CLAY: I’ve been looking at the data, Buck, and I think this is an important bit of data. We tweeted it out. We did a story about it at OutKick. And it drove the blue checks crazy. I could barely keep up with all the blue check anger on social media when we popped this story on OutKick, and I’ve seen a lot of other places writing about it as well. The data reflects that even though Florida is usually Ron DeSantis…

They have #DeathSantis trend and they come after him because of all the freedoms that Florida has had and how little restrictions there are and there’s no mask mandate and how dare they not have a covid vaccine mandate! Right now, as I’m looking at the New York Times’ most updated data, Florida has the lowest rate of covid infection — this is per capita, per hundred thousand people — in the entire United States. Okay?

States that have substantial restrictions, like where you are, Buck, in New York and where a lot of our listeners are in California. The covid infection rate in New York right now, New York State, is triple what it is in Florida, and it is over double in California what it is in Florida as well. Plus, California in the past 14 days, cases are up 61% — and in the past 14 days in New York, cases are up 11%. In the past 14 days, Florida is down 20%.

So, not only is Florida way better in terms of covid cases per hundred thousand people than both New York and California, the two states — populous states with the most restrictive covid requirements — the trend lines are actually getting worse for New York, Buck, and worse for California relative to Florida. Yet there are almost no stories New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC. The Blue Check Brigade refuses to acknowledge this reality.

BUCK: When we first were fighting against lockdowns —

CLAY: Yes. A long time ago now.

BUCK: A long time ago now. I know, Clay, it feels like this has been quite a saga, right?

CLAY: We’ve had wars that lasted less time than covid has in the United States.

BUCK: Sure. When I remember and you remember back in, like, the March-April period of 2020, I was pushing for — and I got absolutely people piling on, “You want people to die” on social media.

CLAY: Oh, yeah.

BUCK: ‘Cause I said Easter Sunday of 2020, “We go back to life. We do what we can. Keep those at high risk safe. Protect the nursing homes. Keep people who are at high risk home, fine. But basically, people under 65 or under 60 need to realize this is life and the masks aren’t gonna save us,” and everyone went crazy.

Okay. They were initially telling us that these things that we’ve been made to do the whole time: The masking, the social distancing, the Lysoling, the groceries, the shouting public playgrounds and make people not able to go to the beach and mask up outdoors and mask up on the jogging trail. It was going to be… Remember this? “Crush the virus,” right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Flatten the curve. That was the promise, and I want to remind everybody, that’s how they got us to go along with this as a society was in the promise that it would be massively successful and impactful for us to do this. The effect of it would be tremendous. We had Walensky, right, same kind of stuff: 80% reduction in transmission. There were pieces written in May and June of 2020 about how masking would stop all this.

Clay, now we’re at the point where they’ve had to completely recalibrate all this; so they look at Florida, they look at California, they’ll try to find some way to say, “Oh, marginally things in California are a little bit better.” They pretend they didn’t tell us it was gonna be massively better. And they don’t take into account, look at all the stuff that they’ve been doing. Look at the craziness they put us through.

The frustration, the economic devastation, the drug overdoses, the mass hysteria, the enormous increase in people that need anxiety meds to get through the day because they’re so terrified of covid, giving shots to their 5-year-old kids. All of that stuff needs to also in a sense be “the data” here. The fact that California and Florida are basically neck-and-neck, so to speak, with covid shows that Fauciism is a massive failure and clearly the wrong move from the very beginning.

CLAY: No doubt. And this is why federalism has been so important. And you’ve heard us beat this drum. But for a guy like Ron DeSantis in Florida — and there have been other red state governors as well, but I’m gonna use DeSantis ’cause he’s the focal point, very often, for the criticism. But for the choices that he made, there would be no ability to have a comparison, right?

If every state had done what New York and California did, which is what the Biden administration would have had occur if they’d had their choice, then there would be no control group where you’d be able to say, “Wait a minute. The masking and the kids being out of school…” ‘Cause remember, California didn’t allow kids to go back to school. New York didn’t allow kids to back to school. In 2020 in the fall, in August of last year, all kids in Florida were back in school, the whole state. They played all high school sports. They had totally normal life. I know. I’m a property owner in Florida. Buck, you’ve been thinking about it.

BUCK: No, I own property in Florida. Yeah, I just don’t live there. Sure.

CLAY: Yeah. All right. So I spend a few months ago a year in Florida. I’m gonna be down there next week and then I’m gonna be down there for Thanksgiving.

BUCK: Are you building a little Buck guesthouse, by the way, sir.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Do I have to talk to Mrs. Travis to get approval?

