BUCK: We wanted to talk to you about the mask situation ’cause, Clay, I think this is in many ways the perfect preview of what we should all expect tonight because masks all of a sudden are dropping all over the place. I no longer get the angry stares of “You’re an evil granny killer” when I walk into a coffee shop, whatever, without a mask on here in New York. All of a sudden — like magic — Jen Psaki wants to say this about the whole situation.

PSAKI: I would say the president is very powerful, but he couldn’t make us be in the green zone that we’re in right now in D.C. That’s why we are not, uh, required — not gonna be required — to wear masks starting tomorrow. So, uh, I would say that for him it had nothing to do with the timing around the State of the Union. Uh, he wanted to give the CDC the time to assess and make recommendations that would be clear to the American public about, uh, what their recommendations would be for mask wearing moving forward.

BUCK: Just real quick, Clay, I just would say, “If anyone believes that…” I don’t care what their part. “If anyone believes that, please don’t vote because you are not able to think through problems of politics and policy in a way that is even remotely sound.” It is the most obvious lie anyone could ever conjure, and she’s saying it all the time.

CLAY: It is. Think about this, Buck. Friday, the CDC comes out with new guidelines. Those new guidelines, by the way, are what allows there to be a green area, because, make no mistake, the overall rate of covid infectious right now is still wildly higher than it was for much of last year, and certainly wildly higher than it was for much of 2020 when everything shut down.

There are way more cases of covid right now than there were in March of 2020 when we did 15 days to stop the spread. Remember all that insanity the years ago? The reason why masks are now being removed is because the CDC redefined what the overall characteristics of high levels of spread and everything else were. So this is 100% a political decision.

This is about the political science, not the science at all. And what’s so frustrating to many of us is we’ve known this for so long that this was what was going to happen. And the fantastic that you got the CDC on Friday, Buck; you’ve got New York State and New York City over the weekend announcing their changes. You’ve got California, Washington, and Oregon announcing their changes, all of that happening before Joe Biden speaks tonight which Joe Biden’s pollsters came out, Buck, and said, “You’re getting hammered on this.

“We have to change the trajectory. You need to declare victory against covid and move on because that’s where the American public now is.” But the problem is that’s not good enough. And this is what we’re gonna continue to hammer off and on. You may get tired of us saying it for the next eight months. First of all, they’re going to bring back covid restrictions, like, even now they’re saying, “Well, we’re doing away with this now while we can.

“But we may bring them back: Masks on kids, social distancing, mask mandates, all of that.” So it’s not going away. It’s going away for some places for right now. That’s why the midterms have to be an evisceration, and I appreciated what you said, Buck, because I think it’s the message that Republicans should run with. Biden’s a disaster.

But the 2022 midterms, while being partly a referendum on Biden, are really a referendum on all senators and congressmen and your school board members and your local administrators and your local officials who did this to us, and were wrong about everything. There have to be consequences for all of these people being wrong about everything, and those consequences need to be a red wave the likes of which we have not seen. Everybody needs to be a single-issue voter, and it’s covid failure. That’s what you are casting your ballot about.

BUCK: You’re either voting for freedom or voting for tyranny this fall. Everyone should know this. That is actually a true way to put the choice that is before the American people in the midterm election. I know that it’s only March, but, friends, this is creep up on us fast. And the people who have been in charge who have been so wrong about everything, they’re not humbled. They’re not sorry. They’re not sitting around thinking, “How can we do better next time?”

Their only thought process really, in terms of what will guide their actions and how they will conduct themselves, whether it’s Biden, Democrats in the Senate, the House — all the blue check doctors that have been on CNN and MSNBC and writing for the New York Times, the Washington Post, constantly over two years — who were wrong about basically everything. None of them were saying to themselves, “Wow, maybe we should have listened to the Clay and Buck show,” which would have been a smart thing for them to come away with.

CLAY: (laughing) That’s how bad things were, Buck: If you and I had been in charge of American covid policy, the country would be in an infinitely better place.

BUCK: Economy would be better. Mental health across the country would be better.

CLAY: Kids would be better educated.

BUCK: Kids would be better off. Focus more on protecting and getting every single senior… Think about the messaging damage — and I know we have the whole other State of the Union. We’re gonna get into the economy and how they’re gonna try to spin inflation. This is gonna be really tough. This is gonna be the waiter who shows up and is charging you three times as much for your dinner as you thought it was gonna be and is explaining to you, “It’s not that expensive.

“It’s not that bad. This is fine! You loved those french fries.” Anyway, Clay, the reality of what we have seen here during covid is a collapse of the elite in real time, a collapse of their credibility, a collapse of — I would hope; this is the part of it that remains to be determined — their ability to control us going forward. And they’re gonna fight with everything they have against us. They’re not thinking to themselves, “Hold on a second.

