CDC’s Walensky Makes Excuses for All The Mistakes and Lies

BUCK: We were right about so much when it comes to covid. And it’s quite a moment here to see that after — I’ve been saying the CDC was trying really hard to beat out the FBI. The FBI just sort of threw one into the end zone from distance here, but the CDC was becoming the worst three letter agency in the federal government. And I still think worse than the IRS, worse than anything else based on its mission set and its competency or lack thereof that we’ve seen during covid.

Now, the CDC has announced just in the last hour what they are calling a shakeup, this is under Rochelle Walensky’s watch, under her tenure as CDC director. A shakeup because they say that it fell short in its response to covid. So, it needs to become more nimble. And she told the Associated Press — going to a friendly news outlet — “I feel like it’s my responsibility,” Walensky said, “to lead this agency to a better place.”

“We saw during covid that CDC structures weren’t designed to take information, digest it, and disseminate it.” That’s actually a health policy researcher.

Walensky then said, “It’s not lost on me that we fell short in many ways. We had some pretty public mistakes. And so much of this effort was to hold up the mirror and to understand where and how we could do better.”

Let me say it’s not okay for the CDC to do an internal washing of its own laundry and suggest that with better bureaucratic structure, with a few more meetings, maybe some meetings about the meetings, maybe bring in more bureaucrats… They’ve only got a — what is it, a $12 billion budget and about 10,000 employees? Maybe if they just — if they just doubled that, everything would all of a sudden be better.

Clay, I think the CDC failed in a way that it should be torn down to the studs, all of its leadership should be fired, it should be renamed something else, it should have to go through lots of congressional hearings to explain how they’ve sucked at their job so badly because this little, oh, we’re gonna tinkle around the edges. You know what this is gonna turn into? We just need more resources. Every bureaucracy just wants more resources.

CLAY: That’s my concern, too, when I see these headlines. And here’s what I think should happen. We should replace everyone in a position of prominence at the CDC with anyone who signed the Great Barrington Declaration that is interested in serving and working at the CDC.

For people out there who have forgotten, the CDC, after two and a half years of covid, has basically finally reached the conclusions that all of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration reached years ago. And this is why I get so frustrated about whether or not there are consequences. There are consequences for whether you make good or bad decisions, or there should be, in a democracy.

If you made kids wear masks to school as are still occurring in Louisville and in Philadelphia and in San Diego and in so many different parts our country right now, if you made that happen or you continue to make it happen, you shouldn’t have a job. Because your most important job — if you were in the teachers union and you advocated for schools shutting down, you shouldn’t have a job anymore. And my concern, Buck, is what you just kind of elucidated there a bit, and we talked about —

BUCK: Good word.

CLAY: — earlier in the program, that they are just going to pretend that none of this ever happened and hope that the distance mists of memory sweep in and make people forget what they were told. And the reason why I think this is gonna be, Buck, is because there are so many sheep out there who are willing to do this already with the covid shots.

Do you notice Buck? I go check the mentions sometimes, and anytime I post a Covid-19 related story and I say, “Hey, the shots don’t really stop or prevent the spread,” which is a hundred percent true and “don’t make sense for young or healthy people,” which is also a hundred percent true, and that “we were lied to,” which we were, which is also a hundred percent true, somebody comes in and says “Nuh-uh, you weren’t lied to. You don’t understand how covid vaccines work. All they were designed to do is prevent hospitalization or death.”

First of all, they’re not stopping that either. But that is the moved goalpost definition of what the covid shots are supposed to do because, Buck, you well remember and huge percentage of our audience remember that we were all told by the CDC, by Rochelle Walensky, by Dr. Fauci, by the Rachel Maddows of the world who carried their water, you get this covid shot, you will neither get nor spread covid ever again. And instead we found out that’s a hundred percent not true.

Well, a lot of people aren’t even aware of what the original thing they said anymore was and so they buy into the moved goalpost version of how to deal with the covid shots. And my concern is there aren’t gonna be any consequences for these people who got it wrong. There are gonna be billions of dollars in rewards for the Moderna and the Pfizer and the J&J executives, and the Dr. Faucis of the world are gonna ride off into the sunset on an entire collection of honorary degrees where they’re considered to be savants. That shouldn’t be possible in a democracy where consequences should matter whether it comes to judgments.

BUCK: I’ve said it before, I’m gonna keep saying it every day until Election Day that I can remember to. Based on the covid madness alone, Democrats deserve to lose, honestly all political power in this country, but we know that’s not going to happen. They certainly deserve to lose control of the House and the Senate though, and the Biden administration eventually must be held responsible for this. It wasn’t just that they were wrong — and I think this is so important as well, Clay — there was a viciousness to it.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: There was the country’s upset. Let’s blame our political opponents. Let’s blame the other side for this virus that, you know, was very dangerous to elderly people —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — was not very dangerous to everybody else. It was dangerous to the elderly. And they turned it into, if you don’t do what we say, you’re killing people. I mean, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, would straight up say it, (impression) “You know, if you don’t want grandma to die, you better bet the shot.” And we would sit here and say, what kind of moral blackmail is this? This is crazy. So they were nasty about it too.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: They not only used force; they really tried to go after and destroy the reputations of people who disagreeing with them and the — it was a test-drive of authoritarianism, folks. I hate to be the one who breaks it to you, but whether it’s on climate or it’s on racial justice or it’s on covid, if Democrats can come up with some moralistic excuse for absolute control over your life, they will take it with no if, ands, or buts, no compunction. They’ve been they want.

CLAY: You’re right. And, again, I’m afraid they may escape consequence for all of this. I really am. And I think there’s an argument that this is going to be the great impact of the FBI raid on Trump, is that it takes away from covid failure, inflation, border issues, the murder rate in this country, certainly the economic dislocation that so many have felt, all predicated on Joe Biden’s poor choices. Afghanistan, which is a one-year anniversary of when most people finally decided Joe Biden’s not up to the job. What’s going on in Ukraine. All of these are failures.

And instead of discussing all of this, a lot of the discussion I’m afraid over the next 90 days is gonna be, oh, will there or won’t there be an indictment and we’re all gonna be continuing to talk about the raid, which is the ultimate way to change the narrative and make the story Donald Trump, as opposed to Joe Biden, when almost all the time the midterms are a referendum on the party in power and the president of the United States. And that’s Joe Biden, who’s been a disaster.