CLAY: CNN has continued to go further and further down the emotional slope of insanity.

BUCK: Do you think they have, like, fliers with your photo on them somewhere over there like, you know, if you’ve got a shoplifter sometimes they’ll put them up, you know, ’cause you’re banned from the building.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Do you think there’s like a “be on the lookout” with Clay Travis? There might be for me too, by the way, ever since I left that place.

CLAY: Buck, I question whether they’ve told anybody at CNN not to in any way interact with me because I light CNN up quite a bit, and no one will even step to me on the — on the Twitter or social media streets and take aim at anything that I say. I feel like not only have they banned me from the network, they’ve banned their talent from in any way interacting with me.

That’s a shame because I think they have a lot of dumb people at CNN, and I think both you and I would run circles around them if they regularly stepped to us, but they don’t, and so instead we’ve got all different sorts of insanity that our friends and compadres… By the way, thanks so much as we finish up on the 2021 year for so many people that are incredibly talented and work on this show. But which CNN insanity should we hit people with here? I think probably 13 where the doctor says wear your mask at Christmas with your family no matter what. I mean, this is pretty ridiculous.

BUCK: Oh, okay.

WILLIAM SCHAFFNER: I would recommend that we hang on our stockings with care. I think we have to be careful. If we’re all going to get together, we should all be vaccinated and preferentially (sic) boosted. We should wear our masks if we’re uncertain. And another thing we can do is, we could all get tested the morning of our getting together! We did that at our house over the Thanksgiving because we had a member who had a very serious condition that put them at risk of very severe disease should they get infected. We were all negative. It worked out just fine.

BUCK: ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, Clay, and all through the house there were tests for everyone, even the mouse. This is insane. This is insane.

CLAY: If you are having your kids wear masks while they open Christmas presents inside of your house, just go ahead and commit yourself to an insane asylum. You are beyond redemption.

BUCK: The most important thing for everyone out there who’s like… I went into a grocery store yesterday here right in Midtown; everyone was masked. I did not… I practice what I preach. I have one in my pocket ’cause I had to get milk — you gotta do what you gotta do — but I didn’t put it on. No one said anything to me, but I do think the way to handle this now is anytime someone says can you put your mask on be like, “Oh, sure, I forgot, but I’m going to double mask. Why aren’t you double masked? Don’t you take the virus seriously?” And see the gears in their brain come to a screeching halt all of a sudden, ’cause they’ll remember it was almost exactly 12 months ago that little Fauch was running around with the two masks. He’s the worst.

CLAY: I always like to say whenever someone tells me to wear a mask, if I feel like they’re being particularly… First of all, if they work at a business, I’m gonna put it on. But I always like to say something like, “I’ve already had covid eight times. You don’t have to worry about me.” Maybe I have had covid eight times but just the reaction like, “Oh, my God. You’re still alive and you’ve had covid eight times”? Yeah. Probably 25.

BUCK: Good that I got covid personally and got through it, ’cause that whole J&J shot’s not exactly bulletproof.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Clay picked a different CNN clip to make fun of. Man.

CLAY: There are so many.

BUCK: If CNN didn’t exist, I feel like we’d have to make it up just because it would be so entertaining.

CLAY: Well, Joy Reid is somehow worse than anybody at CNN, too, so we’d still have MSNBC, but they’re a good combo.

BUCK: She’s just saying, like, she’s the superstar of lib insanity. But as a network, I think CNN is more fun to make fun of. But here you go. They have positive spin on the economy. It’s almost like they got an email from, I don’t know, Jeff Zucker or something telling them they all have to take this line.

DON LEMON: This is good news. Gas prices are heading south here at home! Americans are finally getting some relief. Finally, right? Good news, people. We talked so much about bad news. Oh my gosh, inflation, blah blah. This is good news. Gas prices are heading south, down! Government forecast says that they could drop below $3 a gallon. Whoof!

JAKE TAPPER: Finally, some economic relief, however, minor Americans are paying a little less at the pump after weeks of rising energy prices.

