CLAY: Joe Biden finally testing positive for covid, despite the fact that he’s had both covid shots and both boosters. What is interesting about this, Buck, is — and I know the timing is different in that the fall of 2020 covid was still somewhat new, but you remember well because you were in the middle of the covid fray then, and certainly I was, too, that there was an obsession with Trump testing positive for covid and how dare he come back to the White House when he still had covid and how dare he even get covid. It was his fault that he got covid. And everybody wanted to know where it came from.

And they had a White House press briefing yesterday, Buck, where suddenly how you get covid doesn’t matter at all — and you will remember this because we talked about it on this show — but contract tracing was going to be the way they ended covid forever.

BUCK: There are some things I can go back and people can listen to my shows then or just Twitter and — I know not a lot of people on Twitter — but I go back, in June of 2020, I was just talking about — so this is now over two years ago — how the contact tracing program in New York City was so stupid that only either a person who was racked with anxiety, so they couldn’t think or was truly a moron could ever think that this was going to work.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: They were calling people like me — they would call you ten days after you had covid and be, like, hey, who did you hang out with? And then maybe they would call those people ten days after that or maybe they wouldn’t. The initial public health officials who were talking about the success of contact tracing — I want everyone to understand this because this is true, this is real. Some of these things, Clay, they were so dumb. The Fauciites are such idiots that it sounds like we’re making this up. Public health officials, the commissar for New York or LA, when she’s not out at a Dodgers game hanging out without a mask.

CLAY: And all these people also look super unhealthy, don’t they? The more obsessed you are with covid —

BUCK: Could you imagine a job pre-covid than being the No. 2 in the public health department in most cities, the most useless job in so many ways, too.

CLAY: No kidding.

BUCK: The initial push for contract tracing, they would say things — I mean the Walenskys and the Faucis, they would say, we have had a lot of success with contact tracing in the past. For STDs! I’m just going to put this out there. Most of us have far more people we may have breathed on than we would be worried about for a close-and-continuing-contact situation.

CLAY: Unless you’re Matthew McConaughey or Brad Pitt, the number of people that you have slept with over time, or a porn star, probably way less than the number of people you have breathed on.

BUCK: There were programs here in New York, Clay, where they would not open up gyms. They wouldn’t open up restaurants until we had a certain number of contact tracers who were doing the most pointless job on the planet. But this was listed as a requisite for opening up businesses that were getting crushed. We didn’t have enough contact tracers? Couldn’t open up our businesses. That was put in place by de Blasio and backed up by Cuomo. Those people are morons. They’re incapable of thinking through.

We were at tens of thousands of cases a day just at one point in New York City. You’re going to trace tens of thousands of people and all of their — what are you going to do when you trace them? But, Clay, they’re still obsessed with mass testing. What is mass testing going to do? What does it tell you when you do all the testing all the time? Nothing.

CLAY: Yeah. I’ve never been tested for the flu and I don’t think I’ve ever been tested for a cold. Kind of have a sense when I have it. And Buck for those of us who live in red states, I remember getting off airplanes. They had the contact tracing set up, so you’d get notifications on your phone even if you hadn’t signed up for it. Like, if I remember correctly, in LA or New York, they would say, hey, covid is spreading, do you want your phone to help trace — you know what I’m talking about?

BUCK: I would go to Miami for visits to see my brothers who were brilliant enough to move there at the beginning of the pandemic, and I would come back to New York. There were National Guard soldiers standing there. I guess as if to frighten away the virus with their M4s without magazines in them. They were standing there to try to go through our contact tracing app or something. The people that pushed this are so stupid and they’ve destroyed the faith that anybody could and rightly would have in public health officials.

People don’t talk about it anymore. The things they did, it’s not that they didn’t work super well. They were abjectly pointless and actually worse than that because they harassed us, they added to anxiety. And like Rochelle Walensky still goes around giving speeches and people practically tear up because they think she’s so amazing.

CLAY: Yes to all of that. I wanted to make sure we played these clips because many of you out there will remember when the Fauciites were all arguing, “Hey, contact tracing is the way out of covid. This will save everybody.” So not surprisingly, there are still a lot of left-wing loons who believe this contact tracing reality is still something that should be happening. So they grilled the White House about where Biden got covid.

And so here is Karine Jean-Pierre saying, it doesn’t matter. We’ve been told forever — remember how they lectured Trump? Where did he get it? Was he wearing a mask? Did he make the right decisions? Remember, they have protected Biden from interacting with people pretty much as much as someone could be protected. They even sit him at a table a long way from anybody else. They put him in masks outdoors. And now, how did he get covid? Well, Karine Jean-Pierre says, hey, guys, it doesn’t matter.

“Where exactly was the president infected?”

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: “I don’t think that matters” pic.twitter.com/m9kPfVoNEk

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 21, 2022

REPORTER: Where was he infected? I don’t think we know. I certainly don’t know if you have any thoughts on that.

JEAN-PIERRE: I don’t think that matters.

CLAY: Okay. So it doesn’t matter. She’s saying now on the record it doesn’t matter. Well, then, she gets challenged by probably the Corona Bros in the White House press corps saying, how can it not matter in an age of contact tracing? This is CNN anchor or reporter here. Listen.

REPORTER: How can it not matter where he got it if that is something that of course is involved in contact tracing? This administration is taking it very seriously. How can it not matter?

JEAN-PIERRE: I think what I was trying to say is that what’s important now is that he has mild symptoms, and that he is working from the residence on behalf of the American people. Look, we knew that was going to happen, as Dr. Jha said when he joined me at the briefing room not too long ago, he said — at some point everyone is going to get covid. What is important is to make sure that you get the treatment that we have provided for folks.

