BUCK: Covid stuff, folks. There’s new… I want to make sure I get this one right. You know, it used to be we had the place names. Lyme Disease. Ebola Virus.

CLAY: That’s racist.

BUCK: Now it’s all BA.52379er.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: It’s getting real complicated to keep track of the various versions of these viruses. There’s a new one that has been named. Oh, this one has a cool name, so I don’t know if that makes it better. It’s an allusion to Greek mythology. Centaurus covid subvariant they’re saying has been found in the Netherlands. So, do you want to get BA.272729er or do you want the Centaur covid, ‘cause it’s probably scary sounding, right?

CLAY: Remix, man. I said, “I had the Alpha. I had the Omicron.” I feel like the remix, I’m probably gonna get the remix. I’m gonna be on the road for the entire fall for the bus tour, college football season again. In fact, Buck, I think you’re gonna be with me in one of the markets we’re number one overall in the nation, Austin, Texas, for the opener Alabama-Texas game. But I’m guaranteed already to get whatever variant is circulating on the road this fall. I would put a hundred percent odds that I’ll get covid a third time.

BUCK: Just hopefully we won’t get it at the same time our covid diagnoses this last season, during the covid season, were about a week apart. And even though we were about, what, 600 miles apart or something? So, that’s coming your way, folks. Masks, the World Health Organization, they’re talking about it. So, this is why I actually love it when the libs on Twitter and other places refer to me as an anti-mask fanatic. Yes. I’m an anti-mask zealot, yes. This is a hill I will die on — not because of covid and unmasking myself, by the way. So that’s something we’ll get to.

CLAY: By the way, for people in New York City, you’re going to have to wear masks again. Like, I would bet almost every dollar that I put into gambling, which is too much, that both New York and L.A., by November, will be wearing masks again, if not beforehand.

BUCK: As of this morning, the L.A. County health director, Barbara Ferrer — and it’s amazing how many of these city health directors seem like they should be teaching gender studies at Wellesley. There’s such a political and cultural crossover. Wait a second. I thought health directors were supposed to be science nerds. You don’t really get that much of it. So Los Angeles may return to mask mandates soon, she was saying. So that’s the whole county of Los Angeles with millions of residents.

That was this morning, they’re already saying it. So, we’ll get into some of that and later this week. I believe we’re gonna have Alex Berenson join us because the data on vaccines just keeps on coming. And I don’t care. This should be a bigger story. More people should be talking about this. The fact that we just had 60,000 National Guard members — roughly 60,000 — who faced firing last week over booster mandates is completely insane and outrageous. So, we’ll stay on this, and I feel like we’re talking about it even before we mention it.

CLAY: Do you think, Buck…? Imagine in a different world, Trump is still the president. don’t you think the media — the Washington Post, the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, don’t you think — they’d be aggressively investigating the covid shot and blaming Trump for saying this was going to be 95% effective and we’re basically down to 5% effective? Because Biden basically has been driving the covid shot, it’s as if they won’t ask basic questions. Do you think it would be different if Trump were in office as it pertains to the shot?

BUCK: There would be breathless stories on the front page of the Washington Post about how Jared Kushner owns a hundred thousand dollars of an ETF that, as part of its portfolio, owns 6% of Pfizer; so, as a passive investor in an ETF five years ago he is in the pocket of Big Pharma. They would be writing the craziest stuff imaginable about how the vaccines have corrupted Trump. But that said, I do believe… I do believe this, and people can argue with me.

I think that there is a clear psychological link between being a true believer lib — a leftist — and being a neurotic and a hypochondriac. I think the hypochondriacs of America are overwhelmingly leftist in their political thinking, and so there would be a crossover even if Trump was the president. That’s why I’ve said to you before, my biggest goal when I get to speak to Trump when he was still in office, as I’ve said, was to have a conversation with the man and push as much as possible to make sure that he was on the same page about how lockdowns were a bad idea; mask mandates were crazy.

I was in his office, Clay, May of 2020. No masks. No one in the White House is wearing them. It was very clear. They understood this. But I remember, I said, “No lockdowns at the federal level, sir, right? We’re not gonna do any of this?” He said, “Absolutely.” It wasn’t about what the politicians were saying to me. It was about what was reality, and you’re already seeing this making a bit of a comeback right now, and I think we’re heading for it.