Aaron Rodgers and Novak Djokovic Become Enemies of the Left

CLAY: I want to read this quote for you, a couple of them, because I don’t know if you saw it. We talked about this quite a bit because it turned into a big story. Aaron Rodgers chose not to get covid vaccine, the Green Bay Packers quarterback.

BUCK: The Aaron Rodgers jerseys as Christmas presents were flying off the shelves.

CLAY: Yes. As a result… By the way, we’re number one show in Milwaukee. We love all you there. Aaron Rodgers, not trying to have a big sports argument here, but he is the NFL MVP this year, okay? The only other case you could make is for Tom Brady, but Aaron Rodgers should be the MVP. His team is number one in the NFC. They are the favorite right now I believe to win the Super Bowl in the gambling markets. He is the best player, okay? He missed one game because he tested positive for covid.

Many players have missed games for testing positive for covid, whether they got the vaccine or not, all right? So there are only 50 voters, Buck, who make the decision on who the NFL MVP is gonna be. Only 50 of them. One of the voters went on Chicago area radio yesterday and said he would not be voting for Aaron Rodgers because “I don’t think you can be the biggest jerk in the league,” he said, “and punish your team and your organization and your fan base the way he did and be MVP.”

He further built on it by saying it’s because Rodgers had been unvaccinated and spent 10 days on the covid list. He said, “We’re told to pick the guy who we think is most valuable, and it’s not strictly on the field. He hurt his team on the field by the way he acted off the field. They’re gonna get the number one seed anyway, but what if the difference had come down to the Chiefs game where he lied about being vaccinated and they ended up getting beaten?”

He said that’s one of the justifications for why he’s not voting for Aaron Rodgers. How insane is it, Buck, that a quarterback in Aaron Rodgers — who looked at all the data, like we tell all of our listeners to do every single day — recognized that he was not under danger himself from covid, made the decision that he was not going to be covid vaccinated? He told his team, told all of his teammates. He didn’t hide it from them.

He did try to hide it from the media, because he knew it would be a big story, and now these left-wing losers in sports media — the same people who went after Drew Brees when he said, “The reason I stand for the national anthem’s ’cause my two grandfathers fought in World War II and I want to honor them” — now they’re going after Aaron Rodgers and at least one of them, of 50, is saying publicly, “I’m not voting for him because he upset me with his off-the-field decision making.”

BUCK: I’m like a foreigner when it comes to the sports media. It’s almost like I have to translate. I’ve never paid any attention. I don’t know. So when you’ve been saying, Clay, as we’ve done the show together, or I think actually they are —

CLAY: They are.

BUCK: — more left-wing than the national political media. To me, that’s colder than absolute zero.

CLAY: Blows your mind.

BUCK: How is that even possible, right? You can’t even get — and yet here we are with the U Penn situation and the transgender swimmer playing on it. And you point out ESPN does no stories on it.

CLAY: They haven’t done a single story on it.

BUCK: They don’t even cover it. You would think they would celebrate it. But, see, it’s not helpful to the narrative. This time it’s not helpful to the narrative because they’re annihilating all the women’s records. And on this issue of Aaron Rodgers, it made goes to show you they are effectively — and I’ve been learning this from you in real time as we go along — the sports media… It is like ESPN is as people have derided it MSNBC with sports. They are just as adjunct of the overall narrative of the left, which is remarkable because you think that sports would be one place where excellence, winning, truth.

CLAY: Meritocracy.

BUCK: Meritocracy for everybody. And yet, no, Aaron Rodgers, ’cause he’s against the covid narrative. I’m sorry. We haven’t even yet had a reckoning in sports or anywhere else, but you’ve been talking about the positive cases on a lot of these teams. There seems to have been no willingness to have a national conversation about the fact that the vaccines to stop spread did not work, okay?

CLAY: Completely failed.

BUCK: For stopping the spread, they’re an abject failure. For individual protection for those at risk, they’re good. Are they better than natural immunity, by the way? I would like that conversation. I want to know. Who is safer right now to be around, someone who got the shot six months ago and has not had covid or somebody who had covid and never got a shot?

I would like Fauci to answer that question, but as we know the rules also change all the time. I am a tennis player. Not bad. Pretty good. Got a decent forehand, serves needs a lot work. You know, the only sport I played well. I won shooting when I was in Florida with my brothers. We like to go to the range. But the only sport I playing on a regular basis is tennis and crushing commies if one can say that’s a sport.

Sorry. I just had to. But nonetheless, I know a bit about tennis, and Novak Djokovic is… I mean, there’s three great living tennis players who are all kind of… There’s Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer — and then, of course, you go back a ways, there’s Pete Sampras for the greatest-of-all-time title. But right now, I think Djokovic, is he number one in the world?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And wait a second, Clay. There were kind of different rules for him when it came to covid suddenly and going to the Australian Open.

CLAY: So this is both ridiculous, predictable, and sad all rolled into one. Novak Djokovic has chosen not to get the covid vaccine. He already had covid and like many athletes, he looked at the data, you know, athletes are intensely in tune with their bodies and he said it’s not worth me getting the covid vaccine. So the Australian Open is going to start in the next few days.

I’m not sure exactly, but it’s in January of this month in Australia. And Australia is not allowing anyone into the country unless they’ve been vaccinated for covid. Now, leave aside how crazy that is. Somehow Novak Djokovic qualified for an exemption to the covid vaccine requirement, traveled from Europe to Australia, arrived in the country, and they refused to allow him to enter the country because word got out that he got the exemption and people are furious in Australia.

And so right now as we speak, Novak Djokovic is at a hotel at the airport in Australia being guarded by two different security guards unable to leave his hotel room in Australia. They don’t know if he’s gonna be able to play in the tournament, but he got on the plane and flew there! It’s no small flight to go all the way to Australia, and now they’re not letting him out of his hotel room.

BUCK: It was just too much, right? Australia. It’s been so disappointing ’cause everyone had thought in America, I think, the perception was that Aussies are more laidback Brits with a better tan. You know what I mean? They’re just sort of they’re in the sun, they’re at the beach, they’re hanging out. And Aussies, it turns out, are creating the template — even more so than China — of the biosecurity state. But at least they’re trying to be consistent in this lunacy because the worst tyrannies, as we see in this country, is when they rule based upon how important you are, based upon how powerful you are.

One thing I think I mentioned when I was in even Miami, Clay. Djokovic obviously gets a pass, or they wanted him to give him a pass ’cause he’s so important. But the virus doesn’t care how important you are. You know, the virus doesn’t care how wealthy you are. Even in Miami you have a lot of the servants, if you will, you know, the servant class or people in the service industry were masked up all the time.

CLAY: Oh, yeah.

BUCK: This has become a class marker for a lot of people because why should somebody who’s eating dinner not mask up? Forget eating dinner. People say you need to have food in your mouth, whatever. Why should someone who hangs out at a bar you should be able to be unmasked while somebody else is masked up? It’s just about class and power at this point.

CLAY: How angry would be if you traveled all the way to Australia, they had told you that you could enter country, and then when you got there, they put you in a hotel room with two armed guards and you weren’t able to go anywhere?

BUCK: It’s a long flight from what I understand. Have you ever been? I’ve never been to the Land Down Under.

CLAY: No, I would love to go. I’m not gonna be able to go ’cause I’m not vaccinated. I don’t want to travel all the way to Australia and end up held hostage in a hotel room.

BUCK: Clay, I don’t want to have to get some kind of special exfiltration mission going to get you out of your Australian quarantine camp if you visit. But I will say with this audience, we’d get you out of there in a quick minute.

CLAY: I would appreciate it.