Happy Independence Day Return to Normal!

CLAY: Welcome to the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. I appreciate all of you hanging out with us on what is — let’s be honest — a holiday for a lot of you. We’re working hard here. I hope you guys had a fantastic Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I hope wherever you are across this great country or around the world, you celebrated the Fourth of July to your fullest. Maybe a little bit…

Maybe a few hangovers out there in the crowd today. Maybe some hangovers that are still being built, as you are listening to us today. I am Clay Travis. He is Buck Sexton. You can follow us on Twitter @ClayTravis and @BuckSexton. And, Buck, I was down in Atlanta, which was pretty fantastic. I went to Major League Baseball games on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I’m still fired up over Major League baseball’s decision to pull the All-Star Game out of Atlanta. But it wasn’t the Braves’ fault.

They didn’t support this in any way. And I got to be honest with you: full stadiums. I don’t even recall seeing a mask in the entire three days, really, to and from the stadium, all around The Battery and the Atlanta area. It felt like 100% normalcy from a sports perspective. I know you were back in New York City for the holiday.

What did the city feel like, and what was your vibe on what I would say is the first holiday that felt like all the way back to March that we haven’t been lectured, “Oh, this is going to be a super-spreader event. Wait for two weeks.” They even had a barbecue at the White House. Joe Biden was out eating ice cream, which seems to be the only thing that the media will cover him doing these days. What was your vibe in New York? Did it feel normal?

BUCK: It felt like a return to freedom, at some level. There were lots of folks in restaurants, lots of people out and about without masks on. I will say now, there are only a few places where you really feel things are stretching even still in New York City. It’s gotten a lot better here. You have it in these national ride-share apps, if you take any of those Uber, Lyft, any of those.

Taxi drivers — I think it’s because here in New York, there’s always been a partition. So they’re very lax about that, for the most part. Because they don’t wear them. They don’t wear masks in the same way you’ll see others. And, you know, Uber will make you take a photo of yourself to prove you’re wearing a mask. If you get hit once for not being a mask wearer, they’ll make you start taking a selfie to prove your mask is on.

CLAY: Oh, my God.

BUCK: But to your broader point, look, restaurants are wide open. The weather here was a little “eh” here over the weekend. I know people had better weather in other places or perhaps they had similar situations, but I’ll just say this: We had a Fourth of July celebration where finally it felt like people could live their lives again. And remember, Biden told us, if we were good…

CLAY: (chuckling)

BUCK: If we were good little boys and girls and got to 70% vaccination rate… Well, we didn’t get to the 70%. But I think people have finally… Now, when I say, “people,” I think 80% of America is in a much better place about all this stuff now. I think about 20% of America is still so traumatized that they’re still completely unreasonable about the covid realities. Maybe it’s more like ten or 15%, but they’re a very vocal ten or 15%.

CLAY: I think that’s right, and I keep waiting. So Nashville had the biggest fireworks display of anywhere in the country on Sunday, yesterday, and I looked at the pictures. There was no social distancing, there was no masking, and I’m cautiously optimistic — I’m curious what you think about this, Buck — that it’s going to be really hard (given where the masses are going to find themselves, really quickly) to go back to the masking and shutdown universe.

My fear is, as it gets cold and the fall and the winter emerges, there are gonna be some hot spots, and the same people who learned that they can have Draconian authority over all of us — the Gavin Newsoms and Andrew Cuomos of the world — may try to rear their ugly head and reclaim control. Do you think that a July 4th like we just had and this weekend…?

Travel, by the way, it was impossible to drive all over the place. Because people were out on the roads, in massive numbers, flying in big numbers. Biggest crowds in airports since March of last year when the airports got shut down. Do you feel big days like this help to fight the battle of, “We can’t ever go back again?”

BUCK: Can I tell you my Spirit Airlines story?

CLAY: Oh, yeah. I need to hear all about this.

BUCK: Can I tell everybody about this since you’re curious?

CLAY: You were texting me about this on Friday. Yes.

