CLAY: I do want to give credit. We got a lot of people listening in L.A. It appears that people are coming to their senses even in blue cities, in blue states like Los Angeles and California because — we’ve been beating this drum for a while. — L.A.’s health authorities were going to implement a mask mandate. And what started to happen was, first of all, surrounding counties said, “We’re not doing this. This is stupid,” and then even inside of L.A. County, for instance, Beverly Hills said, “Well, we’re not going to enforce a mask mandate,” and guess what happened, Buck? As a result, the L.A. County public health officials — for the first time I can remember in a long time — tucked their tails between their legs, ran scared, invented some brand-new metrics and said —

BUCK: They didn’t admit why they’re not doing it though, right? That’s the point.

CLAY: Well, yeah, of course.

BUCK: They’re saying, “Our numbers aren’t actually what they need to be for the mask mandate.” So this is the thing, Clay. They will never give this up. They’ll never just say, “You know what? Enough people realize how dumb this is that we’re going to stop trying to force the face diaper on everybody.”

CLAY: I do think it’s a small measure of potential good news that, even in Los Angeles, people seem to be coming around to what you and I have been saying for two years, which is: All of the data is quite clear; masks do nothing to stop the spread of covid. It’s all cosmetic theater. And they finally won a battle in Los Angeles.

BUCK: You know also, whatever happened to double masking? Remember when double masking was a thing? ‘Cause now you’ve noticed, the latest fashion trend for the Fauciites is definitely an N95 that has the rubber strap that’s so tight on your head ’cause it’s gotta be well-fitted that it’s leaving kind of an indentation on the back of the head area, the skull, but they’ve skipped past the double… I remember if you were a really cool kid and you wanted to get that Fauci high five, you were double masking.

CLAY: I remember that.

BUCK: And there were even some triple maskers. I just want to know, what’s going on, folks? ‘Cause for the mask wearers out there with their N95s, I’m like, “I’m not seeing that second layer.” So I don’t think they take the virus seriously. Joe Biden, for example, remember in the wintertime they were double masking? This past winter they were double masking. Fauci was showing up everywhere, N95 with a cloth mask on. You’re gonna rock the N95, I just gotta say — for all the libs out there who are suffering from an anxiety disorder — go all-in on it; wear those two masks.

CLAY: You know the place, to your point, where the masking seems to be the most embraced is right now Congress. If you watch any congressional hearing, you don’t even need to know who the people work for. Every Democrat subsidiary, employee, all the different subcommittees, you can just sit there and watch; they all have masks on now.

BUCK: There really is some separation in the brain between the left and the right here or something, because we’ve talked about this many times. I hated masks when Trump was president; I hated masks from the very beginning, I didn’t think they would work. Remember, Trump just said to us that Fauci told him masks don’t do anything.

CLAY: We got the audio. Yeah — and Fauci himself said that even publicly!

BUCK: Right. And people just wanted to forget that. And now it has become — it really is the MAGA hat of the contemporary liberal. You wear a mask because you’re establishing your political allegiance. And I just want to free their faces, man. I’m a face humanitarian. I want people to be breathe in that fresh, clear air — or whatever, if they’re in a major city, the smog, doesn’t matter. The point is you want to be letting it go free and there are still people walking around.

In New York City, I am amazed how many folks are still wearing them. Now, it’s a small percentage comparatively. Maybe it’s 5% now on the streets you’ll see. But you will not walk down a street in Midtown Manhattan without seeing people wearing masks. You will not see free faces everywhere. And I think if Fauci was a decent human being, which I don’t think he is, he would come out and tell everybody, “Guys, enough’s enough.” You know, they could do that right now. They could finally free everybody from this.

CLAY: They could have done it for two years.

BUCK: Yeah, of course. But why not now? Why not just say it? They won’t do it, man. So L.A., yeah, they backed down off of this one. When the caseload goes up, as you know it will — when the caseload goes up let’s say November, December time frame after the election — do you think that they’re gonna just walk away from this stuff?

CLAY: I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re getting to the point where the political pressure might be significant enough from independents. We know, to your point, the mask has become —

BUCK: Oh, but I mean after the election.

CLAY: Yeah, right. Well, I think there’s 30% of people that are gonna continue to wear masks because it sends a signal about who they are. It’s their personal branding in some way. It’s sad.

BUCK: How many times did you get yelled at for mask related issues all-in over the course of the pandemic? Do you know? I definitely… I think I was at six or seven times people angrily, including airline attendants —

CLAY: (laughing) Yeah.

BUCK: — angrily confronted me. And I hope that they have shame in their own minds attached for that forever because they should —

CLAY: The one that — I can think of one in particular because I was down in Key West, Florida, which is where you would think of being maybe the most chill place in America, one of them, and we were in the airport there, and I was drinking a coffee — I think an ice coffee, early morning flight — and the flight attendant, flight gate agent there came over and said, “Sir, you’re leaving your mask down too long in between sips.”

BUCK: Oh yeah. Too long — yep — between sips.

CLAY: And I just was like, I mean, how long, you know, how long is it pope basically for me to sip? And my wife just got me right in the ribs with an elbow. And she said, “You’re gonna get us banned off this airplane flight ’cause you’re arguing with a gate attendant over how long you can drink your coffee.” I said, “Yeah, it’s ridiculous.” She said, “Just shut up.” As many wives have liked to say to their husbands over the years, “Just shut up and stop creating any issue here,” put your mask on.

BUCK: You’ve seen The Lives of Others, right?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Yeah, we talked about this because when you watch that, you think who would be the East German informants on their neighbors, their friends to the Stasi? The mask shamers? If you went back in time 50 or now 70 years?

CLAY: They of course think they’re on the right side of history. It’s so crazy.

BUCK: They called the ones informing. The mask Stasi. We know that there are people throughout history who, unfortunately, think that doing the bidding of the authoritarians in our society. The pointless, absurd, freedom crushing bidding is something that they should be proud of.

CLAY: I’m already thinking, Buck. I’m fortunate to have three kids and hopefully I’ll have grandkids one day. I’m already thinking about how those conversations about the covid era are going to go with grandkids. You know, anybody out there who’s fortunate enough to have grandparents or great-grandparents, 40-50 years down the line, and your kids, your grandkids or your great-grandkids come to you and say, “Hey, did you live through World War II?

“Did you live through the Vietnam War?” Different things in your life, Kennedy assassination, which are big flash points that you can take that kid into that experience of what it was like based on your own personal memory. I hope that 40 and 50 years from now kids are gonna look at these stories, Buck, and say, “Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, how did you ever end up in a situation where they shut down every school because of a virus that had almost no impact on kids?”

BUCK: We’ll be able to look at our grandkids, Clay, and say when the great mask wars were happening —

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: — we weren’t shoveling Fauciism in Louisiana.

CLAY: We were on the right side of history. I feel good about that one.

BUCK: That’s a good thing.