BUCK: Linda in Chicago, Illinois, welcome.

CALLER: Hi. Thank you. I just wanted to really call and compliment you on your interview with Kristi Noem and how well you did it, because the things that you said to her were what I would have said and what I would have asked her. And I had wanted to hear from her what she had to say in response about the women’s sports thing and other things. I really want to thank you for pushing back a bit with her.

It made me a little… I’m all about not what people say but what they actually do, ’cause talk is cheap. You can say anything. People, politicians say things all the time that I agree with, but then if they don’t actually do it… I’ve gone away from wondering about what people have said, but I thought you did a really fine job. And she did give me some answers that I appreciated knowing her stance. It made me feel a little less… Because I was very pro-Kristi Noem, and then when she did what she did with the —

BUCK: The transgender bill. I mean, anybody who’s wondering, you can go and watch the Tucker interview with her, the Tucker Carlson interview with her months ago on that one. I would just say, watch that interview and come to your own conclusions about what you think and then for a lot of people on the right, there has been in the last couple of days some pretty substantial pushback, and the Noem camp is going after people publicly on social media — very aggressively — in response too.

So look, sometimes… We’ve all been at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and Clay’s a guy that knows sports. If I sit down at the Travis table and I say the Tennessee Titans are gonna go 0-14 or something this year, it’s gonna get a little contentious. Doesn’t mean that you’re not sitting at the same table and you’re all part of the same family. But I think if we’re gonna get the right answers, I think we need to push sometimes, and I think that there is urgency right now.

They’re lining up all the mandates, all the state push all across the country, and I think a lot of us want to see something that will prevent a continuous regime of vax passports, needles and arms — and this is obviously very personal to me, because of what I’ve been going through here in New York City. So Linda, that was the intent. And if you felt the interview was illuminating, then I really appreciate that and we try.

And, like I said, it’s within the family, folks. We can’t always agree on all the things all the time on the right, you know? A lot of people that became big Trump supporters in the early days, Clay, in conservative media, I remember they were very opposed to President Donald Trump. But then people forgave them because they figured out what was really going on and what the Trump movement was all about.

CLAY: No doubt.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: We’ve got Victor in Orange County, California, on the line. Victor, what’s up?

CALLER: Yeah, guys. Thanks for having (garbled) couple of (garbled).

BUCK: Wait. I think we lost Victor. Can we hear him?

CALLER: Yeah. Can you guys hear me?

BUCK: Yeah.

CALLER: (garbled) Hello?

BUCK: Yeah, man.

CLAY: Yeah, you called us.

CALLER: Are you here?

BUCK: Yes.

CALLER: Okay. So the governor of South Dakota. I do think she has a point. If you mandate this, if she does this, then what’s gonna stop the next administration from doing the same thing?

BUCK: Well, okay, I mean —

CLAY: I think there’s a difference between —

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: Let me just like say this.

CALLER: (garbled) in California.

CLAY: Yeah, I understand but so let me just explain. There’s a difference between a mandate that requires something, right? Like I am mandating you do X, and a mandate that guarantees your freedom from something which doesn’t require you to do anything. And I think that’s a significant difference, right? And you can use the mask example to kind of think through it.

What people are arguing for — Buck and I, other people; I’m a parent — is the right to choose whether or not your kid wears a mask. That is the freedom to make a choice. That is not a not-wearing mask mandate. That’s the freedom as a parent to make a choice. A mandate, which is what’s happening in many blue states, is, “We are demanding that you do this,” and so, what I think — and, Buck, you can explain exactly that. But I think there’s a difference between a mandate requiring an action and a mandate that makes clear that you aren’t required to do something. Those are two fundamentally different mandates.

BUCK: Yeah, and we don’t leave in a false, libertarian utopia where businesses… I mean, just take out Dakota, for example. There are licensing authorities in that state for funeral homes, for chiropractors. There’s a lot of regulations that you have to go through. There’s a minimum wage in the state of South Dakota. There’s a lot of things that businesses are told they can and can’t do, sometimes having to do with safety regulations, other times having to do with economic regulations.

And I’m just gonna say on this point that, “Oh, the Biden administration will do it so we shouldn’t do it,” you’ll notice something here. The mandates all go in one way. The left uses its power to force people to do things — in this case, to force needles in your arms — and we have to find out a way to get that to stop. We have to find a way to get it to no longer be the case. The federal government has a lot of coercive power, especially, for example, with hospital systems, but just in general.

And they’re saying they want private companies to do this. States under their health authority and also under anti-discrimination law have a lot of leeway. But just even under their health department leeway, they could determine that forcing people to take a vaccine that we haven’t even had… Now, what, we’re doing a third booster shot? We don’t know what that’s going to mean.

We haven’t done the real trials for this, that that’s not safe, and they won’t allow a private business to make people do it, the same way that you can’t as a private business decide you’re not going to serve certain people because of immutable characteristics. There’s a lot of case law to support doing something to protect freedom. Or, guys, we can all just sit around and hope that the government doesn’t just come for us in one way or another, which is why we are right. Now that’s my feeling on it. I see it in New York. They’re making everyone get the shot. We don’t have power here.

CLAY: Lots of governors have made a decision that they’re not going to allow vaccine mandates. They have done that in Florida. They have done that in Texas. They have done that in Tennessee. They have done that, I believe, in Georgia, Oklahoma. You can run through a long list — Arkansas, I believe, as well.

A lot of red states have made that move, and so I think it’s an interesting question to debate on a philosophical level. And again, the other thing to factor in here is every state legislature is different, right? There are lots of unique specificities in each, individual state. But that is… Look, again, she wanted to come on the show. She requested an opportunity to come on the show.

BUCK: Yeah, just to be very clear to everybody, it was their ask. (chuckles)

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: They wanted to come on, and if you see some of the exchanges between the governor and some other conservative pundits in the last 24 hours or so you’ll see, this — people feel very strongly about this. It’s gotten pretty contentious, because it feels like if we’re gonna surrender — or how about this? How about going on offense in favor of freedom instead of playing the “Oh, but ,small government” game?

That’s the question that we face now. We’ve been trying to say let’s play the small government game for a while. We are now defending on a 1-yard line. They’re about to start forcing needles into your kids’ arms, everybody, Clay and I know it. That’s happening. So we can either try to rally against this in a meaningful way or you’re gonna end up like everybody in New York: Getting the shot one way or the other.