CLAY: That’s actually a big statement, Buck. If you had said, like we did, everyone is going to get covid — did you hear the White House just said everyone is going to get covid? If everyone is going to get covid how can they justify virtually every covid policy that they’re trying to put in place — kids in masks, not letting somebody like Djokovic come into the country to play in the U.S. Open, because he hasn’t gotten the covid shot. The fact that anyone should get the covid shot in the first place.

If we’re all going to get covid, and that’s something that Jean-Pierre said that I actually agree with, I think you probably agree with, Buck. The problem is she’s probably about a year and a half behind the reality of recognizing this was going to happen. Why is there any covid restriction anywhere in the United States right now if we’re all going to get covid like she just said?

BUCK: It transferred, Clay. It transformed from a policy meant to achieve a goal to a belief that gave people psychological comfort. That’s what’s really happened with all the covid policies. It has been for a long time no longer ultimately about this will limit or stop or end covid. It’s we do this because it makes us feel better and it separates us from the unclean bad people who don’t do this. This is religious in nature now. Just as Democrats often replace traditional religion as in a spiritual relationship with God with a relationship with the state, this has now become a ritual for them. This is a rite.

CLAY: I just think that clip of acknowledging that everybody is going to get covid, it makes it impossible to me.

BUCK: I’ve been saying that for two years; you’ve been saying it for two years. When we were saying it, we were monsters who wanted grandma to die.

CLAY: That’s right. How about we were right and they admit that? How about the Great Barrington Declaration all being correct, too? But that statement from Karine Jean-Pierre — everybody is going to get covid? If that’s true, then why should there be any covid restrictions whatsoever?

I mean, everybody out there listening, think about this, because, Buck, the way that they tried to convince us all that we had to take action was because they said, well, even if you’re going to be okay, you may give it to your grandma. Remember, they were obsessed with the fact that we were all going to kill everybody’s grandma. Well, if everybody’s going to get it, then you’re responsible for your own health, but you’re not responsible for everybody else’s health. All of the justifications for covid actions have been predicated on you and me and everybody else being responsible for the larger universe.

If everybody’s going to get it, then we’re all individually responsible with taking care of ourselves, which is kind of the history of mankind. Like, ultimately, you’re responsible for yourself. If you’ve got kids, you’re responsible for them.

BUCK: One of the biggest, most important lessons of covid is that your health is actually in your hands and you have to take action if you want to be the healthiest, best version of yourself. And if you listen to the state, you’re going to be, you know, suckling on soy milk and miserable.

GOTTLEIB: This is an endemic virus, but an endemic virus can cause a pandemic. We have a flu pandemic every year. It meets the definition of being a pandemic. You have global spread of pathogen, uncontrollable spread of pathogen. But at this point it’s an endemic virus. We won’t be able to extinguish it.

REPOTER: Are we still in a pandemic?

GOTTLIEB: We’re still in a pandemic with covid, yes. This is probably going to be a seasonal pandemic. Even if it settles into a seasonal pattern, it’s going to meet the definition of being a endemic even if it’s an endemic virus. I think the reality is most people now see the pandemic as part of a fabric of modern life rather than a public health emergency.

BUCK: Pandemic, endemic, all this stuff, folks. This is actually important, this definition back and forth. Pandemic on all people, epidemic within the people. Epidemic virus means it exists within the population and with seasonality it comes back. Pandemic is it’s all over the place and spreading globally. But notice they’re now saying, well, the flu is a pandemic and we have flu every year. So we’re still in a pandemic.

Actually by the definition that they’re shifting to, we’re going to be in a covid pandemic forever and it’s also endemic meaning within the population. Will continue to exist with the population. So we are exactly where some of us were saying we would be two years ago. Two full years ago it was, look, guys, everyone’s going to get it. It’s going to be here. This is now a fact of life. We should treat it like the flu. It’s like another flu on top of the flu. And just go forward with our lives.

Clay, I feel like they’re slowly inching toward this because they want to get to where we knew we were all going. But they just never want to admit that we did all this horrible stuff to the American people that was unnecessary and we were wrong about everything. Or they were wrong about everything.

CLAY: Last year, we had Alex Berenson on. And even people who are on our side, Buck, reached out to us and they were, like, hey, you’re being a little aggressive in saying that these covid shots are not going to cure covid.

BUCK: I had right-wingers tell me, Buck, I love what you and Clay do, but you’ve got to keep Alex Berenson off the air on the vaccines; he’s gone to crazy town. People were telling me that. They were wrong.

CLAY: Same people told to me. And you and I were competent enough to look at the data and say what he’s saying are very valid comments. Now he’s been proven 100 percent true. The thing that I look and think about next year, what will we be saying next year?

My concern, Buck, is that by next year, it’s going to be impossible to argue that these covid shots were not actually harmful to us in trying to get through covid. In fact, my concern, data arguments out there, this is what science is, it’s unclear, but there are increasing data points that are suggesting that the more covid shots you are getting, the more likely you are to get covid. And so a year from now, just like now, you can say oh the covid shot doesn’t stop you from getting or spreading covid. A year ago you couldn’t say that. My concern is a year from now we’re going to be saying, “Man, all the data is reflecting the covid shots actually made everybody worse.”

BUCK: Last summer you were a danger, a clear and present danger to the public for bringing up the dangers of vaccines, even in the future, that we could hit. And eventually I think we’ll be at a place where, “Oh, well, maybe we shouldn’t have silenced those voices that wanted honest discussion. ”

CLAY: No doubt. That’s my concern a year from now, where we’re going to be.