BUCK: And also, just for everybody, we’ve got a member of Congress who didn’t want to celebrate the fourth that Clay and I are going to dive into. The anti-Americanism on the left for the Fourth of July, we’re going to dive into that momentarily, and there’s lot of news stories. Big thing, big … kerfuffle? I don’t know if that’s the technical term.

CLAY: That’s the perfect word.

BUCK: Thanks.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Out of ESPN. We can talk about that in a moment. So we’ve got a bunch of things we’ll get to in this hour. I’ll give you the abbreviated version. So I’m sitting there. Clay and I had our first two great weeks in Nashville and everyone’s feeling good. We’re going off the holiday weekend. And, yes, the only flight… Because everyone keeps sending… It’s like, I don’t know, Clay. People tell me texts: “Do you know that Spirit Airlines is a budget carrier?”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Yes! But I’m not fancy. I just want to get somewhere I want to go.

CLAY: You pick time over flight airline. I feel like most people probably do that.

BUCK: Exactly. So in this case, I’m flying Spirit once again, and I wasn’t even going to name them. Well, I guess I did in the twitter thread that went kind of viral over the weekend. But I’m sitting there, and I’m right next to where the airline attendants gather in the front, you know, as they do, and, “Hello. Welcome,” and, “Hello! How are you doing?” But instead of that, there’s a lot of, like, “Pull your mask up, honey. Pull your mask up, honey,” and not to adults — well, that too — but to small children.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: So small that at one point, the attendant says, “Can you pull your mask up?” and the parent says, “My kid’s, like, not even 2 yet.” And there was kind of a, “Okay, I guess we’ll let that slide,” and they were telling basically 2-year-olds, not that the mask is off, but, “Pull it up over your nose,” because that will save us.

So then we get to… You’ve seen this when we fly. Airlines are where you deal with this, and I always tell everybody, that flying in general is like taking a time warp to the Soviet Union, circa 1975 or something. The rules are stupid. We all know the rules are dumb. We have to obey them, because otherwise we get into trouble.

They know it’s dumb. We know they know it’s dumb. But yet, we still have to do it. So I’m sitting there and people are coming on the plane, and then the woman who has been telling everybody to mask up, pulls her mask down for the entirety of the announcements.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Now, Clay, I’m not a masters in public health or a PhD in epidemiology or an MD, and I accept that. But I’m pretty sure there’s no special exception for, “I want to be able to say something more loudly, so that the virus is not being expelled.” Not that I think the virus is even… By the way, they’re all vaccinated. I can hear their whole conversation, because right there.

CLAY: What’s wild about this is all of this is a sham, and you hit it correctly. But anyone out there who has got a parent, there are a few videos that have gone viral of people with 2-year-olds or 3-year-olds or whatever it is, trying to get their kids to wear their masks and that’s virtually impossible. But the moment they said, “Hey, you can eat or drink on the airplane and pull your mask down,” any argument they were making about mask-wearing was invalid.

And I actually wonder how much longer are we going to go with what I clearly think is cosmetic theater as it pertains to the airports, because you know, Buck. You were in Nashville. The only place where people are wearing masks in like the states of Florida, Tennessee, Texas — a lot of the country now — is when you go into an airport, and when you walk through a terminal. So how much do we keep the cosmetic theater and the charade going?

BUCK: And for everyone who’s listening who’s in a place where they don’t do this or you’re not worried about this, understand that as long… It’s like an infection that hasn’t been cleared. I think that’s a pretty good analogy here. As long as some of this stuff lingers, it will come back. There will be… Whether it’s this flu season or this covid season combined or the next time. Until we all understand that this stuff — to borrow from you — is just cosmetic, it’s just theater. It’s the theatrics.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: It’s going to come back, but to finish what’s happened, I’m sitting there. The woman pulls her mask down to do the whole, you know, buckle your seat belt — which, again, it’s the Soviet Union. Flying planes commercial is, you know… And let’s just say at Spirit, they’re not exactly… It’s like “fly the Fauci skies.”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: They’re very strict even though they don’t really care, and I hear them having a conversation about, how, “We’ve got noncompliance,” and I’m like, “You have to be kidding me,” and a bunch of them gather. You know, the stewardesses or the attendants — or whatever the proper nomenclature — gather, and they say, “There are three people not wearing their masks!”

