BUCK: Fauci versus DeSantis is one way to look at the lockdowns and the situation of covid in the United States. If you’re looking for two people who symbolize their respective sides here, Fauci at every turn, has been the face and voice of lockdowns, of absurd/pointless mitigation measures, of prognostications that don’t come true and always giving cover to the left wing authoritarian lockdowners. That’s what Fauci’s done.

When schools wanted to be shut down, even though kids were at very low risk, oh, he was perfectly happy to give the teachers unions what they wanted. Somehow, this guy has never upset his own side. Fauci has never upset the MSNBC/CNN-watching, New York Times-subscribing audience. He only annoys those of us who believe in individual liberty and freedom and know that the data does not support many of the things they’ve been pushing for.

Here is how Fauci responded over the weekend to the suggestion that Florida stands in the way of his madness and calls him out. Here’s how Fauci responded.

FAUCI: Whoever is attacking me and attacking just the reflection of the politicization of what should be a purely public health issue, and it’s really unfortunate. You know, they’re attacking personally me, because I’m a visible person. But I’m merely articulating the proper public health practices that are recommended strongly by an organization, and that organization is the CDC. So, they like to pick out a certain person because they could make that person, you know, the personification of political divides, which is so unfortunate, Jake. We should put all of that aside. We have an extraordinary problem that’s killing people in the United States.

BUCK: I don’t know if there’s ever been a bureaucrat who’s more catastrophically wrong and more serially dishonest than this guy. Yeah, Clay, it’s interesting. The CDC? He doesn’t work at the CDC! So, why is he the guy who’s on TV every five minutes explaining the CDC guidance and all the rest of it? This guy’s the absolute worst. You’ve seen it from the beginning; I’ve seen it from the beginning.

CLAY: Yeah, and we should give people some updates. Maybe we need to get into this at the top of the third hour a little bit. We told you that this was likely to happen. Alex Berenson has been banned from Twitter, and that is significant. For those of you who regularly listen to this program, we will continue to have Alex on. But it is anti-science at its most basic level.

Science is about uncertainty and being aggressive in challenging all of the preconceived conceptions of what is the truth in order to get at the essence. Science is about challenging everything all the time, and with covid, scientists have constantly told us all the time: “You can’t say that! You can’t say that covid may have escaped from a Chinese lab. You can’t say that the vaccine might only be strongly effective for around six months.

“You can’t say that young people are virtually without danger from covid. All of those things are true. You can’t question whether schools should be open or closed. You can’t question whether lockdowns make sense! Buck, just right now the data is out. Israel — which is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world — just set a new high all-time for covid infections, covid cases in their country. All right?

Science is about looking at data and searching for why that data is telling you that story. What is clear, it would appear from the Israeli data — and this is part of the reason that Alex Berenson got kicked off of Twitter because he was right about this — is that Covid zero isn’t a reality. The vaccine is not going to wipe covid away. Same story just happening right now. Australia is effectively abandoning their Covid Zero strategy. Australia, island continent. They basically had wiped out covid in that country. Now the Delta variant is there — same thing that happened in New Zealand — and it’s skyrocketing. All of these strategies are failing.

BUCK: And on the point about censorship, it doesn’t even matter if what someone says was correct. It doesn’t matter that in retrospect some of the things that people have been censored for turn out to be true and the censors of social media — the big tech oligarchs — will even admit it.

CLAY: Yes!

BUCK: The point is: You are to comply. The point is: They’re turning a whole country into the airline attendants who will tell you, “You better mask up in between bites or else we’re going to kick you off the gosh darn plane.” Look, this is one of those areas that everyone says, “I will not comply with this or that” and I applaud that sentiment, and I’ve been an unmasked bandit as much as I can be. But they’ll get to the way they force you, and planes are a perfect example. Everyone thinks, “Oh, well, I won’t bend a knee!” You ever flown in the last 18 months, ’cause you’re bending the knee. You’ve wearing a mask, which is idiotic on a plane.

CLAY: It’s nonsensical.

BUCK: We all know it does nothing, and it doesn’t matter to the people in charge because what’s most essential to them is that you do what you’re told. We are reordering American society right now. We are rewiring millions of people’s brains to think that they should operate like lab rats instead of citizens who go through the maze as they are told, or else they get a little electric shock.

This is happening day in and day out, and we have not yet come up with an effective response to this. There are a few places, a few holdouts. But even look at what Ron DeSantis deals with in Florida, Clay. He says masks optional based on parents at the state level. Notice Democrats don’t sit around and wring their hands about, “Ohhhh, we don’t want to abuse our power,” and do some doublespeak so they can bend the knee to corporate interests. Democrats in cities say, “You know what? We’re just going to defy you, and we’re going to have mask mandates for everybody, anyway.” That’s how they’re playing the game while our side sits around and is basically hoping that we don’t have federal vaccine mandates. Let’s see how close we get to it.

CLAY: And this is an interesting question, Buck. Because a lot of people say, “What should we do?” and I’ll give you an example here locally. We had tickets to go to an outdoor concert called the Pilgrimage Feast. It’s great event in the Nashville area. They just sent out notice that you have to provide proof of vaccination, or you have to provide a negative test to go to an outdoor concert.

My wife, immediately upon getting that email, said, ‘Send me a refund.” Right? I think that’s the response from people out there who are like, “What can we do in the marketplace?” If you have a market that is behaving in a way that you don’t think is rational… It’s an outdoor concert. My wife has been vaccinated. But I’ve got covid, a natural immunity — and we talk about this, Buck. I have no desire to go get a vaccine. So, email came, without even asking me anything, she immediately said, “We’re out. There’s no way that we are going to do this.” By the way, Joe Biden looks like he’s about to speak. We’ll see how in the world this goes. He’s at FEMA addressing what’s going on with Hurricane Ida.

BUCK: And of course, he’s got has his mask hanging from ear now.

CLAY: He has his mask on.

BUCK: This is just so stupid, friends. Honestly, I’ve lost so much patience with the mask theatrics and all the rest of it. It’s absolutely absurd.