BUCK: If you have to pick one thing right now that shows you the rotting core of the Democratic Party in the era of covid, I don’t think you could have a better example of it — I don’t think anything could be more clear — than what’s going on right now in the Windy City, Chicago: 330,000 students are shut out of school today. Why? Well, because the teachers union has decided that they want another paid vacation. They want to stay home and do, quote, “remote learning,” which — as we all know from the actual studies and experience of this — means effectively no learning at all.

The Chicago Teachers Union and school districts are in an impasse over what they call “covid-19 safety.” Here’s the impasse: The teachers union is very powerful, very important to Democrats, and they think they can get their way. Clay, there isn’t even an argument that they can make in good faith that schools should be shut down while restaurants, bars, clubs, you name it aren’t. Yes, they have vaccine passports, but they’re not closed. But they’re doing this anyway because they think they can get away with it.

CLAY: In the nation’s third largest city, Buck, after New York and L.A., there are 330,000 kids in Chicago that are not in school today because 77% of Chicago area schoolteachers voted not to go back to school in person because of covid. I got some numbers for you, Buck, because this goes to the essence of what I think is the most fundamental failure of everything we have done associated with covid. The poorest and the kids with the least advantages.

The Democrat Party, what do they say all the time? “Oh, we care about equity.” They don’t even care about equality anymore. They care about “equity.” Listen to these numbers, Buck, and I want you to just think of the kids that these teachers and these Democratic politicians and their teachers unions are leaving behind: 330,000 kids in Chicago area public schools. Eighty-two percent of those kids, Buck, are black or Hispanic. Eighty-two percent black or Hispanic.

Seventy percent are on free or reduced lunch. Okay, think about that for a minute. A lot of these kids who are not in school today in Chicago are not able to get regular, safe, healthy food — breakfast and lunch, by the way. Twenty-one percent have limited English proficiency. Fifteen percent have special education needs. Okay? That is the data on the kids who are being wronged by the failures of adults, and this is part of all of the covid insanity, Buck…

And I say this as a parent, and I say this as somebody who believes in public schools. I went to public schools K through 12 Nashville area. My kids, my two youngest are in public schools now. This is indefensible. The Democratic politicians who have allowed this to happen, who have allowed them to be captured by the schoolteacher unions, this is the biggest failure of American public policy in our lives, and the fact that Joe Biden…

You could say, “Well, it’s a local Chicago school district.” The fact that Joe Biden and his cronies in the Democratic Party, two years into this, Buck, are not standing up and saying, “You go to work, or we are going to do whatever is necessary to take away your paychecks,” it is infuriating to me. I know it’s infuriating to a lot of parents out there listening right now in Chicago and other places.

BUCK: Who are the bad guys here? Think about that for a second. Listen to what Clay just laid out for everybody on those numbers. We’re talking about kids who are suffering — and let’s just note not just today. It will be weeks of this. It will be more falling behind academically, more households where people might have to stop working, lose a job that they really need to take care of kids because they have to handle this sudden change in what the covid policies are thanks to the teachers unions.

Dr. Anthony Fauci — and I know people think that he is my white whale and I’m obsessed with him, but they’re not wrong. Dr. Anthony Fauci is on TV every five minutes it feels like. Where is he? Where he is Walensky on not saying, “We think the following; we think maybe schools should be open,” but saying, “This is the indefensible wrong”? Why not use the platforms that they have? Why not come out and speak as public health professionals about this issue? We know that child suicide, teen suicide is way up.

We know that learning loss is enormous. We think that anxiety disorders, mental health issues are skyrocketing. Those are all very serious things that you would think a public health professional who has an enormous amount of influence on these policies would care about. No. Of course not. Because Fauci’s constituency is the Democrat Party and CNN, not the American people. And that’s why he won’t scold them. He scolded your neck of the woods, Clay, about football games.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: He scolded people who wanted to enjoy SEC games this summer. Where’s the scolding of the teachers union? We all know why.

