CLAY: We discussed yesterday the Wall Street Journal article about the fact that red states have recovered far more rapidly and in fact now employ more people than they did pre-covid while blue states are still over a million jobs behind. The state of Florida is surging. So many people are relocating to Florida, Texas, Tennessee. I saw in that Wall Street Journal article my home state of Tennessee grew at a white-hot 8.6% rate, the fastest in the nation, and also that the unemployment rate in Tennessee is at its lowest recorded level.

Buck, off air you and I were just talking that the states that made the best decisions, thanks to federalism, are now being rewarded. More people are moving there. More people with high incomes are moving to these states, and that’s going to make those governments even more efficient and better. This is how federalism was designed to work: 50 state laboratories. The states that make the right decisions get the benefit of population growth and economic growth, and that’s what we’re seeing happen, right?

BUCK: New York, California, Illinois losing people because of their governance. I’m a New Yorker, so, trust me, I feel this, for everybody who’s listening on WOR. But because of the governance, we should be losing people out of state. That’s just the reality of how the system is supposed to work. We have different state governments operating so that we can see what works, what doesn’t, and we can have some choice, right?

This is where I think the pandemic has reminded people that state government really does matter. I do believe that we have gotten into a frame of mind where for a lot of people maybe the local government mattered to them because community regulations and things. But state government, people barely even cared who their governor was.

CLAY: You’re preaching to the choir here, man, and I’ll take it even further, Buck. I didn’t even know who was on my school board. I just didn’t pay attention. I didn’t think about it. I was worried about president — maybe I’m paying attention to the Senate, the national picture — but I didn’t really focus that much on the state.

BUCK: And now when you realize that a bad governor — and the covid bad governor list has many names, but you can certainly throw Gavin Newsom, Cuomo — too bad, too bad — Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Pritzker of Illinois and you go down this list. The bad governors, they weren’t just saying things on TV that were annoying. They were telling you, “Your business is not important enough! Shut it down. Oh, maybe you’re gonna go bankrupt? Too bad for you.

“You mean the PPP doesn’t cover,” which it didn’t for a lot of people, “everything that you needed for their business to thrive? Too bad. Your business isn’t important enough. Your kids don’t get to go to school. Your kids have to mask up. You have to mask up. People realize, all of a sudden, “Hold on a second. That they can do that much to me in my state,” and the big problem that we faced was that if you lived in a red state under the Trump administration, things were pretty okay, although some of them — Texas, Abbott should have done a better job in Texas.

I give him a B- from what I could see as an outside and from all my friends, I talk to our buddy Jesse Kelly and so many others down in that state who say that it just wasn’t a good…he didn’t do a good job at all. Michael Berry was telling us. I was like, “How is Abbott?” He’s like, “Eh, you know. Michael knows. Not doing a great job during covid. But then when they got the federal government, now it was, “Well, now you have to deal with this madness pretty much no matter where you are.”

So, it was heads they win, tails they win. Right? It didn’t matter, effectively. And, you know, for a lot of people, at least. And that’s why I think we see your state can only do so much when the federal government overreaches. And then when finally, the madness passed, Florida, Tennessee, getting huge influxes of people, driving up real estate prices; so that’s a good thing for people that have owned.

CLAY: It’s a good thing if you own. The problem is you’re gonna have to pay it if you move to a new house, right, unless move to a new state now. But Ron DeSantis — I’m down in Florida. This is my final day down here. I’ve been down here for 10 days, working, and DeSantis… I know there’s a lot of you out there who were so incredibly frustrated about this. DeSantis, they have a new law in Florida to make sure that patients’ rights are protected. This clip is from April, but it has now gone into effect so that you can speak to your family and you’re not gonna have this situation where someone dies and they’re not even allowed to speak to their family. Listen to Ron DeSantis talk about this patients’ rights law.

Under our new law, never again will Florida families be denied the right to visit a loved one in the hospital.

This is now the way of the land. pic.twitter.com/vuxQacO0px

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) July 5, 2022

BUCK: We need to remind everybody of this, Clay, because those covid policies like what Governor DeSantis just talked about was going on in other states during the pandemic, they were stupid and cruel.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Both of those things were happening on a regular basis, stupid, worthless, cruel policies that the Fauciites pushed on all of us. And we have not had an election referendum on this where we’ve seen, this is now an opportunity. The Democrats want you to forget about the padlocked schools and the padlocked playgrounds. They want you to forget about double masking, which they actually told us for a while. Remember that? They told us we should all double mask.

CLAY: Oh, yeah.

