BUCK: But every year, they say the world is going to end, it never does. But they call themselves the reasonablists, and so it’s really hard to criticize them because, “Well, they must be reasonable,” right? But if we knew people who were in a cult, and they were worried that tomorrow will be the last day of existence every day, and we’ve gone through two — let’s say two — years of this. Wouldn’t it be ethical, wouldn’t it be the kind thing to do to look at them and instead of saying, “You know what? You’re right. Maybe the world tomorrow will end,” to say, “Stop it. The world’s actually not going to end.” That’s how I feel about people walking around with masks on. I want to free them from their neuroses. Now, for some people it’s a political allegiance thing. And they’re on their own. But for people who truly believe, this is making them safer, I want to free their mouths.
CLAY: Yes. By the way, and the other thing I would say, is people ask, “Why do you care?” Because those people aren’t content with only them wearing it.
BUCK: Exactly.
CLAY: They all want you to wear a mask too, and given the opportunity, they will do it. Now, I’m curious, that the polling is so bad, for Joe Biden right now and for Democrats in general that I don’t know that they can try to bring masks back in earnest in November, before the midterms. But I think once the voting is all in for the midterms — and it’s well into fall by the mid-November and what not — that there’s going to be a big push from the Biden White House, for masks to be brought back from all over the country. We know cases are going to go up.
CLAY: You know, on just what they will try to delay, I think they will delay on a federal level, any covid authoritarianism. They don’t want people to be reminded, not only of how heavy-handed they were, but how ineffective it is.
BUCK: I will say this: One thing that I’m trying to process more every day here, is the people who were the most skeptical and critical of vaccine mandates, mask mandates, all of it, are more correct than ever now.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: And yet, based on the data and the reality and what we’ve seen, conservative media in general has just stopped talking about it entirely. And people can say, “Oh, we’ve moved past it.” One, no, we haven’t, because they’re not done. If you’re a reasonable and rational person — if you’re a reasonablist, if you’re a reasonable person — you must think, “Come on, everybody.” They’re not reasonable, right? But beyond that, it’s also important for accountability, and that goes into our election come up here.
Who was right? When Biden was saying last summer that it was a pandemic of the unvaccinated. He goes on Kimmel last night with a mask on, just to take it off, right? Last summer, the pandemic of the unvaccinated. Last summer, you should get fired from your job! Military service members should lose their careers. First responders. Cops, nurses, doctors, lose their careers if they won’t get this shot. Was that monstrous tyranny without any public health benefit to the individual, to be forced to do it anywhere around them? The answer is, yes. It was monstrous tyranny. And now we know this, and no one wants to talk about it on our side either? I’m a little flabbergasted by it.
CLAY: I agree. And, by the way, the winter of death, it wasn’t very long ago. We just all… If you were listening to us all right now. Remember, the White House put out an official statement saying that the unvaccinated were headed for a winter of death. That was an actual phrase from the White House release. That was so absurd, that a lot of people had fun with it and mocked it. But that was only a few months ago. And, by the way, the data now — we need to get Alex Berenson on to talk about the most recent data.
But the data now reflects you know who is getting covid the least now in this country? The unvaccinated! The data reflects in the most recent months that have been released — April and May, that data — the people who were testing positive for covid the most, were the people getting covid shots. Unvaccinated, smallest percentage, overall, of getting covid. Probably —
BUCK: You keep talking about this, Travis, and they’re going to send us to Gitmo. We’re not allowed to say these things. The New York Times is going to come after you, buddy.
CLAY: I would hazard to guess it’s probably because most of the unvaccinated people have had covid. That would be my theory — and natural immunity, I think ultimately, is going to be proven ton lasting and more powerful than any covid shots.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
BUCK: Biden went on Jimmy Kimmel last night, and I do find this depressing, because I remember growing up. I didn’t watch a lot of the late-night comedians growing up. I did occasionally watch Leno, for whatever reason. I never thought Letterman was funny.
CLAY: Oh, I loved Letterman. We talked about this.
BUCK: I know. You’re right about a lot, but sometimes you go off the rails. So I’m here to keep you honest. I was more of a Leno guy when I was a kid. But I do remember that it was jokes. It was just meant to be funny, and it wasn’t — and you turn on now, and I try not to do this. But you watch Colbert. Kimmel. Any of those late-night comedians. Fallon is not as much. I will say, I’ve noticed that. He’s not venomous partisan on a regular basis if at all.
But the other ones completely play to that script, and Kimmel… if you’re a president and you haven’t done a real interview in 121 days, to go on the Jimmy Kimmel Show. There’s just something… I just think it’s kind of unseemly. I think this is pathetic, that this is the best, the leader of the free world find do is to go on the Jimmy Kimmel Show to be asked questions by an, say, unlettered fellow. Not a particularly astute political observer. You know, as much as I may have celebrated The Man Show back in the day, I didn’t think this would be the guy that one day I would want to be hearing important political questions discussing —
CLAY: The man’s show was amazing. We’ve had Adam Carolla on, and, look, I think your point is well-made right here, 121 days. Whoever you go on with, I would feel the same way if Joe Biden was like, “Hey, I haven’t done an interview in 121 days, and now I’m going to go on The View. Or I’m going to go on…” What’s this show called, like Seacrest and Ripa, or whatever it is? I watched the Kelly thing.
