BUCK: There’s obviously something happening right now, and we’re not being told the whole truth. There are people who say they know answers about what the covid spread is, what’s behind it right now. There are people who tell you they can protect you, that if you just listen to them, everything will be much, much better.

But what exactly could the justification be if you look at the data? I mean, what is the rationalization of what’s happening here? They don’t really have any good answers for you. You look at places like Florida and Texas. Right now, CNN has “Texas, Arizona, Florida push back against covid mitigation measures.” They want particularly Florida, but all these states to cave in right now.

Here is what’s going on. The Broward County of Florida school superintendent is saying they’re just gonna go against the state mandate here.

VICKIE CARTWRIGHT: You know, my core value is students first. No amount of personal financial loss will cause me to go against this value. No amount of money can compare to a person’s life or the impact that this virus may have on a person or their family.

BUCK: Clay, this is where we are now. They’re just going to do what they want to do. She’s saying that… All the governor is telling people is parents have choice.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Schools can’t make kids mask up if their parents don’t want them to and some school districts are saying, “No, Governor.” Well, that’s not how our system works, Clay.

CLAY: Yeah. Look, I want to give some data. One of the things that we try to do on this show is — and this is a big story, and I think there’s a lot of discussion around it right now, and I understand why people sometimes feel overwhelmed. But the way the daily media cycle… Buck, it’s like you’re drinking from a fire hose.

If you’re just right now tuning in to us and you’re like, “Hey, what’s going on?” what I believe we can do is be as honest as possible with our audience with real data and try to interpret that for you. So let me give you a couple of data points here. We’ve got an article up at Outkick right now.

I’d encourage you to check out Outkick.com, the site I run. In the past year, according to the CDC, there have been 40,396, kids 11 and under, die. There is an awful story that is a tragedy for each of those parents. I’ve got three kids. Everybody knows once you become a parent, you have two primary fears. One, that something could happen to your kid

And, two, that you might not be there to raise them to adulthood. That’s every single parent no matter your race, no matter your gender, everything. So these are all tragedies: 40,396 kids 11 and under have died since the start of 2020. Fewer than 200 of those deaths are from covid. That means 99.5%, roughly, of all deaths that have occurred in children 11 and under are from something other than covid.

Now, this is a big deal to me because I think it ties in with the fear, because the fear really is about kids and masking and everything else. So I walked my kids, Buck, to school this morning, my two youngest, my first grader and my fifth grader. They’ve now implemented a mask mandate in the area where I live, but they’re not really endorsing it. Everybody was walking in.

I would say the vast majority of parents their kids did not have masks on; these are not parents, by the way, that are making irrational decisions because they want to risk their children’s lives. I think this is important about parent choice. I care more about my kids’ health and safety than I do anything going on in my life.

I look at all the data and know that wearing a mask is not making them safer. And I think that’s what the vast majority of parents out there are doing. And, Buck, unfortunately, you know how we’re gonna be covered ’cause we already saw it. CNN is doing hit pieces based on the event that I went.

In the past year 40,396 kids under 11 years old have tragically died in the United States. Less than 200 of those deaths were caused by covid. https://t.co/9LZPozaj2s

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 12, 2021

We played you yesterday the clip of my speaking at the school board meeting, and CNN today, this morning, Ali, our producer texts and us says, “Hey, CNN has got video where they’re trying to make everybody, thousand-or-more parents who showed up like they’re Neanderthals who don’t care about science.”

BUCK: Yeah. You’re mask insurrectionists, Clay.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: That’s actually happening right now. That’s the circumstance. That’s the situation. Play clip 1.

AMARA WALKER: They ended up voting in favor of, of a temporary — temporary! — mask mandate that would only apply to the elementary school students there. And what you saw after this meeting in the parking lot was the anger — and, frankly, the vitriol boiling over with supporters — or I should say opponents of masks lashing out at the supporters of masks and even heckling people walking out of that meeting wearing masks! “We know who you are. We will find you.” We also heard someone in the background saying, “I am a parent.” So, uhhh, these are parents heckling other parents, Erica.

