BUCK: Science is supposed to be something where you’re able to ask questions, right? You are supposed to be able to have debate. You’re supposed to have a discussion about what’s real, what’s not. Test and retest, hypotheses. There’s a scientific method. Sometimes you’re wrong. You say, “Hold on. Could this be the case?” You try it out; it’s wrong. You say, “Okay, we learned something new;” you move forward.

Someone says, “Well, I disagree.” You go, “Okay, let’s test it.” That’s what science as we were all taught in grammar school is supposed to be. But, folks, it’s all wrong. I hate to be the bearer of bad news. The notion of science as an approach and a discipline, an intellectual discipline based upon data and truth. That’s not now. Dr. Fauci is actually science believe it or not. He is “science,” the walking embodiment of it, The Messiah of science is that evil little Smurf walking around in his lab coat. Here he is.

FAUCI: Anybody who’s looking at this carefully realizes that there’s a distinct anti-science flavor to this. So if they get up and criticize science, nobody’s gonna know what they’re talkin’ about. But if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well, people could recognize there’s a person there. So it’s easy to criticize. But they’re really criticizing science, because I represent science. That’s dangerous.

Fauci on Ted Cruz and Rand Paul criticizing him:

“They’re really criticizing science, because I represent science.” pic.twitter.com/7LROkobbxi

— The First (@TheFirstonTV) November 29, 2021

BUCK: No serious scientist or human being would ever say that unironically out loud, Clay, “I represent science.” He’s every bit as bad as I’ve said he is for almost two years now.

CLAY: Also, let’s put in context how this interview happens. We have requested Dr. Fauci to come on this show ’cause we have questions we’d like to ask him. We’d be respectful. He’s declined, saying he doesn’t have time. When I watched this interview with CBS they had an entire room set up for an in-depth interview on Face the Nation. For people out there who don’t understand how these kind of things get set up, this is a weeks-in-the-process sit down interview with Dr. Fauci in an effort for him to be able to directly combat his critics with almost no pushback from his interviewer.

When he says “I am science,” which, as you said, “The state is me; I am the Senate,” these are statements that are megalomaniacal, right? I mean, these are not normal things that a person would say. But when you actually break it down, he seems to me, Fauci, like he is feeling the heat on a level that he may not have before. Because this feels like an interview he’s doing to try to cancel out some of the negativity.

BUCK: There’s that and there’s also something that I think we’re gonna talking about more probably in a few months than we are right now, but that is what is the history of this actually sound like and look like, this whole pandemic response? Fauci wants to ride this thing out in his position to the end so that they can claim victory.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I know this is gonna drive people nuts, but the shutting down of playgrounds so kids can’t go outside to protect them from covid, the arresting of the paddleboarder out in California? All of that will be swept under the rug. There will be “Fauci saved millions of lives and the Biden administration was putting him in the position to do so!” That’s the narrative that they want to cling to.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: We got Fauci out there just in the last hour, actually, on TV. This guy’s on TV every five minutes, and people I know who work in TV for a living, TV news, are on television less than Anthony Fauci is. You have to ask why that is. But I want to get to this ’cause it matters. I mentioned this with Clay in the last hour.

If we read for all the things that we have learned — all the violations of civil liberties, all the constitutional violations that have gone on, everything we’ve seen during the pandemic… Remember, they shut down churches, they told kids that they couldn’t go to parks and padlocked them as if they’re unsafe outside. They tell you to mask up between bites. They tell you to double mask and then they forget all about it because it’s bizarre.

They tell you to Lysol your groceries, all these things that have happened. That’s all forgotten about by the left, by Democrats, by Fauci, and in the history of this, which has a tremendous political importance, a lot of power will come from this, when we finally get through this and it will be in the next year or two, I think, that people will finally start to calm down.

They will hold themselves up as heroes, and Anthony Fauci will walk around acting as though he saved millions of lives by constantly harassing people, destroying their businesses, immiserating them with no actual positive consequence. Donald Trump pushed Operation Warp Speed. We all wanted a vaccine. Two-hundred million Americans, I think, have now gotten the vaccine.

A vaccine can be helpful for sure for people, and we’re hoping that people that are at high risk get the vaccine and others who just want it get the vaccine. The problem comes in with the mandates, right? We’ve been having in ongoing discussion for a long time. Why do I know that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a fraud? How we know this from the beginning?