“What is it that we can do here that will bring the country back together?” All that really matters is maintaining power, staying in charge, and being in a position to do all this stuff to us again. Yeah, if we had been in charge of the country it would have been better. Think of how much, if instead of trying to convince 5-year-olds… Oh, I saw you shared that data, Clay.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Vaccine boosters, for, what was it, 5- to 12-year-olds?

The Pfizer “covid vaccine” offered almost no protection against infection for kids ages 5-11. Considering these kids are under virtually zero risk from covid, giving them this shot is absolute insanity. https://t.co/dGATgh4uRW

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) March 1, 2022

CLAY: Vaccines themselves for 5 to 11 years old have had virtually zero impact in limiting the kids getting infected. So everybody out there who rushed — and I said straight up, “People are gonna call you anti-vax.” I didn’t get my 5-year-old vaxxed, now 7-year-old, I didn’t get my 11-year-old vaxxed. I’m not going to do it, okay. Five- to 11-year-olds, zero positive result when it comes to rates of infection based on getting the covid shot.

And, by the way, that’s written in the New York Times. Even the New York Times is writing it for people out there who are like, “I don’t know that I trust that data.” If you ran out and got your 5- to 11-year-old vaxxed for covid, you got them zero positive impact effectively. They didn’t need the vax to start with, but the vax had no impact on whether they got covid.

BUCK: And yet we could just go back three or four months and people were in hysterics about waiting to get their children vaxxed. “Oh, my gosh!”

CLAY: They were crying and all the kids crying, like, “Oh, we could finally get the covid shot!” It’s child abuse that they had made their kids think they were afraid.

BUCK: Think of all the sociopaths that were taking photos of themselves with their writhing, crying children getting a shot in the arm. They were, the adults, were trying to show everybody how seriously they take the virus. These people are idiots. And it’s terrifying we have to share our country with so many millions of lib idiots. I’m just gonna be honest with you. I actually thought…

This has been a change in my perception of people around me. I thought even like the Democrats that I grew up around and within New York City would be far more rational during covid than they were. I know I wasn’t gonna get them to agree with me on a lot of other things, but I figured they could realize that building a little miniature restaurant outside of a restaurant wasn’t it actually doing anything from an epidemiological point of view.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I figured they could understand that when every single study shows that there’s almost zero, globally, transmission of covid outside, riding around New York City on a bicycle with an N95 mask on is psychotic. I was wrong. I was wrong. They were crazier than I thought. And for people ask me, why am I so angry at Fauci…? I see this in my Twitter responses, which I try to not look at unless it’s someone on our team, one of our people.

But I see people will say, “Fauci did the best he can. You could have done any better.” Really? There was an alternate way to go. We talked about the alternate way to go. There was the Great Barrington Declaration. The fact that there were seniors still who didn’t get vaccinated — many of whom were distrustful of this whole situation because of how much was politicized — just goes to show you the messaging was a massive failure.

Imagine if we had all been united. We said all along, our parents… I love nobody in the world more than I love my parents. You feel the same way. You love your immediate family members more than anything else. My parents were vaccinated and boosted. You said it too. Imagine if we could have been united as a country on, “Look, guys, this really is a disease that threatens those 65 and up.

“We really know this. We all agree on this. Let’s make sure all of them know it’s really in their interest, not mandating it but really in their interests to get the shot.” It’s a lot harder to make that case when Fauci is running around saying, “I think your 5-year-old is gonna need an eight-dose regimen, maybe 12 doses.” You know, people understandably see that and say, “These people are lunatics.”

CLAY: And when college kids are protesting because they’re not having to wear masks, I mean, the entirety — and this is a good debate question that we should have I think going to find, now that every mask mandate’s being basically ended and the vax mandates are being ended, when in the world are they gonna take it off for airplanes, right? Because that’s the last place — and as the Southwest Airlines and the American Airlines CEO said under oath, actually.

Based on the recirculated air, the safest place, probably, that you could be is on an airplane when it comes to whether or not covid is spreading there. But this idea that we have to continue this the cosmetic theater of sitting around and pulling down your mask while you take a drink and then putting it back up and wearing it informant of the airports in general, it’s madness. It’s absolute madness.

BUCK: Clay, you and I understand this, and our people, our extend family — which is everyone listening to this across the country — they understand this too. This isn’t over when they stop with these mandates. It’s over when they admit the mandates were wrong.

CLAY: And had no impact. Which is really why we played that Saturday Night Live skit, because this is where we say, “Team Rationality is gaining members every single day.” It’s time some people a long time to come on board, but when Saturday Night Live is doing that skit… If you didn’t see it, you can go see it on Twitter. We played it for you; I think it’s up at ClayAndBuck.com. When they are making fun of the ridiculousness of all these restrictions, they’re basically acknowledging that they had no impact. That’s what they’re doing. They’re not saying it directly, but that’s basically what their acknowledging.