CLAY: Buck, the best tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic, is currently embroiled in a customs dispute — I guess it would be a customs dispute — as he attempts to enter into Australia to play in the Australian Open.

BUCK: Immigration dispute.

CLAY: Immigration dispute. I guess immigration dispute would be wrong. Maybe his rackets are stuck in customs. I don’t know. So he’s not allowed in because he’s unvaccinated. But the best tennis player in the world is unvaccinated, already had covid, made the choice not to get vaccinated.

BUCK: He’s also gluten-free, by the way, and the test to that as being part of his rise to greatness. Just throwing that out there.

CLAY: I don’t even know if I would even know how to be gluten-free if I attempted to be gluten-free. I don’t think that I have the skill set to even analyze my diet to that extent. But the best football player in the world, the less the best quarterback in the world is presently Aaron Rodgers, maybe Tom Brady if you’re listening to us in Tampa or New England (and there’s still a lot of Brady aficionados). But right now Aaron Rodgers is favored to be the MVP of the NFL.

And recently a sports journalist… There are only 50 people who get to vote for NFL MVP. A sports journalist went on the radio and said he would not be voting for Aaron Rodgers because of Aaron Rodgers’ off-the-field decisions, including his decision not to be vaccinated. Aaron Rodgers tested positive for covid, had to miss a game, and this left-wing lunatic sportswriter said: As a result, I will not be supporting Aaron Rodgers for MVP.

Aaron Rodgers was not going to take that lightly. Yesterday he was asked about that choice, and he teed off. I think a lot of you out there — even you Chicago Bear fans, even you Detroit Lion fans, even you Minnesota Viking fans who have watched Aaron Rodgers run roughshod over your teams over the years — are going to respect this answer. Here is the Green Bay Packer quarterback on what he thought of an MVP voter who wouldn’t vote for him because he wasn’t vaccinated.

RODGERS: I think he’s a bum. I think he’s an absolute bum. He doesn’t know me. I don’t know who he is. No one knew who he was, probably, until yesterday’s comments. But, you know, his problem isn’t with me being a bad guy or the biggest jerk in the league, ’cause he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know me. Doesn’t know anything about me I never met him. I never had lunch with him. I never had an interview with him. His problem is I’m not unvaccinated, you know, so if he wants to go on a crusade and collude and come up with an extra letter to put on the award just for this season and make it the Most Valuable Vaccinated Player, then he should do that. But he’s a bum.

Aaron Rodgers just teed off on the NFL MVP voter who said he wouldn’t vote for him because of off field issues. “He’s a bum…His problem is that I’m not vaccinated.” This is great, enjoy: pic.twitter.com/d1t3THdwZB

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 5, 2022

BUCK: This is the equivalent of a flying elbow off the top belt buckle, I think, to borrow from WWE, used to be F.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: When I watched it was WWF, but apparently the World Wildlife Federation got annoyed about that over time. But obviously Aaron Rodgers, great football player and, as we now know, great American, not taking any of the nonsense. It’s interesting, Clay, because it has obviously spread far inside sports. This us-versus-them mentality, has spread far inside the sports world, too.

Which you know backwards and forwards, that you have people that feel like, even when it comes to their favorite basketball player were you pro- or anti-Kyrie Irving, not based on how amazing his jump shot is or whatever but based on his vaccination stance. I really do think that the left and because of the echo chamber effects of social media and their general information fire hose dominance, under Trump created this sense of us and them always and in everything, right?

So it affects all aspects of your life. And I think as Trump has faded from the public square — because he’s been kicked off social media as well as no longer being president — there’s a need for the left to fill that with something and what I’m seeing happening is the same way that Trump, pro or anti, created this really severe separation in American society (that the left was using to try to divide and conquer, I think, in our politics) now you have a separation based upon vaccinated and unvaccinated.

And the unvaccinated have become this class of so-called undesirables that the establishment left is always able to blame. It’s Emanuel Goldstein from 1984. It’s the Two Minutes Hate. They’re the probable. Whenever they need, they turn to that, and also the insurrection which, of course, we’re seeing today but the unvaccinated now are replacing MAGA people as the primary target of the left’s ire because I think they need this sense of us versus them or else they might have to actually think about these policies they appreciate and push for.

CLAY: Well, what I would say here, too, is athletes are hyperaware of what they put in their body. And they have to be. Because whether it’s their diets, whether it is the supplements that they choose to take, the difference between a supplement that is permissive and one that is impermissible and could get you suspended and cost you millions of dollars is sometimes very slight.

And so a lot of athletes when they’re suddenly told for the first time in their careers, mind you, “You have to get this shot,” reacted in the same way they would if you told them that you had to eat some particular thing or you had to take some pill. A lot of them started doing their research, and even some who agreed to get the covid shot are now looking around and saying, “Wait a minute.

“We’re at all-time highs. Everybody is testing positive. There’s virtually no difference in whether you’re vaccinated or unvaccinated in terms of your likelihood at this point to test positive for covid.” I gotta give Aaron Rodgers credit, because what you see so often is somebody says something and it creates controversy, and then what do they do? They immediately back down. They apologize.

BUCK: (sniveling) I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!

CLAY: There are a lot of probably people out there that would have run and gone and gotten their covid vaccine even though it was totally unnecessary and thrown themselves prostrate on the American media and begged for forgiveness. Aaron Rodgers has basically shown up at every press conference since this happened, double birds already up, just letting the media have it over their embrace of cancel culture and insistence that he bow down and get a vaccine that he doesn’t need.

I gotta say, I got all of the respect for him for being willing to do it — and that line about the “MVVP,” the Most Valuable Vaccinated Player, is actually really funny to even think about. And then to call the guy a bum for the argument that he made and say straight up, “This is because I’m not vaccinated,” I give him a lot of credit for it. He’s totally owning it.

BUCK: You and I both know… I don’t even know this individual’s name, but we both know that he probably was getting a lot of high fives from the establishment, from the ESPNs and… I can’t even. That’s the only one that I know so that’s why I keep citing it. All the other ones that do the sports things.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I know one good one called OutKick and then I’ve heard of ESPN and then after that it gets very fuzzy. But, yeah.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I sit here and I see the way that you can’t be a person in public life and have your own opinion on this, even for yourself. You are immediately forced into being almost a vax… You have to be a vaccine advocate and a mandate advocate, right? We advocate for vaccines for folks over 65. We say we think it’s a good idea. That’s one thing, but you have to be a mandatory vaccine guy now.

And really you gotta be a mandatory booster guy and really you have to be a mandatory booster, double mask, testing, home testing, 10 days of quarantine — maybe go hang out in a camp in Australia surrounded by barbed wire where they won’t let you out except to get food — guy. When does the madness finally come to an end, Clay? When do we reach the terminus? It’s not even about when covid ends. Here’s how covid ends? Get shots if you’re at risk; otherwise, go about your life. The end. That’s what we should be doing.

CLAY: How it ends is ass kicking in 2022 followed by an ass kicking in 2024, and then the Democratic Party will have to acknowledge that they are fundamentally out of touch with the vast majority of the American public and that identity politics mixed with cancel culture is a cancer to this country and their party. That’s how I hope it ends.

BUCK: Can we also just make a marker here ’cause it is January 6th Insurrection Day. If they get wiped out in the midterms, you’re gonna hear constantly from Democrats about how it was racism and voter suppression — and if they lose to Trump or any other Republican in the next election, they will say that they cheated. We just know this.

CLAY: One hundred percent.

BUCK: While they’re lecturing us about refusing to accept results, we know that they will turn around and refuse to accept results. So that’s where we are.