ERICA HILL: What an example they’re setting. It is disturbing, to put it mildly.

BUCK: Play the world’s smallest violin and pass around the soy milk, Clay. You were there. Here’s CNN is trying to make it seem like anyone who shows up at a meeting like this to voice their opinion about what Ireland found… Tucker did had his show last night on Fox the study that the Irish did. They looked at the data; it’s basically child abuse.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: You’re making kids uncomfortable, causing anxiety. It does not make them safer. Obviously, people should be upset about that but the hysterics to think that Little Timmy or Little Susie is gonna die if they don’t have some stupid please of cloth over their face all day? They’re the barbarians who are threatening people now. That’s what they’re saying.

CLAY: Yeah. And this is emblematic of how unfair reporting can be, right? We talked about the mostly peaceful protests that CNN covered for months, the BLM riots that were taken place all over the country, and what did they say? Even the people who were burning down police buildings, who were trying to burn down courthouses, they were saying, “Oh, that’s a small minority of the protesters.”

A couple of people are really fired up as these people who have gotten a mask mandate put in place walk outside of the building, and they tell them, “Hey, we think there should be consequences for what has happened here,” and this, to me, is indicative of what happens when your representatives — and I had a buddy call me, and I’m curious what you think about this, Buck.

I had a buddy call me and he said, “You know what? I’ve never paid attention to who’s on the school board before.” That’s what he said, candidly. He’s got four kids, and he said, “I’ve never cared. I pay attention to who I vote for governor, I pay attention to who I vote for Senate, all those things.” He said, “I’ve never thought about the school board. But what this showed me is the school board, the lowest level of the democratic process, often can have the most impact.”

I bet most of you out there listening to us right now… I put myself in this category. I didn’t know who my school board representative was. I never really thought about it when I went in to vote. I’m gonna care now because they are not reflecting — in our neighborhood and in our county, they aren’t reflecting — the democratic values of the people. And so when you do that, you create anger, and you create discord and distrust. And that’s what we saw in the wake of that meeting.

BUCK: It’s gonna get worse, everybody, unfortunately across the country. It’s gonna get worse because you have more of the dominoes falling. You have the governor of New York, incoming governor of New York, Hochul, saying gonna be a universal statewide mask mandate in all schools in New York. Does anybody think that California’s not the gonna make sure that they —

CLAY: Kentucky just did it, Buck! Kentucky just made a universal mask mandate for everybody in the schools.

BUCK: Kentucky. It’s even hard to keep up because these things are changing day in and day out in these states. What they really want is Florida because Florida is the beacon of freedom, has been the beacon all along of they did not lock down, they did not go to that place that they were told they had to or else it was gonna be an experiment in death and all this other stuff that they said.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Now what they’re desperate to make sure happens is that Florida can’t be the control group because if you have schools in Florida without masks and all these other states with mandatory masks for children, we’ll be able to do a very clean comparison of whether or not this stuff matters.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: And I’m telling you, I would bet a large sum of money on if we can get to this place where we see what the control group of Florida says, we’ll know that this is all stupid and the people that are pushing this are hysterical loons. They want to avoid that at all costs. So all they need is Broward County, a few others to have… If you have a patchwork system, it’s gonna be, “Well, the data is muddled.”

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: “We can’t really see. Some schools had it; some schools didn’t.” We need to have some places that hold the line against this madness, and I’m worried that pressure right now is gaining so much. And part of it, Clay, is how are we having when we have…? What is it? Over 190 million people in the U.S. have gotten at least one dose of this vaccine; 163.9 million people have been fully vaccinated.

And we’re being told that there are some states that have 50%/60% vaccination rates that are, “Oh, my gosh, the Delta variant’s gonna get us!” It’s only possible for this to be as bad as it is right now if there are some things that they’re not telling us yet but we’re gonna find out soon, like this vaccine or the vaccines wear off even faster than was anticipated.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — which, when you hear Dr. Anthony Fauci saying — he said it today, Clay — everyone’s gonna need a booster.

