BUCK: We also have the ongoing back-and-forth over what feels like such a small story, but it’s turned into a tempest in a teapot, as they say. You have the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments again this week, and there was this story that got out about how Neil Gorsuch, one of the Supreme Court justices, was not wearing a mask, and this made Sonia Sotomayor afraid, and therefore she would not go with the rest of the justices.

She would virtually join for oral arguments, and that Gorsuch was doing this in defiance of the will — expressed will — of his colleagues. Essentially, he was being an unmasked bandit — as I am in my gym in my building — an unmasked bandit in the Supreme Court. And they made a big thing of this because, as you know, the libs love to mask shame. It’s one of their favorite pastimes. As hypocritical and absurd as it is, they love to mask shame. And here is, for example, them doing just that to Justice Gorsuch. Play it.

NICOLLE WALLACE: Tragically, anti-mask insanity has now reached the highest court in the land!

MEHDI HASAN: Why is it that so many conservatives in public life who claim to be such pious Christians and obsess over morals and decency, are actually awful, awful people?

ADRIENNE LAWRENCE: Gorsuch has the nerve to refuse to wear a mask indoors while seated next to his colleague, who is vulnerable to possible death!

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: That just seems ridiculous. Can you put a mask on? It’s not hard.

BRIAN FALLON: Justice Gorsuch had to know that this would become a public controversy, and so I think he did this as a branding opportunity.

KASIE HUNT: What’s up with Justice Gorsuch? If all of the other — including all of the other conservative members — of the court, are willing to go along with this? Why not him?

JOY REID: (screaming) Every other justice is masking up — even Clarence Thomas, who doesn’t seem to care about anybody.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Neil Gorsuch, shame on you! Shame on you.

BUCK: Shame on all of them because it’s not true. So I just wonder, initially on the right we were thinking… This is why Clay and I updated the story yesterday. We’re thinking, “Wow. Gorsuch deciding that he’s just not gonna play by these absurd rules,” and so, guess what? Turns out that Gorsuch and Sotomayor put out a joint statement saying that they are warm colleagues and friends, and they don’t agree on the law, but there’s no strife between them over this.

It turns out that John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, has come out to say that, no, he never said that everyone has to wear a mask. That never happened. So Gorsuch isn’t defying anything or anyone here, and Sotomayor, because she is very concerned about her health — and, remember, everyone on the Supreme Court is vaccinated and boosted. That is now insufficient.

Vaccinated and boosted and then the additional protection of the mask must be necessary, too, we are led to believe, as if that’s going to make a damn bit of difference. We all know it’s not going to, right? We’re at that point. Although I know the libs, you heard them there on TV, “Just wear the mask!” No. How about no? How about stopping crazy libs. Start with that. But, yeah, there was false reporting on this.

NPR is standing by their reporting. They’re saying, “Well, Gorsuch not wearing the mask is why Sotomayor wasn’t there.” But no one told them that, apparently. They just surmised that. So, like I said, tempest that teapot. But it just goes to show you, anti-mask insanity. We’re not the ones that are forcing developmental delays on children’s speech, millions and millions of kids.

We’re not the ones forcing learning loss on them and forcing them to eat outside and freeze their little fingers off because we’re a bunch of cowards who have been overtaken by the mass neuroses of Fauciism. No, that’s the libs. That’s the crazy commies running around there. So I just want to point that one out to you.