BUCK: I want to say as a New Yorker, I feel like I’m on the front lines of covid crazy here, although California is now getting a little competitive with us. California has decided, Clay, that they’re gonna try to be… You know how Ron DeSantis is the beacon of freedom from covid madness and other states have followed suit? I think California and New York are in this back and forth over who can be the biggest Fauciite lunatic state.

CLAY: Where, by the way, is Gavin Newsom, Buck? Kind of a big story?

BUCK: I was gonna ask. He’s kind of MIA, which is a little weird. It’s been a while he’s been gone. I’m sure they’ll have some BS excuse for why he’s been gone. Maybe not. Who knows? We’ll see. But in New York… People often overuse, I think, the term “Orwellian.” But when you start saying unfreedom is freedom, you’re truly going into George Orwell “1984” territory — and the worst mayor in America, Bill de Blasio, has done just that.

DE BLASIO: Your point about freedom is very powerful, but what is freedom? Freedom’s the ability to go out there, live your life, have your job, be with the people you love. We were deprived of that for most of two years. Vaccination actually gave us back that freedom, and I think people have realized that as they see these mandates work, “Wait a minute. That’s actually the thing we wanted.”

.@NYCMayor De Blasio: Forcing New Yorkers to get vaccinated “actually gave us back [our] freedom” pic.twitter.com/NHDTDhYepW

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 9, 2021

BUCK: Ah. “Bend the knee, Clay, and we’ll give you a little bit. We’ll give you some crumbs from the freedom table, and then be thankful for what we give you. That’s freedom.” This is de Blasio’s mantra.

CLAY: I think we have to keep in mind — and my wife, actually, is the one who says, “Hey, you should say this on the radio more” — we didn’t have to do this. So many people like de Blasio say, “Well, this is what we had to do for the last two years.” No, we didn’t, and I’m thinking about it in the context of Columbia basketball, Columbia University, Ivy League school. They shut down their basketball program for 612 days.

The Ivy League did not allow kids to play basketball for 612 days because of covid. Other places found out ways to get back to normalcy. So, we can’t allow people to blame covid for where we are right now. We made a lot of bad choices and used covid as the justification for it, as Bill de Blasio is still trying to do there. It’s a lie. It’s not true.