CLAY: Buck, over the weekend I believe you actually watched a sporting event. Novak Djokovic won Wimbledon, and he is one of the guys alongside of Kyrie Irving in the NBA, Aaron Rodgers in the NFL, who has been willing to discuss the fact that he did not get the covid shot. And I’ve stopped calling it the covid vaccine because it’s not a vaccine. Data has come out recently, and it’s only continuing to get worse from here. We hired Ian Miller, @ianmSC. We’ve had him on the show a couple times.
He does a great job looking at the data. He has an article up at OutKick right now. The first two covid shots, the Moderna or the Pfizer shots that many of you may have been forced to get at work, you may have gotten because a year ago you believed what the government was telling you, they are now 5% effective at keeping you from getting covid. The third booster is only 20% effective. These numbers would never have gotten these shots approved by the FDA, which wants it to be over 50% efficacy so call it a vaccine.
So, I want to play this audio for you. Buck, you and I have been talking about how they’re ramping up the covid fear porn, as I have called it for some time as we move into the fall. And Djokovic was asked… He’s not allowed to come into the country. We still have a restriction for foreign visitors who have not gotten the covid shot. You are not eligible to come into the country, evidently. And so Djokovic will not be able to actually play at the U.S. Open, and he was asked about that decision.
He wasn’t able to go to Australian Open. We talk a lot about athletes being brave and taking risks and being outspoken. It’s funny how Djokovic is not a hero because he’s saying something that the left wing in the country is upset about when it comes to the covid shot. But I want you to listen to him here and then, Buck, I’m curious what you think as a big tennis fan about the idea that the U.S. Open, which is in your home state basically of New York would not have the best tennis player in the world arguably able to compete over this ridiculousness. Listen to this:
CLAY: What do you think about this? I mean, a lot of you… By the way, when I shared this story on social media said he should just come up through the southern border. They’re letting everybody across there and they’re not mandating that those people have covid shots in order to enter our country, which is true, and it’s sad, and it’s ridiculous, and it’s obviously satire. But I feel like maybe his best route to the U.S. Open is just to go down to Mexico and walk right across the border instead of flying in.
BUCK: The fact that there are so many people that are still willing to go along with this I think is part of what you and I have talked about a bit and will continue to talk about here, which is there is a mental health break down that has occurred in this nation and around the world because not of covid per se because the way covid was handled and the response to covid. Because if it had really just been about the data, if it had really been about what was truly a risk for individuals, this would have been something that was of high concern for senior citizens effectively.
And everybody else would have largely just said, “Look. I might get sick — maybe I’m one of the very unlucky who’s at low risk who will have a really bad outcome — but I’m just going to live my life.” And “I’m just going to live my life” should have been everyone’s attitude more or less starting in the summer of 2020, and that there are so many people that are still willing to do this to this day I think just shows you, this is about power now and this is about people who want an affirmation that they were on the right side of history when they were on the wrong side of history.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: Novak Djokovic is a big thumb in the eye of the establishment. I really believe this, by the way. You may have seen, I tweeted about this over the weekend. Until people in this country see Fauci as the moral and policy equivalent of a biosecurity war criminal, we have not actually looked at the full scope of what was done in this country of people who were told they weren’t able to hug their dying relatives, of people whose businesses were destroyed, of people who were fired from decades of military service for not getting a vaccine, that, if they looked at the data now, would the first vaccine even really be approved? You have to wonder about this.
CLAY: No, it wouldn’t be.
BUCK: Would the very first one be approved?
CLAY: At 5% effectiveness there is a 0% chance that this thing would get approved.
BUCK: But I worry. I worry, Clay. One thing that kept coming up in my mind over the weekend is if you read — I think I told you I read Unbroken recently. You know the book Unbroken?
BUCK: Unfortunately made into a bad movie by Angelina Jolie, but a very good book about Zamperini was this track star.
CLAY: Unbelievable book.
BUCK: Movie Zamperini. An amazing book. For those who haven’t read, I highly recommended it. It is fascinating because of the Japanese treatment of prisoners of war. First, the Japanese treatment of the Chinese was on a same plane of moral atrocity as anything else that occurred in World War II. Murdered and raped millions of people. It was absolutely horrific. But the Japanese treatment of American prisoners of war were true war crimes, right, of the worst kind. And initially when Japan surrendered there was this sense that we’re gonna hunt down the war criminals and hold them accountable.
But then there was a movement within Japan, including somebody who was initially thought of as a war criminal was later the prime minister of Japan, of, “Hey, we need to forget. Yeah, we did some bad stuff, everybody does some bad stuff but we need to move on to other thinking,” and there was a whole shift internally, didn’t want to spend time thinking about this, didn’t want to spend time.
And I worry that there’s something like that with the covid lockdowns and the mask mandates and the vaccination mandates going on now where people just are deciding, we can’t even handle the reality of how stupid and oppressive this was. I’m not saying it was as bad as the treatment of POWs, but I’m just saying, there’s an unwillingness to grapple with what we have done, the same way that they were unwilling to grapple with the atrocities they committed in Japan. I think there are a lot of… Look, I’m just gonna say it: A lot of leftists in this country who are just pretending like they were right all along here, or they just don’t want to talk about it. Because they did tremendous damage to people.
CLAY: And they’re still doing it. I’ve got a poll up right now. You guys can go vote @ClayTravis: “Do you believe that Djokovic should be able to play in the U.S. Open?” Simple question. Should he be able to enter the country and play in the U.S. Open. You went to the U.S. Open last year if I remember correctly, Buck.
BUCK: I’m gonna go again this year.
CLAY: Isn’t it crazy that Djokovic would not be able to play?
BUCK: Right. So that the bureaucracy of the USTA is super left-wing group. No surprise to you as sports guy. I know that from people who have been coaches and have played, you know, some of the satellite tournaments, et cetera, super left-wing bureaucracy, and tennis is popular, it’s more popular probably in this country with Democrats than it is with Republicans as a spectator sport.
CLAY: There are a few sports like that.
BUCK: Yeah. I’m just guessing tennis is one of them. So, this is why they have very, very clear policies about vaccine mandates, and there are a lot of people… I went outdoors to the U.S. Open last year. People were masked outside. There was a lot of that going on.
BUCK: — plans but they were shouting at everybody to show their vaccine cards. I really do think that there are a lot of people — you know, and for people say, how bad is it? The Economist this past weekend had a big story. You know what it was? The global learning loss that has occurred that will result in not just developmental delay but likely a developmental gap, particularly in poorer countries and the poorer people in those countries, they will never get to the level of literacy and basic academic capability, basic understanding of complex systems that they would learn in school. They will never get there.
And they’ll never really even be able to calculate how bad this damage is. But now the Democrats and the people that pushed this stuff in the bureaucracy is turning around saying, well, nobody could have known. That is a lie. They are lying to you. I mean, the scope of… You know, you and I talk about this here. I think there needs to be more conservative media focus on this. The devastation and the two the brink of totalitarianism that we suffered through because of covid is not something that we should just let pass, especially as we’re going into an election year.
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