CLAY: And I’ll tell you this. These are quotes from Axios that I saw this morning, number one story: “Biden’s covid fear: Fading vaccines,” and it says here, “Surprising new research,” not surprising to people who have been paying attention to this show, “shows the effectiveness of covid vaccines,” I’m reading directly from Axios, “fading faster than expected, raising fears inside the Biden administration about the health and messaging consequences for Americans.”

I’m reading directly from Axios, and this is a senior Biden official that is not named, but the quote here is, “I think everybody believes this wanes over time. The question is, to what extent? Nobody wants to be behind the eight ball here. We want to catch it before there’s an issue, and that’s why there is very intense scrutiny.” They’re looking at Israel, Buck. They are looking at England.

Israel is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, and the overall hospitalization rates are skyrocketing. There is very — and we talked to Alex Berenson last week. A lot of people criticize Alex Berenson. They try to cancel him. But the data doesn’t lie, and ultimately the data is telling us there are major issues with these vaccines and how long they last.

BUCK: We’ll come back to this in a second ’cause there’s also a New York Magazine piece that looks at vaccine duration of protection, and this is a huge. you can imagine what the implications of this are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We are trying to be one of the last places you can have an intelligent conversation about data, risk analysis, and everything else as the continuing covid madness spreads across the country. I was talking about the mask-related situations, and CNN did this morning a story ripping the parents who had shown up for the school board meeting that I spoke at on Tuesday night.

We talked about it and played the clip on Wednesday. I actually went on with Tucker and had a good conversation with him. He did a great job, Tucker Carlson did, last night on Fox News laying out exactly more arguments for why masking children is pure madness. But CNN — and you know this, Buck. They are trying to portray everyone who is opposed to masking children as if they are lunatics.

And I will just say this. Thousand people showed up. Almost all of them very respectful making the arguments that they hold dear. You know how this works, Buck. You find one or two people, and you use them as a stand-in for arguing that everybody is irrational and deranged who is in favor of kids not wearing masks.

BUCK: Yeah, I remember when I used to cover the Occupy Wall Street protests back when I started at The Blaze.

CLAY: Oh yeah.

BUCK: There were people that I could have interviewed and put on air that were talking about, like, the lizard space lords that were actually running Wall Street and the flying saucers.

CLAY: (laughing) Right.

BUCK: But I realized, “Okay, that’s not really a fair representation of the overall Marxist lunacy here. “So I’ll go to somebody who’s actually gonna talk about how money does grow on trees and AOC actually understands economics,” although she wasn’t in office at that point. But you get what I’m saying. I gotta tell you, this clip they have, Clay, of the guy… We gotta play it ’cause otherwise —

CLAY: We’ll try to run and hide from it.

BUCK: You have all these parents, all these parents who are just saying, “Hey, with stop abusing our kids with your anti-science nonsense,” and this is what CNN wants people to take away.

MAN 1: Everybody’s taking notes, buddy! (unintelligible)

WOMAN 1: Put it back on!

MAN 1: Put that mask on!

WOMAN 1: Put the mask on!

MAN 1: We know who you are!

MAN 2: Keep it calm!

MAN 1: We know who you are!

MAN 2: Let’s keep it — keep it calm!

MAN 1: No more masks!

MAN 2: Keep it calm! Keep it calm.

MAN 1: No more masks!

MAN 2: (referring to police) We’re on these guys’ side. They’re…

MAN 1: No.

MAN 2: …on our side.

MAN 1: No, they’re not. They’re not on our side.

MAN 2: Police are on our side. Police are on our side. Let’s calm down.

CLAY: All right. So they find one or two people who are fired up — and look, I get it, because you’re not having your democratic rights respected.

BUCK: They weren’t even that bad. They weren’t threatening anybody.

CLAY: It’s not even that bad in the grand scheme of things, but they’re gonna play that over and over. And you know what already happened, Buck? One of my buddies sent me the Daily Mail and he’s saying, “Hey, are these your quotes?” and the Daily Mail has these guys’ quotes, and they have my picture up like it was me speaking and saying!