JOHN BERMAN: Relief for the United States as energy costs drop.

BRIANNA KEILAR: That pain that you’ve been feeling at the pump? It may be short lived.

KATE BOLDUAN: There is finally some relief at the pump.

WOLF BLITZER: Good news that the pump.

MATT EGAN: Finally getting some relief, as you mentioned.

KATE BOLDUAN: The national average price of gas dropped four cents in the last week.

DON LEMON: Gas dropped nearly a nickel in the last week.

MATT EGAN: It’s a seven-week low. It’s moving in the right direction.

JOHN BERMAN: The average is now at a seven-week low.

MATT EGAN: Actually, a seven-week low.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: Slightly lower gas prices. So that’s good news.

ERICA HILL: This is the kind of positive news we’ve wanted.

BUCK: Oh, yeah, this is the kind of positive… Clay, I just want to say, CNN wants all the peasants to know: Don’t spend all you’re pennies you’re saving in one place, folks. Crazy.

CLAY: It dropped a nickel! They’re bragging about the price of a gallon of gas dropping a nickel? Now, here as I was listening to that, Buck, question for you. I know you’re in New York City. What percentage of the CNN anchors we heard talking about the price of gas pump their own gas? I drive my car, I pump my own gas, I live in middle America, I have a car, I notice what the price of gas is. I am a normal human being. Do you think that Don Lemon pumps his own gas?

CLAY: See, I think he’s got a driver most of the time.

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: And so I think he would be — and I think this is true of most CNN anchors, and, look, there are people in Fox News who live all different sorts places. I don’t want to blow ’em up here but they live all different sorts of places in the country. Obviously, you live in Manhattan. It’s not like you’re driving up — you don’t even have a car. You got your scooter.

BUCK: Whoa. Hey, hey, too soon!

CLAY: Used to have a scooter. But when I hear that, we know… So for people out there who missed the story, they had head-on meetings, the Biden White House did, with friendly media sources to say, “Hey, we think you’re not being positive enough about the trajectory of the economy,” and then all of a sudden there are all of these stories on CNN about the price of a gallon of gas dropping a nickel.

And you’re supposed to tell me that these are not going to actually be directly connected? It’s embarrassing — and, by the way, dropping a nickel means if you’re, you know, out there and you’re filling up 20 gallons — let’s say you got a truck or you got an SUV — it’s a dollar. You’ve saved a dollar on filling up your gas tank.

BUCK: Maybe even more important way to put this in the context for everybody in terms of the numbers, Clay, would be gas price a year ago was $2.25 a gallon. Now it’s about $3.25 a gallon. So you’re up a dollar a gallon ,but CNN is throwing a little party for the Biden regime because it’s back down if you’ve cents. Look, they have no… I also understand.

Their mandate is to make this Biden White House look like it is semi-competent and not a total failure from all angles and all perspectives and I think what we already recognize is they don’t even have the basics for that. Right? It’s not even really possible to spin this level of failure and incompetence. So I don’t envy the job that Psaki at the White House and the CNN anchors posing as journalists have. I mean, do you think CNN is a journalistic enterprise, Clay? I don’t.

CLAY: No. And look. If they just flat-out came out and said, “Hey, we’re in the opinion business” —

BUCK: Yep.

CLAY: — then I would say, “Okay, I don’t agree with them on a lot of different things, but they are in the opinion business and all of us have different opinions.” But it’s when you try to lecture me that you are an unbiased journalist dispensing only the truth that your lies become readily apparent.

BUCK: So we may think that Joy Reid, Lawrence O’Donnell, whoever is saying crazy things over at MSNBC, but there is an honesty at MSNBC that these are people doing opinion shows.

CLAY: Yeah. They are partisan.

BUCK: CNN still clings to the fiction that you’re getting journalism even from their evening hosts. They are pretending there is no ideological bias. It’s just dishonesty, folks, but we live in a world of dishonesty these days because of the mainstream media.