CLAY: And look. I got an email yesterday. My kids’ public schools went back today in person, not wearing masks. I went and talked to my school board back in August. But I’m a kid who went to public schools in Nashville and I went to a lot of public schools, I’ll be honest with you, that were not that great a schools, right? I mean, certainly not in the context of where my kids get to go to school now. And so I believe every Republican politician and, frankly, I believe every Democratic politician, that they’ve shown themselves to be totally wrong on this issue and they won’t even speak out.

We talk a lot about, “How do we broaden the tent of sanity in this country? How do we add allies?” Every Republican politician and every staffer who works for a Republican politician that is listening to us right now all over this country ought to be firing off as aggressively as they can at the teachers unions right now, because we’re talking about the third largest school district in America. And like I said, it’s 82% black and Hispanic. Do kids of underprivileged backgrounds in the United States deserve education in person or not?

This is an existential question that has not really been fought for two years. If I could go back in time in all honesty — and I argued this at the time — I think one of the great flaws of the 2020 Trump presidential campaign, the fact that Biden managed to get dragged across the finish line, was because of moms in the suburbs. I think if Trump had gone all in in October and November of 2020 leading up to that election and said every school district has to be open for in person learning, that he would have brought a ton of moms.

Not only white moms, black moms, Hispanic moms, Asian moms, and a lot of dads, too, who understand. Look, Buck, this is the foundation of getting back to normalcy, because if you can’t get your kids to school, many people can’t go to work. This is why the overall women’s employment rate has collapsed in this country. It is the essence of failure that we are sitting fighting these battles. And look. I don’t know the full legality of what could be done from a federal perspective, right? But I do this.

Ronald Reagan did not allow the air traffic controllers to go on strike because of the importance of their job. If I were right now advising Joe Biden, I would say you come out and talk all the time about equity and inclusion, how in the world are you gonna allow the third largest school district in America to not being going to back to school over covid right now? You own this.

This is your failure. You’ve had a full year to solve it. This is on your watch, the Randy wine garnets, all these teacher unions that only care about themselves, not the kids, it’s time for kids to be put in front of adults in the lineup of who we care about, way past time. And this is such… You can tell by my voice, it infuriates me.

BUCK: It’s never going to happen, as you and I both know — as everyone listening to this knows — because the teachers unions are among the most important machine for donations and votes in the entire national Democrat Party. The teachers unions are a commie enclave that work for Democrats. If you look at donations, enormous donations from teachers unions across the country to candidates as well as of course get-out-the-vote efforts, all the things that they do, and this is part of the Democrat big city machinery.

Certainly, in a place like Chicago, it’s true in New York, Los Angeles. Find me a big city, I’ll show you teachers unions that get their way, that are never going to be crossed by the Democrat Party. You’re right. Joe Biden, if it was about the children — which, it’s never about the children when you’re talking about the teachers union. If it was about the children, he would come out and say, “Exactly what is going on here?” This is a moment to show that the left can be reasonable when it comes to covid restrictions. Of course, they can’t be, and they won’t be, and this also raises the question, Clay. You and I were both opposed to school shutdowns in the fall of 2020.

CLAY: And that was considered controversial! You and I went to the mat to fight for schools to be open.

BUCK: And yet here we are now looking at how the teachers unions while the rest of society in Chicago is still up and running… They’ve had some noise about this in New York, they’ve had some noise about this from the unions in L.A. They feel like maybe this is too much. But in Chicago, that city machinery, they think they have the ability to get what they want here. Clay, this raises for a lot of us a question of was it ever a good idea?

Was it ever fair for the teachers unions to shut down these schools? Why did Fauci bend the knee to them as he did? And of course we see now, it was never about health or safety of kids. It was about lazy adults who have power in the Democratic Party and some more neurotics who were terrified, not wanting to do their jobs, wanting to get paid to sit home on their couch. That’s what actually happened, and kids suffered because of it.