CLAY: We are gonna have… By the time this thing gets through — and Mrs. Travis is in charge of all the building regimen. By the time this place gets through, we’re building a studio that I’ll be able to use, and I’ll let you be able to use it too. You can come down to Florida and hang out in the studio. It’s gonna be an awesome studio in Florida so I can do the exact same thing there as I do in Nashville.

But this year, Buck, I went and spent the whole month of May in Florida. My kids were out of school. Everybody was out. We had 15 days to stop the spread, everything else, went down there, and if Ron DeSantis doesn’t make the choices that he does, I really think — and certainly Greg Abbott, talking about populous states that have been willing to defy the mask and vaccine mandates.

If that doesn’t happen, then there is very little pushback against Fauciism. And we wouldn’t have the ability to call them out and say, “All of this virtue signaling, all this cosmetic theater is worthless. You haven’t done anything except destroy the economy with no benefits.”

BUCK: One thing that when I got asked, “How do you…?” You know, I do public speaking, you do public speaking at different places to actually see people in the flesh, not just do radio, right? One thing that people often ask me — especially younger college-age folks, people in their twenties — is, “How do you win debates with leftists, right?” This is a constant thing will at that people will ask, understandably.

Because they’re frustrated too with the lack of rationality and the lack of logical arguments. It’s always, you know, “That’s racist,” or like, “You’re evil!” You know all that stuff. And I say to them, “Ask them what would be…?” This is just one tactic. I mean, everyone has their different things. Ask them what it would take for them to change. What data or what would have to be true for them to change their minds.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Because what you’ll find that’s fascinating is it’s never even occurred to them that it’s possible for them. There’s no scenario in which many people on the left would even consider the possibility of being wrong such that they can’t even think of what it would take for them to actually change their mind, right? Just assuming that I could make whatever it is true. I think that that’s where we are on covid. Because if you ask somebody who believed Fauci from the beginning, for example…

And Fauci’s just the most visible manifesting of this, right? He is to communism what Stalin was. He’s at the very top. That’s a little harsh but you get what I’m saying, right? He’s the guy that we associate the most with it. And what would it take for people at this point to realize that he’s been wrong over and over? There actually are some articles now in so-called mainstream publications about, Fauci’s gotten a lot of stuff wrong. The CDC, those folks have gotten a lot of stuff wrong. What would it take, Clay, for people to realize they’re gonna keep getting stuff wrong ’cause this is who they are?

CLAY: That’s a fantastic question, Buck, because it’s the underlying question we’ve been asking and I think are gonna have to continue to ask for months into the future. How do we land the plane? Okay. Let’s presume that we are up in the — up in the air right now, we’re flying around. And we know that at some point we have to land the airplane. What is an acceptable way for Fauciites to ever allow us to land the plane? What has to happen?

BUCK: Ooh. We actually have the White House through a spokesperson —

CLAY: We have an answer?

BUCK: — being asked how they land the plane, and, Clay, you’ll be happy to know, it is a robust and fantastic answer from them.

REPORTER: Do you have an idea of when the pandemic could become an endemic — uh, you know, could cease to be a pandemic and what would that look…? What does the endgame look like at this point?

JEAN-PIERRE: I do not know. I would refer you to public health experts, the CDC. That’s not something that we’re zeroing in on. Our focus is to make sure we do everything we can to save lives and get people vaccinated.

BUCK: No, it’s actually the White House. It’s not the CDC, Clay.

CLAY: But that’s the single most important question, and she’s not able to answer it. If you aren’t looking into the future and saying, “How do we land the plane?” It’s great when you’re flying around in the air, right? The Biden White House is like, “Oh, look at those clouds! We’re just gonna cut through ’em. Everything’s great.” You’re gonna run out of fuel at some point.

Things on the ground get safe enough for you to land the plane. What are the circumstances? This is a question. I know we got a lot of people in the media who listen to us. This is a question — I don’t see it as being partisan remotely, Buck — that you should be asking and grilling people in positions of power for what are the metrics by which you believe normalcy can occur? What do you not see now that you need to see in the future for kids not to wear masks, for everything to get back to normal?

BUCK: Clay, I also think also there’s a fundamental misunderstanding here of how all this is supposed to work Clay from a government perspective. The CDC is advisory.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: The White House is what is pushing OSHA to do the vax mask mandate. The White House is what is telling the FAA.

CLAY: We elected the White House theoretically. We didn’t elect the CDC.

BUCK: They’re “the deciders.” I like that Bushism. They’re the deciders, right? They’re the ones that actually have to be… They are make these choices being held accountable. They pretend that it’s the science. They pretend that it’s the CDC so that then they don’t have to deal with the political blowback and consequences that created this cult of the CDC and Fauciism, as though they’re the people that get to make the calls. “No, they’re advisors.” The buck — pardon the phrase — stops with the people telling Joe Biden what to do. That’s what actually happens, that’s the reality of it.

CLAY: No doubt.