BUCK: I’m militantly anti those shows.
CLAY: But I would feel the same way. Now, if Biden were doing interviews with everybody and he wanted to do late night as well, go for it, right? You’re trying to communicate with as large of an audience as you can. But that’s how you break 121 days? And, by the way, I give credit to Kimmel. That’s a great get for him. Joe Biden had broken 121 days on silence. And suddenly, we get a call. And they’re like, “Hey, Joe would like to come on the Clay and Buck show,” we’d have been like, “Have it.” Now, we would have asked him some tough questions. But we would have had him on, right?
BUCK: Here’s some of what went on last night. Where it wasn’t funny. So we’ll start with that, and Biden is clearly in cognitive decline. Not impressive. Never has been impressive. But, anyway, we know all of that. But here’s some of the stuff that was being discussed.
BUCK: You know, we’re getting talk about how there needs to be action taken about guns. And we sit there and say, “Okay. We go through this every time. “They’re shouting that the NRA is evil. And guns and all this stuff. All right. What do you want to have happen? What do you want to be done here? And then they start talking about background checks. And they’ll say, “We need background checks,” and they leave out that 95% plus of firearms transactions that occur in this country, do have a background check — and that a lot of mass shooters, unfortunately —
— along with other people that go on to commit any kind of criminal act — pass an initial background check. So it’s just not good policy. But I feel like a frustration watching this interview with Biden and Kimmel. Because his audience, it’s a lot of low-information voters, specifically on the issue of firearms and the Second Amendment. And they really just get very comfortable, Clay, with this notion of, “Republicans don’t care about all the debt from gun violence in this country, and aren’t willingly to do something because we’re all owned by the NRA”? I think the NRA declared bankruptcy two years ago.
CLAY: They are. They have almost no money to spend, relative to, for instance, the pharmaceutical companies, right? (laughs) You want to talk about a group that is owned — the pharmaceutical company — and this is one I think the Republicans should have hammered more. Remember when Biden came out and said, “Well, you can’t sue the gun manufacturers when someone uses a gun, to commit crimes. Like, we need to change that.” Well, first of all, you can’t sue a car company, when someone violates the law and intentionally runs over someone either, because that’s not the intent of the usage.
But with all these vaccines, Buck, you can’t sue. All the fallout from the covid — you couldn’t even call them “vaccines, the covid shots — are starting to reveal themselves. Are you seeing all this data, all these people that are saying, man, something has just gone wrong. I got four shots. And the government told me I was employing to be perfectly fine, and that’s not occurring. We gave blanket immunity to the drug companies for these covid shots, and this is me speaking as someone who has been involved in mass tort litigation before as a lawyer.
That’s almost unheard of in medicine in general, and if you think about it, we typically have these drugs that end up having awful side effects and years later, people decide that they’re going to sue. And the companies are held accountable and they have to pull the drugs off the market. We specifically gave all of these drug companies immunity, and Biden is saying, “Hey, we have to go after the gun companies, and their ability to not to get sued when people use guns inappropriately.”
And nobody pushed back and said, “Wait a minute. How about being able to sue all these pharmaceutical companies that are in the pocket of the Democrats?” And, by the way, now trying to get kids under the age of five, that to take a covid shot that they have no business of talking at all. To me… Oftentimes, Republicans communication-wise, Buck, it’s frustrating to me, because Biden gives them a layup, and they trip all over themselves, and somehow knock themselves out trying to take the layup and dunk it.
BUCK: And then there’s just really dumb stuff that is said about guns, that we’re all supposed to ignore. This is another part of this. This is the ritual. This is the system, what we go through. The cycle. The cycle of, “Oh, there was a bad incident of firearms somewhere in the country.” Statistics, it’s very rare. They talk about, for example, the spike in mass shootings happening. There’s something like in an average year, 20 to 30 mass shootings that occur in the country, or “active shooter,” “mass shootings” definitions can get a little bit blurry here.
With a country of 330 million people, I think it’s tough for people to understand, when you actually look at these numbers, what rarity actually means. You’re getting into the realm of — and usually even in all these mass shootings, it’s less than 50 people killed in the entire year, from these mass shootings. So while the emotional impact is enormous, and while the psyche of the country — and obviously for the community and the families involved it’s devastating — in terms of a criminal justice and systematic approach in dealing with these things, it’s incredibly hard.
It’s like you’re trying to deal with lightning strikes, in terms of credibility. It’s very, very rare. And so then what you actually see is, well, they want to deal with the daily, commonplace, millions and millions and millions of lawful, legal firearms transactions, Second Amendment rights, protected activity.