crazy things that are absurd but make people who don’t know very much about the world feel better about themselves.

But I also feel like we spend more time in… It’s not just AOC. There are others, and it’s not just members of The Squad and Congress. Pelosi says plenty of stupid things too. We spend more time analyzing this and we have to realize ultimately, Clay, they don’t care that they’re wrong. Ultimately, AOC couldn’t actually make an argument, doesn’t have to make an argument about why it’s okay for her to do this while 2-year-olds are masking. And the fact that she has this, as you rightly point out, really embarrassing — intellectually flimsy is too kind a way to put it — response, “Oh, ’cause people are sexually frustrated by me!” I don’t want to go there.

CLAY: That’s why they’re criticizing you for not wearing a mask? Has no connection whatsoever.

BUCK: It’s just bizarre. But it’s a little bit like people who just cry misogyny or racism the moment that they’re caught up in something, right? It’s like, “Hey, wait. This public figure, this member of Congress didn’t pay their taxes or isn’t paying spousal support! Racism, misogyny,” or whatever. This is the game that the left plays all the time. One of the big challenges that I think we continue to have is that right now you or I will debate any person on Planet Earth about the Biden administration’s policies on masking and forced vaccination, and I would verbally annihilate them.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I think they recognize this at some level because that’s why they never subject themselves to public criticism.

CLAY: And, by the way, we would have these people on our show.

BUCK: Sure, yes.

CLAY: We’re not running from them. If AOC wanted to come on and explain why everybody is so sexually frustrated because she didn’t have a mask on, like, “Hey, we’ll allow you to come on. You’ll get destroyed. You’ll get absolutely ridiculed,” and that’s the problem. Most in the media won’t do that. Right? There is no standard.

BUCK: There’s no standard, and it’s true of Fauci. It’s true of all these other voices right now. How come no one’s asked them just in a live, open public forum, “You guys said this would stop the spread. Has this stopped the spread?” Ask them, and don’t allow them to (impression), “Oh, the data over time, the iterations of the mitigation.” No. Were you wrong? And if you were wrong, why aren’t you admitting it?

Why haven’t you said it before? And what does that mean going forward? There is no accountability for this anymore. They’ve created this bubble of elite consensus that’s really actually, it’s like people that think they’re the best golfers in the world just because they’re never leaving the country club where they play, right?

You gotta actually subject yourself to the broader world if you’re gonna say that you’re right. They will not do it. It’s appalling, and that’s why they get away with this stuff. But, yeah, AOC, some of her… I guess what I’m trying to say about her, Clay, is some of the things — a lot of the things — she says are so stupid that I actually feel debased as a public commentator having to explain how dumb they are.

CLAY: I think that’s well said. What’s disappointing is, how in the world can she get away with making that argument? The argument she should follow is just, “Hey, I follow whatever state and local regulations exist wherever I am in the country. I understand that that can be frustrating, but that’s the world we live in right now.” It’s not a great answer, but at least it’s an answer.

“I’m not wearing a mask and the reason why you are picking on me for not wearing a mask is because of your sexual frustrations” is such an incredibly strange argument to make. The fact is that everyone out there in the media — MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fox News — should be teeing off on a lie that is that obvious. We don’t get that.