BUCK: People act like this is normal.

CLAY: That was happening, too, all these crazy people in Congress. And did you see what happened with Joe Biden? I mean, he’s still trying this. They recognize now that everything they did for covid was a disaster. And we’re gonna talk about the DeSantis policy here in a sec but I want to make sure I read this to you. I’m sure you saw this yesterday, Buck. But Joe Biden, it’s suddenly… You know that meme of the guy walking around in the hot dog suit where it’s like, “I don’t even know who could have done this.”

That’s kind of every time that there’s something crazy that happens, people share that online. Well, Joe Biden tweeted, “Due to the pandemic, kids are…” This is yesterday. “Due to the pandemic, kids are behind in math and reading. We know how to help bridge this gap.” Okay. So, what they’re trying to say now — and this is important, and I want all of you to recognize what’s going on — is “due to the pandemic.” That’s not true. It was the choices that Democrats and the teachers’ unions made during the pandemic that led us here.

But this rhetorical shift that they’re attempting to make now is, “Well, we had no choices. Due to the pandemic, kids are behind in math and reading.” No, no, no, no. Due to our response to the pandemic, which was led by Democrat mayors, Democrat blue states. You know where kids are not behind? Florida, where Ron DeSantis kept them in school. Tennessee, where Bill Lee kept them in school. The states where kids were able to be in school.

And so, as a result of that crazy policy that you just heard Ron DeSantis announce back in April, grandma’s dying, she can hug her grandkids. Somebody who’s been married for 50 years and is losing a spouse, they can hug their spouse. Now they are coming with loaded bear guns for Ron DeSantis. They’re writing all their articles, Buck. They’re saying he’s worse than Trump. How dare he.

BUCK: This is great. The Washington Post just a few hours ago: “DeSantis is smarter than Trump. That may make him more of a threat.” We should all be super scared of this, of course, and they’ve been running this out there for a while. What they mean by “bigger threat,” they’re gonna say, “Threat to our democracy. Oh, my gosh.” What they mean is, threat to their power, as in, who are they going to put up?

What exactly is the attack on DeSantis supposed to be right now? Let’s really think about this. That he was right about everything with covid, that he had far less learning loss or any problems than these blue state governors that they all try to hold up as heroes, that his state is flush with cash, that it has less than half the budget of New York which it actually has more people than, that people are flocking there, that real estate prices are exploding —

CLAY: Skyrocketing.

BUCK: — that I’m thinking about moving there myself.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: What exactly is the attack? It’s so miserable that everybody wants to be there and it’s been great if you’ve been living there during the pandemic? That doesn’t seem like — oh, he’s criminalizing women. That’s what Gavin Newsom said. It’s a crime to be a woman now in Florida. Yeah, I know some women in Florida. I think they’re doing okay.

CLAY: I think they’re doing pretty well. Now, Florida is gonna have to decide what to do, as every state will, in the wake of Roe v. Wade being returned to the states. And we need to talk about some of the poll results that are coming out there, too, Buck, because 75%, for instance, in the most recent Harvard-Harris poll said they didn’t believe the Supreme Court should be making decisions and that democratic process should play out as it pertains to abortion.

So, Democrats are in a tough spot because also data is reflecting 90% of Americans don’t believe in late-term abortions. And Democrats are even supposedly moderate Democrats like Tim Ryan in Ohio, who doesn’t have the time today to meet with Joe Biden. I love that Joe Biden is so unpopular that even Senate candidates in their states — Stacey Abrams in Georgia, this happened. Raphael Warnock, I think. Now it’s Tim Ryan in Ohio. The president of the United States coming to your state, you’re running for the Senate, your schedule is too about his to hang out with them? It’s amazing how that works.

BUCK: I just want to remind everyone, even Democrats knew, through three election cycles plus where Biden officially ran and many others where he thought about it, even Democrats knew Joe Biden was a sub-mediocrity and a loser until like five minutes ago. They knew it. But they just figured it’s the pandemic, everyone knows his name, it’s the brand that people know and we’ll just go with it.

CLAY: “We’re gonna hide him in the basement.” Joe Biden got elected president because of covid ’cause he ran a campaign from the basement which was all about Trump, and they also did everything they could to change the election procedures in many different toss-up states and they terrified suburban women by Joe Biden saying, “I’ll solve covid.” More people are dying with covid today — you’re not hearing media talk about it — than were dying with covid at this time last year. Did you know that, Buck? July 4th last year, compare it. It’s up about 50%, the covid deaths ’cause the covid shots don’t really do very much in terms of providing long-range protection.