CLAY: I want to play these two clips for you from CNN, and then I want to weigh in. I want to hear what Buck thinks too. How much is this polling? How much is this is suddenly Jeff Zucker is out at CNN and maybe he was the king of the mask police? I don’t even know. But I want you to listen to these two cuts. And it’s important for you to recognize that Dr. Leana Wen, one of CNN’s foremost experts, has been in favor of every possible masking tool.
She’s been in favor of vaccine mandates, she’s been one of the most Draconian of the covid restrictionists, and, all of a sudden, she has changed her entire tune. First, let’s listen to her recognize that masking children has a risk-benefit analysis and she no longer, in her opinion — suddenly — is in favor of masking kids. Listen to this.
WEN: There actually is harm that we should be discussing of children continuing to mask. It doesn’t mean that masking doesn’t have its place for children when there are very high rates of hospitalization; if we get a new variant in the future that children are particularly susceptible to, we may want to bring masks back. But we should also be intellectually honest and say that masking has had a cost, especially for the youngest learners. In people with English as a second language, children with learning stabilities, there has been a cost to them so the risk-benefit calculation has really changed.
BUCK: No, it hasn’t.
CLAY: So, Buck, what happened?
BUCK: Clay, we’ve known this all along. I knew this was gonna happen. There’s this weird feeling you have of on the one hand, thank God the madness will at least recede for a time — and I want everyone to be very clear. They’re gonna bring all this stuff back unless we ram home the truth, okay? If we just allow them to walk away from this, Leana Wen style and say, “Oh, we did all the right things but now the science has changed a little bit.”
No, what happened is we went through the seasonal respiratory virus spike, the same thing we saw last year and the same thing we saw precovid every period of time, cold viruses and flu and everything else. It’s dropping way down now. I think cases nationwide in the states down, what, over 50% in the last seven days? Something like that. We’ve seen a huge decline. It has nothing to do with the mitigation measures.
It has nothing to do with the mass vaccination campaign that they put us all through. That didn’t “stop the spread.” Everyone knows it. So now they walk around acting like they’re the reasonable ones because it’s now untenable. Now it’s, “What are we even doing? What’s going on? We’re gonna cater to the hysterics forever?” By the way, they would if they thought they could politically get away with it and politically it was a way for them to maintain power.
What we are going through right now is the Democrat recognition that this is an election year. This is possibly — from a legislative perspective — the end of the Biden presidency, really, if you have Republicans taking the House and the Senate — or either one — and they know that people are tired of this. Anyone who’s rational and reasonable understands they’ve failed, that the apparatus failed.
Fauciism, all of this did nothing — nothing! — to stop the waves of covid we have gone through. And that’s why you have idiots like Governor Murphy of New Jersey who, when they’re asked for data, don’t say they have any data. They just say, “Masks work!” like there’s some moron repeating what they’ve been told in a language they don’t even understand. “Masks work!” What? It’s absurd.
CLAY: Let’s play that. Let’s play that too. New Jersey governor Phil Murphy. He’s asked for any data. Now, to be fair — although it feels like it’s not fair at all, because these are the arguments — the data has been consistent forever. Suddenly, they now are changing their mind. And he was asked for any data to prove that school mask mandates work. Now, by the way, the state of New Jersey is lifting its mask restrictions coming March 7th for schools and child care settings. That’s about a month from today, and here is what he had to say when he was asked if mask mandates actually work.
MURPHY: There’s no question that masking in our schools since the beginning of the school year has been a very smart public health step. I think we’ve had just over 2,600 cases of students with covid positive since the beginning of the school year. That’s out of 1.4 million kids.
JAKE TAPPER: Yeah, but have you seen data that definitively proves that these mask mandates have worked? I mean, the numbers you just presented are impressive, but are they different from the numbers in states where they didn’t have mask mandates?
MURPHY: I’m highly confident, and I’m sure our health officials could say it definitively. There’s no question they’ve worked.
BUCK: “There’s no question.”
CLAY: No.
BUCK: “There’s no question they’ve worked.” Wait, but why do they work? “They work.” Get to… I think he’s a former Goldman Sachs guy. He knows what he’s saying is moronic. He knows he has no data. If they had the data, if they had the evidence, don’t you think, Clay, they would be dancing on Florida’s grave if they could right now?
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: Florida has had masks optional for the entire school year. We have six months of data. Does anyone want to guess what happens when you look at Florida per capita covid counts in schools without mask mandates versus all the others, versus California? Line them up side by side. Basically, the same thing. Didn’t make a difference.
