Learning Loss Was Due to Democrats, Not “The Pandemic”

CLAY: I looked at the front page of the New York Times, and I understand people out there are like, “Why do you read the New York Times?” Because we need to be informed with as many different media narratives and storylines as are possible on a day-to-day basis and I think you have got to read as much as possible so that you are aware of everything that’s being said whether you agree or disagree with it. And, Buck, I gotta hit everybody with this storyline, which they are running with in the New York Times.

First of all, on social media they shared it as breaking news: “Test Results Show the Pandemic’s Effect on U.S. Students, Math and Reading Scores of 9-Year-Olds Dropped Steeply, Erasing Two Decades of Progress.” And, Buck, first I want to tell you what the data shows. And then I want to make it clear to everyone out there what left-wing media is trying to do to cover for the disastrous decision to shut down our schools, which is utterly indefensible and the biggest public policy failure of most of our lives. Right?

So, reading scores for America’s 9-year-olds saw their biggest decrease in 30 years, and math scores fell for the first time in the history of the test that goes back to the 1970s. These results are from the national assessment of educational progress. The declines hit all regions of the country, affected students of most races, and minorities saw some of the steepest decrease. The Wall Street Journal also wrote on this and says it is going to take a generation — a generation, 20 years — for some of these scores to rebound. I am furious. I am disgusted. To me, it reiterated this morning, Buck, why this midterm election has to be a referendum on covid if you supported in any way school lockdowns, school shutdowns, you shouldn’t be able to hold political office, in my opinion as a mayor, as a governor, anywhere in this country.

BUCK: It’s most pronounced in this New York Times article. They make it clear — and this was known beforehand, but, as you pointed out, now it’s all, “Well, we have to address this in a way where, ‘Oh, it just happened to us! Look at this calamity that occurred.’” No, this was a Democrat, man-made catastrophe.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They did this, everybody. I gotta say, you know, for people out there, parents, who are independents, who are persuadable, I don’t really want to hear about all this other, “Oh, what about this? What about this?” This issue alone, what they did to children across the country, what the Democrat Party did… People say, “Oh, but lockdowns happened under Trump.” The school shutdowns in the fall were pushed by Democrat states.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: The states that were open were red. This is a Democrat failure, a Democrat issue. They’re gonna try to muddy the waters and say, “Oh, but what about Trump and Birx and Fauci in the beginning?” We’re talking about fall of 2020, what happened? And then going in for the whole school year, by the way, blue states acted like anti-science loons largely because they are totally in the pocket of the teachers’ unions which are way too powerful politically, have far too much of a say in the Democrat Party and in our national politics as a result.

This is from the New York Times piece, Clay. “Black students lost 13 points compared with five points among white students, widening the gap on these scores between the two groups.” So, it hurt black students more. It further exacerbated what’s often referred to as the testing gap. We told everybody — and I mean literally you and I told this entire audience, and obviously they’re with us, which is why they’re listening to us; there were others as well. There was Berenson. There were other people, conservatives on the right. Our friend Jesse Kelly was a super strong voice on this early on. There were others too. Karol Markowicz and David Marcus.

CLAY: It was a small group, Buck, of people that were really fighting these battles and making these arguments.

BUCK: Going into the 2020 election battle, there weren’t that many of us.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: There were some people now, “Oh, I’m so conservative,” who are actually like, “I like masks and they work and maybe we should be more cautious.” So, I remember who was fighting this fight. And we were fighting this fight. And what they’ve done here to children is unforgivable because they did it for reasons of politics. “Gotta shut down the schools, ’cause then it’s gonna be scary for people and they’re gonna want normalcy, which means a vote for Biden.”

“They’re gonna want someone who’s gonna destroy the virus, not economy.” It turns out Biden got that switched. So, there were politics behind it. There were politics behind Fauci essentially taking dictation from the teachers’ unions about this, which we know. I mean, this is established by White House visitors’ logs. You know, Randi Weingarten who now goes, “Oh, it’s so bad what happened to the students with the lockdowns.” She was a big, “Oh, it’s too dangerous. We can’t go into school!” Why was my grocery store staffed by the same people? Because people need food for the entire pandemic.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Not a single day I remember going in there and there weren’t — the same staffers doing their jobs. They were brave enough to show up so that people actually could put food on the shelves. But teachers in the fall of 2020, oh, it was too dangerous for us to go to school. Remote learning. Clay, it’s appalling. And if they don’t lose in this midterm — I want to be clear to everybody — they get away with it. This is what I was saying about Hillary and Obama and Benghazi. If he wins re-election, folks, in 2012, nothing happens. Guess what? Nothing happened. If they don’t get a massive defeat in the midterm elections, they’ll get away with… They ruined millions of children’s futures because they’re cowards and they’re partisans and they won’t admit it to this day.

