BUCK: I just saw this, and Clay and I knew we had to jump on it right away as a story here. This is on the Daily Mail right now. “Biden’s vaccine strong-arm: The White House is considering withholding federal funds from institutions, including nursing homes, universities, cruise ships, in a bid to coerce the 90 million eligible who have not gotten the shot to get the shot.”

Now, Clay, one of my frustrations from the pandemic when I was doing a show 6 to 9 p.m. across the country was that it felt like there was a lockdown divide-and-conquer reality of things sometimes. So, I’d be in New York and I’d be saying, “Guys, this is crazy, what they’re doing to us,” and I would get people who would write in — from mostly Florida,if we’re being honest, but other places, too, Texas somewhat — and they would say, Buck, that’s kind of your problem in New York.

And I say look, at different points that was true with regard to specific policies. But one thing that I’ve tried to tell everybody all along is that this White House wants to wield the power to make you get the shot. They’re just trying to find a way to do it. And this is now… It had been… They were thinking, “Let’s use the private sector,” Clay, “to push people.” The private sector became the third party. If they’re gonna withhold funding from different institutions, how is this not a mandate, if they actually go with this? A federal top-down one.

CLAY: Yeah. They’re trying to get under that legal hurdle or get over it, however you want to classify it. I say “under,” because it seems underhanded to me, where you’re saying, “Oh, we’re not mandating that you get the vaccine. We’re just going to make it miserable for your employer or for your job site or wherever you might be to be able to do their job unless they bring down the heavy hand of the boss on you.”

This is where I think we are, Buck. Let’s just talk big picture as we roll into the weekend. I was talking earlier start the show, my kids went into schools. Great. Got to shake the hands with the teachers. Got to go into the classrooms. We had an NFL game good guy last night. Remember Joe Biden said 70% by July 4th. That was his goal. Well, he missed it by a month.

Now we’re sitting just a little bit over a month from July 4th, just over 70% of adults have gotten the covid vaccine, and it’s still not enough. And this is what we talked about with Alex Berenson yesterday. The flaw in the logic here is that they are selling the idea of Covid Zero basically: “If 100% of people had the vaccine, covid would cease to exist.

When the reality is covid is the flu now. It’s going to exist forever. Buck, you saw probably this morning just like I did that they’re talking about booster shots by the fall. When have you ever gotten a vaccine and within a couple of months needed another booster shot to ensure that that vaccine is going to work? We were talking earlier —

BUCK: You hadn’t gotten your yearly MMR booster for the last 42 years of your life, Clay?

CLAY: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

BUCK: Wow. You’re a risky guy.

CLAY: So I think they sold us, Buck, on the idea, “This is measles, this is mumps, this is going to disappear,” and it’s not going to, and it’s going to be a consistent endemic issue for probably the rest of our lives. And that’s why getting back to normalcy is such a big part of this importance. Because, Buck, I wish… this is like my argument when it comes to mascot names and you know that if you change one mascot name, it doesn’t end. There’s always another demand that’s coming.

If we were at 100% vaccination rate right now or 95% or whatever it was, there would be still be — if you look at England, if you look at Israel, if you look at countries that are far more vaccinated than us, there would still be — a substantial element of covid in this country. So what is the standard? I wish we could get Joe Biden on and just ask him, “Hey, what is the standard when you will stop making demands on the American public using covid as the excuse?”

BUCK: The same standard for everything, which is when they darn well say so. When the people in charge as in Biden, Fauci-ites, the apparatus of control decide, that’s when all the sudden we are supposed to — and, by the way, I just want to be clear. Biden, Clay, your number’s a little bit off here. Because the commander-in-chief, 350 million Americans have been vaccinated.

CLAY: (laughing) He just said that while we’re on the air, I think, right?

BUCK: He’s got more people vaccinated in America, according to Joe Biden than actually exist. So I just want to note he thinks he’s doing an even better job than Clay is giving him credit for here. We continue to see that if you understand the mentality, if you understand the nature of people who like to control others, of people who believe the state is there to keep them safe and warm.

And that coercion in the name of collectivism is always a good thing, nothing that has happened in the case of covid lockdowns, nothing that has occurred is surprising. The only thing that surprised me is actually how compliant a large portion of the American people have been up to this point, and I’m not sure we’re going to see that change enough, Clay, to get us out of this now — to the point I made before, should be done now.

CLAY: I will say this, Buck. There’s been two things that surprise me. One, how much of sheep everybody has been, which is infuriating to both of us and to many of our listeners. I actually was surprised in May, not because I thought it was the wrong decision, but that they did away with the mask requirement. I mean, that was something that was good news, and I was kind of stunned that they did it.

But now they’ve already brought that back, and I don’t know now what the standard is ’cause remember initially standard was, “Get to 70%, we’re fine, won’t have to worry, people will continue to get vaccinated as they say fit,” and I don’t know how we end this now. How do we land the plane? What is the victory moment against covid. Big picture. What has to occur for the Bidenites out there — to the extent they exist, the cornoabros I call them – to acknowledge this is over.

BUCK: Why do you call them cornoabros?

CLAY: Great question.

BUCK: In what way are they bros? They strike me as the opposite of bros.