BUCK: You’re not only the leader of the masked insurrection.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I have to be the unmasked bandit and keep it stealthy here in New York because I’m completely outnumbered, but you can actually lead a rebellion —

CLAY: We got the revolution that would win. We’ve got the revolutionary army that would actually win. I don’t think there’s any doubt about this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Why are cases surging in Florida, and why is Florida so important right now? That’s a big discussion I think we need to get into.

BUCK: I love that tweet I sent you from —

CLAY: I saw it.

BUCK: Florida is Stalingrad right now. If they got Florida to fall, we all turn into Australia. I’ll give credit to that guy in a second. It’s a brilliant tweet.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Let’s start with William in Raleigh, North Carolina. William, what you got for us?

CALLER: Hey, guys, thanks so much for all you do. We appreciate you taking up the mantle here.

CLAY: Thank you.

CALLER: What I wanted to discuss was, how soon — especially after that Axios that you just talked about — will the administration begin to blame Trump and Warp Speed for not getting the vaccination efficacy that they feel like they should have and why this is wearing off, why the third booster, the potential fourth booster shots that they have been talking about?

I just feel like that that is coming because these guys, nothing sticks; nothing they do is their fault. I just feel like some of this stuff is getting ready to come down with this administration and how all of this going and Dr. Fauci. There’s just a lot out there that I think they’re gonna try and turn this thing around on the whole Trump process again.

BUCK: William, can I just say I think your analysis here is really astute, and I think that you’re right about how the narrative — the media narrative and the Democrat narrative — will shift very rapidly if we get to the point where “vaccine fading,” and I don’t know what we really call it. Vaccines fading over time. We’ll have to come up with a term for this, ’cause it’s not the same as vaccine failure which means it doesn’t work. I’m not saying that, no one’s saying that, but vaccines fading over time, that seems to be the case. why do we need boosters if that’s not the case?

CLAY: And the older you are, the faster it fades.

BUCK: I think it’s likely that there will be a Trump rushed this thing through, Clay. I think you will hear that. I think William’s correct.

CLAY: I think he’s right too. And we’ve talked about that off the air ’cause sometimes we talk about off the air, “Hey, let’s play this forward several months.” Nobody’s got a perfect crystal ball. But, yes, they will start to argue that they moved too quickly. And again, this is one of the flaws, I think, that is the most pronounced of the CDC in general, they have created an expectation that vaccine solved all problems and it’s gonna lead to covid-19 zero. And that’s not in any way reflective from the data itself. And I think that disconnect blows up very quickly on people.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Okay, why does Florida matter so much, and why is, to use the example, it the Stalingrad of the covid resistance? We’re gonna talk about that.

BUCK: Michael Watson was the guy on Twitter who wrote that.

CLAY: Yeah, you sent that to me, and I do think it’s a good analogy. By the way, I’m headed to Florida tomorrow. I spend a lot of time down there. We’re gonna talk about what exactly is going on in Florida, why it’s so significant, and why Ron DeSantis has emerged as maybe the default battleground, the leader of the anti-Biden resistance. All of that and more when we come back. I appreciate all of you hanging out with us. Florida: It’s the battleground.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Grant in Maine. Grant, what you got for us?

CALLER: Hey, guys, thanks for taking my call. Hey, you know —

CLAY: Thanks for listening. Sorry, go ahead.

CALLER: Hey, no problem. Hey, you know, I’ve been looking around and seeing how Paris is rioting and in Italy, and they’re burning their covid vaccine cards in Italy. And here in the U.S. seems like we’re kind of starting to softly comply and go along with the program, you know. We’re talking about getting fake vaccine cards. Well, that’s kind of like the same thing as if you — if they said they’re gonna ban guns and confiscate guns you go bury your guns and hide ’em.

You know, you’re not using them for what they’re intended for. You’re not using them to protect and defend your freedom. I think that we should — we need to stop complying and stop accepting. We’re gonna have to do some hard standing up and potentially lose our jobs and force these people to stop this craziness.

