CLAY: First of all, the Biden address today — to the extent you can call it an address — was, as we play a couple of the clips, an embarrassment. Maybe more embarrassing was the end where they tried to shunt all of the different media out of the room where they had shown up to hear him read his statement. And there were many different questions being tossed at Joe Biden that he ignored. And one of them was a great one, which I would love to hear somebody in the Biden administration try to address, which we just talked about a little bit.

It was, “If Dr. Fauci is now saying everyone is going to get covid in Omicron, why should there be a vaccine mandate at all?” I don’t think there’s an easy answer for that. But it demonstrates, in many ways I think, the complicity of the media at large that almost no one is willing to ask those questions, to follow the logical path. And if they are asked, they are not answered by the administration. And this ties in with yesterday. Ted Cruz was set to address a gaggle of media at the Senate, and they were upset because he was not wearing his mask. If you haven’t heard this, enjoy.

Sen. @tedcruz responds to a PBS reporter asking him why Senate Republicans aren’t wearing masks: “Just once, I’d like to see a reporter say to Joe Biden when he stands at the damn podium in the White House without a mask ‘Mr. President, why aren’t you wearing a mask?'” pic.twitter.com/qUZFD3ePCZ

— Logan Ratick (@Logan_Ratick) January 11, 2022

CRUZ: Well, listen, I think there’s been wild hypocrisy from the Biden administration when it comes to covid policies, whether mask mandates, where Joe Biden rightly said we shouldn’t have mandates — whether vaccine mandates, where Joe Biden said we shouldn’t have vaccine mandates. And, by the way, on the question of hypocrisy, you just asked, “You people at the podium are speaking without masks!”

Just once I’d like to see a reporter say to Joe Biden when he stands (bangs fist) at the damn podium in the White House without a mask, “Mr. President, why aren’t you wearing a mask?” Just once I’d like to see you say to Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, when she stands at the podium (bangs) with no mask, “Ms. Psaki, why don’t you have a mask?”

BUCK: This so essential, Clay, because, first of all, I love Cruz control there. Just throwing down.

CLAY: Fired up! You could hear him slamming the podium there.

BUCK: He’s going for it, and this is also now… This is a tool, masking, because we all know that it’s arbitrary and capricious and idiotic at this point. “Mask up between bites!” I got people yelling at me in my own building in New York City — I don’t think I told you this — a guy was carrying a whole bunch of packages, like six or seven big packages. I walked past him. We’re actually in the elevator area. He’s walking into the elevator, and he turns to shout at me, “Put your mask on, sir,” and then he drops his packages all over the floor. And that is what we call karma.

CLAY: I don’t think I could live in New York City.

BUCK: That is what we call karma.

CLAY: I couldn’t deal with that. I couldn’t deal with that in California. I’m like, I don’t remember the last time somebody… I don’t think anybody’s ever lectured me about masks here.

BUCK: Here’s the essential point, though. It’s not that this guy’s just lecturing me about masks, Clay, is that he is — I am certain, okay — going to go either tonight or tomorrow into a crowded restaurant or bar full of unmasked people and think that somehow he’s being safe from the virus. These people are out of their minds, but they love this because — and this why the Ted Cruz thing is so important — it gives them an ability to poke and prod and harass The Other,” the unmasked, the people they don’t like.

CLAY: That’s right, and that’s the problem overall, I would say, overarching here with everything Joe Biden is saying, right? Biden ran on the idea that I’m gonna be the grandfatherly figure to bring the country back together. Try to square that campaign promise with the speech that he gave in Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon. Try and square that campaign promise with his continued insistence on saying that for the unvaccinated, it’s going to be a winter of death. That is not what has happened at all.