CLAY: When I saw early on… It’s a good question. Back in March of last year, in my mentions — when I was actually reading the mentions — there were all of these Reddit bros rooting, it seemed to me, for coronavirus to spread as widely as possible. They bought into the fear porn, and all of their… If you went and looked at their entire history, it was all sharing and spreading the worst possible fear associated. So I said, “They’re cornoabros rooting for the corona.”

BUCK: These are the opposite of what we think of as bros in our culture, you know? These are not people that are saying, “Yeah!” “They’re not all pounding White Claws on rooftops somewhere talking about the game. Clay, this is a different thing. I think Corona Karens may be a more —

CLAY: Yeah. They were rooting for, basically, the coronavirus. They wanted it to spread. They were the guys who all said… You remember that? Nobody talks about it.

BUCK: Rooting for the virus to spread? This is a whole… What?

CLAY: Oh, yeah. There’s a whole subset of people I really believe who were rooting for chaos, and they were buying into the idea. Remember exponential spread? Remember, when everybody was trying to use the word “exponential” back in March of last year?

BUCK: Yeah, so is Fauci a Corona Bro?

CLAY: Yeah, I would classify Fauci as a Corona Bro.

BUCK: I just think of Fauci as the opposite of a bro. (laughing)

CLAY: It’s an interesting use of the word “bro,” but he’s basically in the corona is going to —

BUCK: It sounds like we’re talking about a beer commercial, when you’re talking about cornoabros —

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: — like people are out drink Coronas. I don’t know. It’s a different vibe. But I get what you’re saying. Yes, there are people who have been all along —

CLAY: So how do we land the plane? Do you have an idea? Like, I would love to hear from Fauci himself, honestly, because he’s gonna change the answer like 15 different times. But when is this all…? What has to happen in order for you, Dr. Fauci, to say this is over?

BUCK: You gotta have at least six months of Fauci going on MSNBC and saying (impression), “So we’re almost there, not there yet, getting closer to there.”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: “We’re like we’re in the general vicinity with the diminution of cases where we’re approaching a place where credulity could reach such a stage.”

CLAY: How quickly did you dislike Fauci, by the way?

BUCK: Right away.

CLAY: Immediately.

BUCK: Right away.

CLAY: Even back in March like early on?

BUCK: When I say right away, it took me about a month.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Here’s Joe Biden saying that he has gotten 350 million Americans — which is, by the way, more people than live in America — vaccinated.

BIDEN: We, uhh, have roughly 350 million people vaccinated United States and billions around the world, who said well over — what’s the number again? I remind myself: 350 million Americans have already been vaccinated!

BUCK: I mean, saying it once, Clay, is one thing, but saying it twice?

CLAY: It’s so uncomfortable. It’s one thing to misspeak because anybody out there who’s ever been talked about with numbers. But, first of all, even on something that significant, I would think that you would not misspeak, right? Because the number of Americans that have been vaccinated is arguably the central focus of your entire administration so far.

And you would think that you would see that number and recognize that’s more people than live in the United States. So if somebody gave him that nobody or he jotted it down and he couldn’t actually read his own writing, you would think in the back of your head, “Oh, that can’t be right. That’s 20 million-ish more people than actually live in the United States,” and every person – -man, woman, and child — is not eligible to get vaccine.

Again, it is Thanksgiving with an elderly relative, unfortunately, who is slowly losing their ability to communicate like they have historically. That’s what Joe Biden’s entire presidency is. And it’s unfortunate, and it’s amazing to me because we spent so much time in the media, Buck, talking about the 25th Amendment and Donald Trump and whether he had to be removed. We made him go get a cognitive test to prove it. Then he got the cognitive test, and they didn’t believe the doctor who had given him the cognitive test. And nobody’s pointing out all of these egregious flaws from Joe Biden every time he speaks.

BUCK: I’ve actually started to think that the Democrats — the same way that they enjoy smashing the double standards that they deploy all the time in our faces now, they don’t shy away from them, they’re not embarrassed by them. It’s, “Yeah, that’s right we hold you to different standards. What are you gonna do about it?”

That is the prevailing attitude among the left in this country, among the Marxist authoritarians. On this Joe Biden issue, I also think that they get some degree of glee. This is like payback for being subjected, mistakable minds, being subjected to Trump for four years. They’re saying, “See? We’ll even make this babbling, deteriorating clown president.”

CLAY: Frequently incoherent, the man who’s the leader of the Free World.

BUCK: It’s also, “What are you gonna do about it?” We managed to make this happen, and, what, you’re gonna say have him step aside? Because let’s be honest, I mean, Kamala taking over for Biden on a policy side might be worse. But nobody actually knows because what does Kamala stand for? It’s not clear to me that Kamala stands for much of anything other than her own political career.

She sort of goes where the Democrat Party wants her to. So that’s a whole other component of this we’re gonna have to see going forward. ‘Cause I speak to Democrats about this sometimes, I ask them. I said, “So Biden. It doesn’t matter how much of this degeneration we see, he’s not gonna step aside?” They say, “No, no, no, ’cause it can’t be Kamala, but they can’t push Kamala aside ’cause that’ll look like the Democrat Party’s a bunch of frauds to the diversity and inclusion issue,” which they are, by the way.

CLAY: They are totally. But they would look sexist and racist which is why I believe the only way this revolves — and we didn’t spend a lot of time talking about it, Buck. But this week it came out that Kamala Harris is the lowest liked, lowest favorable rating since the 1970s for VP.