So now the whole… By the way, the plane… It’s a holiday weekend. The plane is absolutely packed. There’s not an empty seat on the whole plane, and there are three people that they say have their masks down below their noses. And they’ve already told them once or twice or whatever it is. But now we all have to wait there while they go through the removal procedure. They actually removed three people.

CLAY: How old are the people getting removed, Buck?

BUCK: I’d say they were in their 20s.

CLAY: So were they making a conscious stand here? Were they drunk? Like, how would you asses their…? Like three of them, theoretically, they would want to go to New York, right, for the weekend? Like, what’s causing all this consternation?

BUCK: They had to be told, “Pull it up over your nose,” too many times for these attendants’ liking.

CLAY: Oh my God.

BUCK: Then… Because I heard the negotiation going on behind me, and they were like, “No, no, no. We’ll wear them. We promise. We promise.” Like, “We’re good. We promise,” and it was like, “Sorry. Third strike.” Now the airplane people… Not the attendants. They bring on these other people. Not police but, like, I don’t know what. Supervisors or security. And then they have to negotiate with them. And have to start saying, “You either come with us, or the police will come and arrest you.” So then we go through… The whole thing delayed the flight about 30 minutes.

CLAY: So did the girls have to walk off like perp-walk style?

BUCK: Yes. They took three of them off the plane. I have photos of the whole thing. They took the three of them off the plane, and then at the jetway — because remember, you have to clear the jetway before they pull away — they’re negotiating how they can get back on the plane.

So you’ve got — I don’t know — 140 people, give or take? I don’t know how many are on this kind of plane, but over 140 people are all sitting there for over 40 minutes because some attendants are annoyed about the lack of perfect mask compliance, while they’re shouting at us with their masks pulled down about mask compliance. If this wasn’t the encapsulation of Fauci-ite madness, Clay, I don’t know what is. But I did make it to New York City in one piece. So I was happy about that.

CLAY: So what do you think…? I mean, in all honesty, what happens to those girls? Are they banned from Spirit? Are they able to get on a later flight? Like, in theory, I would like to hear their story, because they want to go — theoretically, right — to New York City. They’re in their 20s. They have virtually no risk.

They may be vaccinated for all we know, and the flight attendants just decide, “You weren’t masking appropriately, so we’re going to demand that you exit the plane” after they’ve already boarded? They probably have checked bags, Buck. They’re already sitting there. What sense does any of this make? It’s all cosmetic Kabuki theater nonsense.

BUCK: I would refuse by nullification of these orders if I worked for are the airline. Meaning… I understand people don’t want to lose their jobs. I think the sane, honorable thing to do is just pretend to not see it if someone’s mask is down below their nose. Who cares? Stop being crazy, libs! That’s what I want to say to them, “Stop being crazy,” and people need to noncomply, people in positions of authority with this stuff. Yeah. If somebody else on a plane is gonna complain, yeah, but to call in the authorities? It was total madness, Clay.

CLAY: To threaten them with arrest, Buck? And also, you’re a flight attendant! Do you think that flight attendants overwhelmingly skew corona bro-obsessive with mask wearing, or do you think — to your point — they’ve just been so hammered with this over the past year, that it’s some sort of drunk-power authority that they feel? Because as to your point, they were all vaccinated! It’s not like that they feel like they’re at risk.

BUCK: No. I think it’s because they are afraid that there will be complaints made. This is what I have been told. I have airline attendants who used to listen to me on my previous show, and they would write in, and say that it’s because they were afraid that they would call out for a lack of enforcement.

And so if they don’t enforce the crazy, then they become the problem and they can have professional sanctions. But, look, overall, I don’t want this to overshadow the fact that I think everybody had a really good, free Fourth of July weekend. We’ve made huge progress. We’re just not done with the fight, Clay, and you know that. This isn’t over.