For one thing, he lied about masks by his own ignition, and I don’t plan to let him forget about that. He said it was for our own good. But would a doctor tell you, “Oh, well, that an antibiotic won’t actually cure that infection.” And you find out, “Oh, he just wanted to save it for other people who might need it more.” Is that ethical? That’s what he did on masks. I actually don’t think that’s what he did.

I think he just changed his tune to suit the needs of the lockdown left. But put that aside for a moment. Here he is — and, Clay, this drove me up the wall over the weekend. People all know how I feel about that; they have for a long time. I’m probably… Honestly, he probably would come on. I don’t know. He might come on and talk to you, Clay. He’s not gonna come on and talk to me anytime soon, especially with the impersonations. But here he is saying January 6. Wait. What the heck does that have to do with anything?

MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator Cruz told the attorney general you should be prosecuted.

FAUCI: Yeah, I have to laugh at that. I should be prosecuted. What happened on January 6, Senator?

MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you think that this is about making you a scapegoat to deflect —

FAUCI: Of course!

MARGARET BRENNAN: — from President Trump?

FAUCI: Of course. You have to be asleep not to figure that one out.

BUCK: Clay, what the heck does that have to do with anything? Why is Anthony Fauci telling everybody January 6th? You and I know why.

CLAY: Because he’s a left-wing political prop. That’s what he is. And, unfortunately, who did this interview for Face the Nation? It’s an embarrassment for CBS. Any kind of intelligent interviewer when you had that awkward Fauci laugh would have cut him off and said, “Well, all due respect, what does that have to do with January 6th at all? You are the topic here.”

So deciding to deflect to something that is just really a sign to everybody out there, oh, I’m one of you, right? That’s what Fauci is doing. He’s throwing himself on the left wing of this country because he knows — and I do think there’s a lot of truth to this — that if you are on the right team. They will excuse everything. It doesn’t matter what you’ve said historically, doesn’t matter what you’ve done.

If you’re a member of their team, then they will give you a pass for everything. And so the fact that Fauci has been wrong on virtually every bit of advice he’s given for two years. Remember 15 days to slow the spread? We’re coming up on two years of Dr. Fauci try to go to up there and continuing to try to lecture us about the science and the fact that he “represents the science.”

When again, this entire interview was an embarrassment not only to Dr. Fauci but to CBS News because there was no pushback on that concept. That is such an irrational, outlandish, maniacal thing to say, and it represents anti-science. For anybody out there that actually cares about science, science about rigorously questioning everything. That’s what science is. And this idea that Fauci has in any way represented the science is an embarrassment to anybody who is a true scientist.

BUCK: This is why we all wonder — we should all wonder — why is this guy still the face of the response? We should also take a moment and ask ourselves, has the public health establishment in America covered itself in glory over the course of this or has it been playing catch up and wrong and wrong some more? Now, remember, we’re not talking about your doctor, your MD, your ER who are doing the work of trying to keep people alive and safe. We’re talking about the policy makers at the top of the CDC, the people who are making judgment calls based on all of this. Does anyone feel like they’ve done a good job?

CLAY: No. Is this what a good job looks like, where we are right now?

BUCK: I’m amazed, Clay, how many people still refuse to believe that more Americans have died under Joe Biden’s time in office from covid than died in year one of the pandemic when we had no vaccine and very little idea what we were dealing with, we had less therapeutics, we didn’t have monoclonal antibodies, all these things, more people have died under Biden than Trump.

How is that now not something that people are more aware of? Again, I ask these questions rhetorically same reason why I believe up at CNN, they’ve got the coronavirus pandemic, you know, numbers up there, but they only have the current numbers. Whatever happened to the “how many Americans have died from covid” number? Gee, where did that go, guys? Why did that one disappear from the news ticker?

CLAY: Well, this is, to me… I’m less disappointed in Joe Biden than I am in the media that should be covered Joe Biden.

BUCK: Joe Biden’s a jackass. Come on.

CLAY: We didn’t have high expectations for Joe Biden and Joe Biden is also a politician. Politicians — no matter what stripe you prefer of your politician — often dissemble, lie, don’t necessarily share the best factual data. But science? Science is supposed to be a check on politicians. Science is supposed to be about data, and also about debate.

And, Buck, the combination of Big Tech and Big Science has shut down so much. Remember when you weren’t allowed to say, “Hey, this probably came from a lab leak out in China?” Remember when you weren’t allowed to say, “Hey, masks probably don’t work?” and, by the way, you still aren’t really allowed to say that!