The Stunning Covid Ignorance of the SCOTUS Libs

BUCK: The biggest thing that’s happened in the last 24 hours — and it just really went on this morning, so right before Clay and I came on air with you — has to do with the federal OSHA vaccine mandate for companies with over a hundred employees. There’s a lot of moving pieces here, a lot of moving parts. Just the basics: There’s been a request for a stay, which would stop the enforcement. The Supreme Court heard today oral arguments.

As we speak — and Clay, correct me if I’m out of the timeline here at all — it has not made a determination about that. It will probably take a couple of days, it sounded like, to make a determination about the stay. And then we’ll find out about final merits in June. Clay, there’s a lot of things going on here: Constitutional issues, what works as a matter of public health, federalism, states’ rights, federal government, OSHA mandate, all this stuff.

The most stunning thing today was that some of the Supreme Court justices — and I’m just gonna say it — the libs who love the mandate — Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan. Particularly Sotomayor might as well have a vaccine necklace on like Governor Hochul of New York. She clearly is a true believer. They don’t know what the heck they’re talking about when it comes to covid. Give folks some of what — I’m not exaggerating at all. It’s stunning how wildly ignorant of the covid reality the libs on the court are right now.

CLAY: So let me give a little background, Buck, because I was disgusted. You can have whatever opinion you want on whether OSHA’s administrative abilities extend to mandating the covid vaccine. I disagree with that expansive of a reading of a federal agency. But that is a legal opinion that you can have. We agree argue about that as lawyers. We can argue about that as citizens. That is a valid perspective. But every opinion is founded in facts.

Justice Sotomayor in particular — although Breyer and Kagan were not very good either, but Justice Sotomayor — doesn’t understand the most basic elemental aspects of covid. Couple things that she got one billion percent wrong. She said that Omicron was as deadly as the Delta variant. Even if you watch MSNBC, Buck, even if you watch exclusively CNN, even if you only read the New York Times, that is widely untrue based on all available data right now.

In fact, Omicron is widely regarded — by virtual every expert from Dr. Fauci to Dr. Marty Makary, who we’re gonna talk to later today, they all agree that Omicron, fortunately, is less virulent than Delta. So she’s a hundred percent wrong on that. But this data point was staggering, and we’re gonna play the audio for you. Do we have it now?

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: Listen to this. Justice Sotomayor — “the wise Latina,” as she liked to call herself — says as a part of this question, that there are 100,000 kids severely ill with covid right now. Listen to this.

SOTOMAYOR: Omicron is as deadly and causes as much serious disease in the unvaccinated as Delta did. The numbers… Look at the hospitalization rates that are going on. We have more affected people in the country today than we had a year ago in January. We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators. We have over a hundred thousand children — which we’ve never had before — in serious condition and many on ventilators.

CLAY: Okay, Buck. You know this and everybody out there listening to us right now, of all of the covid “fear porn,” as I call it, that the CIA me the craziest, trying to scare parents is I think the least defensible of all. Because it goes directly to kids going in school; it goes directly to our ability to get back to normalcy. Buck, I bet there are not a hundred kids right now that are actually in serious condition from covid at this point in time.

Covid exclusively, right, where they were otherwise healthy. I bet there aren’t a hundred kids nationwide in serious condition. Sotomayor just said there is a hundred thousand. By the way, there’s only 116,000 people right now nationwide hospitalized with covid. I say “with” because, Buck, half those people or more are in hospitals for other reasons and they’re just testing positive for covid.

BUCK: We heard these arguments, for those who listened to it this morning, and it became very clear that the establishment — the lib establishment, if you will, which Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer are certainly a part of and represent — and it’s just so obvious. You don’t even have to know their voices. I do at this point, and you do, Clay. But if you listen in, just based on the tone, depending whether someone is making the case for the mandate or against it.

You can tell from the tone of the judge who’s speaking pour what side they’re on right away. Justice Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer don’t hide their love for the big sweeping hand of government. Firing large numbers of people or forcing them to get a shot — and keep in mind, one of the more interesting components of this was the timing of all of it, right? Justice Breyer, again… He’s lucky that Sotomayor exists because he seems less idiotic by comparison, right?

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: So he seems like maybe he knows something. He said that every day of delay for the implementation of this brings 750,000 new cases. It’s as though that the libs that are making these decisions — and I’m sure the Biden administration goes along with all this too — don’t understand that the vaccine mandate as a means of stopping the spread is an enormous failure, an obvious failure of epic proportions, and they haven’t adjusted the rhetoric. They haven’t adjusted the thinking at all.

He seems to suggest — or he does suggest. He seems to think, Breyer, Supreme Court justice, that if only, Clay, we had this Biden OSHA mandate tomorrow and it was in force tomorrow, covid would go away, go to zero. These people are living in a delusion, and they’re not just random folks that we’re picking on. This is who is making these determinations! This is who’s deciding you have to mask up on a plane or you have to get a shot before you go into your workplace.

New York City, vaccine mandate in effect. I am in a vaccine mandated city for work right now. They have adjusted nothing based on what we learned about the vaccines working or not working. And so I think it was Alito, Clay — and you can correct me, ’cause we have to remember which one was speaking, listening in real time.

I think Alito was essentially saying that you guys have waited and you’re gonna wait until February before you even enforce it. So it’s so urgent that you have to blow out all precedent — and this is the first time ever and this “fierce urgency of now” — but you’re waiting a few months ago before you implement it? How does that work?