CLAY: My backyard is a perfect example of that, Buck, because Davidson County, which is Nashville, mandated masks, and my county, which is Williamson, Franklin-Brentwood — for those who know the area of Nashville — did not. And the actual six-month data of student infections with covid was virtually the exact same, almost no differences whatsoever in terms of what that looked like.
Now, Dr. Leana Wen, I want to go back to her again because I just watched this interview clip on CNN last night, and it’s rare my jaw drops. Buck, it was like you or I were suddenly a guest on CNN, and the shamelessness with which she pretends that the science has changed but also that she hasn’t been arguing the exact opposite of this up ’til a couple of weeks ago? She now says the responsibility on mask wearing should shift from the government to the individual. Who does that sound like? Listen to this.
WEN: There was a — and is a time and place for pandemic restrictions, but when they were put in it was always with understanding that they would be removed as soon as we can. And in this case, circumstances changed. Case counts are declining. Also, the science has changed! We know that vaccines protected very well against Omicron, which is the dominant variant. Everyone’s 5 and older have widespread access to vaccines.
And we also know about one-way masking, the idea that even if people around you are not wearing masks, if you wear a high quality mask, that also protects you, the wearer, too! And so in this case I’m not saying — I don’t think anyone really is saying — that no one should ever wear masks, but rather that the responsibility should shift from a government mandate imposed from the state or the local district of the school, rather it should shift to an individual responsibility by the family who can still decide that their child can wear a mask if needed.
BUCK: By the way, I don’t agree. I think everything she says there is basically wrong, just to be clear. I understand you’re saying the government shouldn’t be mandating this for people.
CLAY: The big takeaway there is she suddenly is against mandates after she wanted everybody to be vaccinated; she wanted every kid vaccinated to be mandated.
BUCK: She wanted N95 masks for kids a month ago!
CLAY: I know.
CLAY: No, they don’t.
BUCK: Has she been awake for the last four months?
CLAY: I’m willing to forgive the fact that almost every bit of the data she cited to analyze her final result is wrong because the final result is right, right? And so, I don’t… Buck, what do you think happened here? Do you think Jeff Zucker being out at CNN has led to this? Maybe he was the ultimate, you know, covid terror, fear porn purveyor? Is it the data on some of the polling? It’s unjust — but just to happen overnight effectively. Do you think that all these Democratic governors — ’cause I do — in Delaware and Connecticut and New Jersey agreed to come out on the same day to try to distract attacks on them? I think that’s likely.
BUCK: Yes. That’s what happened here. The politics have changed. The science has not changed.
CLAY: Is the same it’s always been.
BUCK: That’s been the same the whole time. The politics in this moment have changed because people realize now. It is unavoidable. You cannot be even vaguely informed about the world around you and not understand the drawbacks of masking, not understand that the vaccines didn’t work as advertised to stop the spread. See, I’ll use the specificity here. She says they work. I know what they’re gonna say.
“Oh, it works against hospitalization and death.” That was not the basis for mandate. It was not, “Get the shot, it’ll save your life. It was get the shot or else because you’ll kill somebody else if you don’t get the shot!” That was a lie. And they haven’t come to grips with that lie yet. They won’t actually say that out loud, but the data all proves it. Clay, it’s political liability now.
They realize that the mask as the sign of tribal allegiance to Democrats is just annoying now for everyone who’s not completely crazy; so they have to let you a little bit. But I want to be very clear about this too. She says, Dr. Leana Wen and many others already, “We have to let up now, so we have the credibility to reinstitute later.” They are not done, and that’s why when people say, “Oh, Buck let it go. Let’s move on. Let’s talk about Ukraine or whatever.” No. They were wrong and they want to do this again. And you and I know this. You’ve known this from the very beginning where this was heading.
CLAY: No doubt. And also, they are going to try and argue that the reason why Omicron cases came down… You know this, too, Buck. They’re gonna say, “Oh, all of our measures work.”
CLAY: “And that’s why the cases came down, because you guys started wearing your mask more assiduously because you were listening to public health authorities.” Because I gotta think, I feel like they must have gotten some numbers inside of the White House because every parent that I talk to, Buck — even people who are dyed-in-the-wool Democrats — on the school masking issue, they are over it in a big way.
And I think what they’re seeing is the overall data has moved rapidly against the idea of kids needing to wear masks, ’cause people start to eventually recognize some of this data, and I think they are panicked over it. Stacey Abrams, for instance. Buck, they’re terrified that they are gonna get the landslide of their lives in November. And if they’re really gonna go to war with the idea being your kids have to wear masks, we’re gonna see a beat-down. I think we’re gonna see the beat-down in a major way regardless, but we might see one that we’ve never seen in the history of the country if they keep trying to drive this.
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