CLAY: One of the great things about the Biden White House, honestly, so far has been Peter Doocy just absolutely (chuckling) letting them have it over all of the ridiculous and illogical and inconsistent positions they have taken. This was, I believe, yesterday. Enjoy.
DOOCY: In May, you made it sound like a vaccine was —
BIDEN: Well, in May, that’s true.
DOOCY: — the ticket to losing the mask forever, and it —
BIDEN: (shouting) That — that is true at the time! Because I thought there were people who were going to understand that getting vaccinated made a gigantic difference. And what happened was, new variant came along, they didn’t get vaccinated, it was spread more rapidly, and people were — more people were getting sick. That’s the difference.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: You know what I mean? When all the sudden (grumbling Biden impression). Dude, we all know what’s going on here. You said, “Get vaccinated; you’re done, you’re safe, you’re good,” and now you’re saying something else. You can get all huffy about it, but it doesn’t change the obvious reality. Maybe it wasn’t an intentional bait-and-switch. I think it kind of was. But here we are.
CLAY: This is something that’s never gonna leave, right? Because when you make such a blanket statement — which the White House made, I believe, on May the 13th — the lesson basically they had was simple. The bargain was clear: “You get vaccinated; you never have to wear a mask again.” That was what Joe Biden told Americans.
And the Delta variant already existed by then. It’s not as if this was a new phenomenon. And now he’s walking all that back and saying that he’s investigating whether the federal government can mandate vaccines, which is an incredible overreach relative to where we are from the risk and the data.
BUCK: So we’re much safer, we’re much better protected, the numbers are way down, and they get more aggressive with the authoritarianism.
CLAY: That’s a great way of putting it.
BUCK: That’s what’s actually happening in the country right now.
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