CLAY: Buck, there’s so many things that I want to say. I’m trying to think of how to organize it. One right here” To me, structurally, every justice has four brilliant Supreme Court clerks who are supposed to be preparing them for every case. This is a situation where, for instance, with Sotomayor, with Breyer, and with Kagan, I would love to know the behind-the-scenes preparation that these justices actually did. Buck, you and I work really hard to get ready for our show every day.

And no matter what industry you work in, there are a lot of people what who mail it in, who don’t prep, who don’t really know all the facts, who don’t come to their job and deliver the best possible version of their labor that they could. I am insulted that we only have nine Supreme Court justices, a an American, that Justice Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan could be this poorly informed about basic facts surrounding covid for a case of this monumental importance.

I want to know how much prep did they actually do; where did Justice Sotomayor get that 100,000 kids are in serious condition right now with covid fact? How did that get put into her brain such that she was comfortable sharing it in a courtroom like she was? How does that happen?

BUCK: And how could you trust the judgment? These are judges, right? The most powerful ones in the country! How can you trust the judgment of someone who is so ill acquainted with the most basic facts and, in fact, has such an exaggerated sense of what’s really going on in the country right now. All of this is premised upon the Biden regime convincing people that this OSHA mandate is going to have an enormously positive outcome and it’s gonna basically stop covid. We’re in the midst of… Keep in mind, they’re not gonna enforce it until I think February 10th is what they said today during the arguments. That’s when the actual vaccine or test opponent goes into effect. We’re gonna be on the down slope of covid already by then, by March or April.

CLAY: Hopefully.

BUCK: Probably. Hopefully.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: By March or April, we’ll be in a place where, at least historically — look at the seasonality of it — it’ll be in substantial reduction. So we have people today that are making determinations about this shot, Clay, who don’t understand the very basics of what’s happening with covid in America right now. Beyond that, it’s not about getting the shot for March. You’re gonna have to get the shot again next fall, and again three months after that, which they didn’t even deal with today. But this is effectively a forever regime, and that’s why the constitutional issues are so on important.

CLAY: There’s no doubt.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We’re talking about the disgraceful, I thought, questioning factual inaccuracies. We got more. We talked about the fact that Justice Breyer said every day we delay means 750,000 more cases of covid, as if, if you had everybody vaccinated, there would be no covid? Again, just to reiterate, 95% of people 65 and up have had at least one shot; 86% of all people 18 and up. The reason why covid cases are skyrocketing is because the vaccine doesn’t, at least with Omicron — it’s even worse, but it hasn’t at all for every variant. It doesn’t keep you from getting or spreading the virus. Yet here is Justice Breyer spreading more inaccuracies himself about covid. Listen.

BREYER: The numbers I read is when they issued this order there were approximately 70-something thousand new cases every day. And yesterday, they were close to 750,000. So if we delay it a day, if it were to have effect, then 750,000 more people will have covid who otherwise, if we didn’t delay it, wouldn’t have. I mean, I don’t doubt the power of the court to issue a stay. I’m just saying, ‘What are the consequences of that?” And if I’m wrong, you better tell me I’m wrong because I thought that it really did make a difference.

BUCK: He’s wrong.

CLAY: Oh, my gosh.

BUCK: Clay and I are looking each other as this audio is being played. I remember it was actually one of those moments where you’re listening to something and you say, “That can’t be… He didn’t just…” I had to go back and check and see and check the transcript. Clay, is Justice Breyer, is he just not very smart? I know she’s Supreme Court. We’re supposed to think he is. Does he really believe that they could shut down all cases in a day with a vaccine mandate on businesses over a hundred? Does he not read the newspaper? Does he not have internet access? How is it possible?

CLAY: First of all, yes.

BUCK: Yes. (laughing)

CLAY: I think it’s possible that he’s just totally clueless. I’ve got a little story that I’m gonna share with you from law school that I think would bring this home. But does he not realize…? For everybody out there, you don’t get the vaccine and immediately the vaccine works. You have a get a couple of shots. We’re talking about a multiweek process.

The way that Justice Breyer is thinking about this is like you’re turning a faucet on or you’re turning a faucet off. If his conception of vaccination worked, then the vaccine would immediately prevent all infection, which is just a hundred percent not true. Here’s the story for you, Buck. I don’t think identify told this story on this show before, but when I was in law school, my law school professor, Rebecca Brown, great con-law professor.

She had been a former Supreme Court clerk. And for people out there who don’t understand, the Supreme Court clerkship is the absolute pinnacle of the law school achievement. There are only 36 every year. They’re incredibly difficult to get. We had one person get a Supreme Court clerkship out of my class at Vanderbilt, and it is for the greatest and most esteemed of the law students that you would get this opportunity.

So she’s very well-reasoned. She says they were debating cases one night late at the Supreme Court. I believe she worked with Justice Souter. They ordered pizza. The Supreme Court justices were not aware that you could order pizza and have it delivered to your homes. These are all a bunch of old people. As they were eating, Justice Souter walked in, looked at the pizza and said, “What is that on top of the pizza? Is that a tomato?”

One of the clerks said, “No, those are pepperonis. That’s a really popular things to put on top of a pizza, Judge.” She used that as an illustration of how out of touch and cerebral and removed justices can be from the real world when it comes to actually comprehending things like abortion or, evidently, vaccinations.

BUCK: The libs on the court have an almost childlike understanding of the realities of covid right now. It was stunning to hear it today. It was really, really unsettling.