CLAY: And, Buck, the data was clear. Like, we don’t have to be scientists. We didn’t have to be MDs. You could just look at the data by May of 2020, every bit of data out there showed that schools could be open. And if I could go back in time — and I wish get in Trump’s head during the debates with Biden — if he had just argued every school in America has to open, if he had spent September and October of 2020 just saying, the data is clear. The science is straightforward. Every school has to be back open.

But what is so frustrating to me about this is — and I want everybody out there listening to pay attention to the rhetorical devices that they are now employing to try to escape responsibility for their choices, okay? This is the headline: “The Pandemic’s Effect on U.S. Students.” I want everybody out there to pay attention to the way that they’re phrasing this. They’re saying it was the pandemic that caused this. That is not true. I want all of you out there when you hear people try to make this argument to push back.

No, no, no. It wasn’t covid. It was our chosen responses to covid. We had a choice to make: Do we keep schools open or do we not keep schools open? And overwhelmingly Democrats, blue states, blue cities, maze the choice to use covid as an excuse to shut down schools, and now we’ve got a generational, a generation… It’s gonna take a generation to catch up for what we did to kids over the past couple of years. It’s inexcusable.

BUCK: The Democrats were wrong on every major decision of covid at every juncture. And, remember, they in part took the White House with Joe Biden by pretending to be the science people. Well, the science is actually clear now because the data is clear. The numbers show this. Their mask mandates did nothing. Their vaccine mandates for the children and for schools did nothing. People say, “Oh, about what about the elder–?” How many 85-year-old teachers do you know? I mean, if they had said, “Senior citizen teachers, we want…”

That’s not what they said. They had 25-year-olds pressing “play” on Zoom instruction from their couch every day, who, big surprise, didn’t want to go back into the classroom and they act like they’re heroes ’cause they’re posting photos of themselves on Facebook double masking. This is appalling, what they did to children, what they did in the school system. And I think, you know, it’s worth noting for everybody, one of the reasons we’re on this today is, first of all, they want us talking Mar-a-Lago documents. Clay and I have seen this coming for days.

CLAY: Correct.

BUCK: They want us, “Oh, but Trump isn’t committing treason,” and ra ra ra. We’ll make fun of them a little bit today but we swat that stuff down because this is where they want to go. They don’t want this, which is people remembering — and actually I would love if some of our, folks, particularly if you live in a state where there were school closures, if you can remind everybody of the choices you had to make as a parent during the pandemic in a place where schools were shut down, if you’ve had challenges with your child, now is an opportunity to tell everybody what they did to you and your family, to remind everybody. It is September. We’re gonna be voting on this. It matters. In New York City where I, for the time being, still live — got an announcement coming soon on that one. In New York City, Clay, they are still checking status. I just looked to see this because we had seen a little bit on social media — they check adults’ vaccination status before they’ll let you in a school building.

CLAY: It’s crazy.

BUCK: And there was somebody who tweeted out this morning, and I saw this on Twitter, that she was harassed for being a J&J one-and-done shot person; so, that hits close to home. ‘Cause I’m sitting here like… I mean, the J&J shot, no one thinks that one does anything anymore. But the point is, it’s not done, folks. They’re not done. Berkeley, for God’s sakes Berkeley is now mandating masking if you don’t get the flu shot because the sacrament of masking for libs is just that. It is a religious rite now as well as a political symbol.

CLAY: Yeah, and in New York City — I think this is worth hammering home — you can’t go watch your kid play in a sporting event. You can’t go into the classroom and assist as a member of the PTA or parent association. You can’t go watch a school play. You can’t physically enter the building unless you still show that you have gotten the covid shot. What kind of nonsense is that when we know the covid shot doesn’t work at all to prevent infection or stop the spread? It’s like these people have such broken brains that they can’t even conceptualize how absurd and ridiculous their choices are.

BUCK: People in Pennsylvania, people in Georgia, people in Arizona. I know that you’re in states that are purple or slightly red or maybe even trending blue. Look at what the Democrats have done to you over the last two years, look at what they’ve done to your states and put your states through. Give credit to the governor of Georgia from an early reopen. He actually got heat from Republicans on that one.

CLAY: Brian Kemp was right on that.

BUCK: Kemp gets a high five on the reopen. We have not forgotten what they did to us. My friends, if you don’t remember what’s happened in the time period — the whole election time period — there is no accountability in this system of government we have. If you don’t remember what they did, if you just move past it, “Oh, whatever….” Remember, you know, they want us to move on. We’re not moving on. Not until they face the reality of what they’ve done.