CLAY: I agree with you, Grant, about the fact that people need to stand up and make their voices heard, and that’s what I tried to do at the grassroots level on Tuesday with my school board. And that’s what I think people all over the country need to do. Because I do believe there’s a huge segment of the American population that believes that government overreach is a major issue here, that the facts and the data don’t justify it, and I think it is a majority of the country. I really do. And that doesn’t mean, by the way, that some of those people also aren’t getting vaccinated. I think a lot of —

BUCK: Difference between a mandate — there’s a difference between a mandate and deciding that this is something, oh, no, it’s bad all across — you — we said this a million times. I don’t want to bore our audience by saying the same things a lot. You told your parents, I told misrepresents get vaccinated they are vaccinated there’s no question right? We’re not — there’s absolutely no anti-vax that we’re talking about here. We’re just anti-mandate and ask some questions about why we need boosters and things like that —

CLAY: Especially if you’ve already had covid. Why are we making a distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated. Really it’s between those with covid and those who have not had covid, right?

BUCK: It’s about control and it’s about they don’t want to water down “everyone has to get the shot, everyone has to get the shot,” that’s the fixation that they have. We have — let’s see — I want to see what Don — in Nashville, Clay’s hometown. Nashville — I’ll be in Nashville with Clay next week, so at least I’ll get to experience a bit of freedom. But go ahead, Don.

CALLER: Hi, guys thanks for carrying the torch. I’ll be quick. I’m going through Nashville, and I’m listening to you talk about Louisiana and their wanting to put these mandates on, New York wanting to put the mandates on. And the proof that it’s about political power, not about medical, is the fact that it’s no longer being considered a pandemic. There is no medical reason for these governors to be making these mandates that they’re attempting to make.

CLAY: I agree. Look. I think that this Superdome story, which, again, just broke if you’re listening to us right now, New Orleans reportedly going to join New York City in having vaccine mandates for bars, restaurants, and next step, although I haven’t heard this, Buck. I don’t think, like, Yankee Stadium is included in the vaccine mandate right now, is it, like if you wanted to —

BUCK: I have to check. But look. Let’s understand what the mentality is here. If you support vaccine passports in restaurants in a major city like New York — when I say “if you,” I mean the people that are pushing for this — they want everyone to get vaccinated. So until that happens and as long as they have the power to harass, annoy, and coerce, they will continue to do so.

And that means that everything is on the table to get there. And this is exactly what we’re seeing. By the way, you see what de Blasio did. It was essentially a bait-and-switch. No indoor mask mandate from the city. Oh, about a vaccine mandate a week later, right? So they’re playing games here to see what they can get away with. Dean up in Boston. Dean, what do you got?

CALLER: What do we do when we can’t trust the CDC or the NIH because they politicize something that you can have other information that contradicts it such as other countries’ studies — England and Vietnam and other countries — and then you have Johns Hopkins and some of the other great medical centers that do the research, they come out and it contradicts what these people say that we’re supposed to take as the Word of God. What happens when we do need ’em? We can’t trust ’em.

BUCK: I think that the credibility — thank you, Dean. The credibility for the medical establishment and apparatus in this country is certainly lower than it has ever been in my lifetime. Doctors have tended to be — it’s usually, like, military and doctors at the very top of the public trust list in America. And I think doctors, Clay, have lost a lot of that. And it’s not fair, ’cause I know there are a lot of good doctors listening, but you see all these white lab coat tyrants like Fauci out there, and you say, what the heck is going on?

CLAY: Yeah. And they are advocating for things that aren’t supported by data. That’s where I think many Americans of reasonable temperament, they look. And I use that as an example at the school board hearing I attended on Tuesday which we’re gonna talk about tomorrow because Joe Biden now has come out and called the people who are in favor of masks in my county heroes in his press conference. We’re gonna play that for you tomorrow as this is continuing to blow up. The reality is, they weren’t citing any data that kids are safer wearing masks than without. I love my kids more than anything in the world. I want all your kids to be safe. Masks aren’t proven to be working for them safely.

BUCK: I just want you to know if you do get sent to Gitmo or something, I know people, we’ll get you out, buddy. I’ll make some of the calls from the old days, we’ll get a team together, we’ll get you out of there, ’cause when the president’s got his eyes on my man Clay, we gotta key an eye on what’s going on here. We’ll bust Clay out of the joint if we have to.