BUCK: The White House, you would think they’d be a little more cautious about sending… What’d they call them, Clay, “strike forces”?
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: It wasn’t strike force. Was it a strike force?
CLAY: I think it was a vaccine strike force, if I’m not mistaken.
BUCK: Yeah, I think that’s the term they used. I mean, I could almost see, like, storm troopers —
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: — and Emperor Palpatine and the TIE Fighters coming into people’s homes. But here’s the HHS secretary, Xavier Becerra , who is pushing back on people like you and me who are making fun of the door-to-door concerns here about vaccines.
BECERRA: Perhaps, uhh, we should point out that the federal government’s had to spend trillions of dollars to try to keep Americans alive during this pandemic. So it is absolutely the gover… the government’s business. It is taxpayers’ business if we have to continue to spend money to try to keep people from contracting covid and — and helping reopen the economy.
BUCK: Nothing creepy at all, Clay, about the government —
CLAY: Oh, it’s so scary. This is ridiculous.
BUCK: — that says now that it’s their business who you see, who you hug, whether you can breathe fresh air, whether you can go into your job, whether you can worship in your church or synagogue or wherever.
CLAY: The reality here is, if we just went back in time, the number one threat, in terms of something that you can control — ’cause you can’t control your age. The number one threat in terms of something that you can control from covid was not wearing a mask, it was not socially distancing. It was being in good physical condition. It was exercising. It was going outside.
It was walking, it was running, it was hiking, whatever you are capable of physically. The government instead told us (chuckles), “Shut down all the parks. Shut down all outdoor activities. You can’t go to the beach. You can’t go on a hike. Stay in your home,” where the virus is going to freely circulate much more, “and don’t get physically in better shape,” which is actually the worst advice that could have been given. But the idea that they’re gonna knock on doors now! Remember “two weeks to stop the spread,” Buck?
BUCK: Yeah.
CLAY: We’re now at 18 months and they’re knocking on your doors.
BUCK: They shut down gyms in New York, and they kept them shut down even beyond when they said they would. So this was a situation where I couldn’t see anyone, couldn’t go to the gym, had a wonderful girlfriend who is fortunately/unfortunately is an incredible baker.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: So I was just eating the most delicious treats, stuck at home (laughing) with nothing to do.
CLAY: All the time.
BUCK: Not healthy. Not good.
CLAY: We talked about basketball earlier. Buck, one of the crazy things out there they did: They took rims off of basketball goals in public parks! Think about how crazy that is. Our tax dollars, people climbed up on ladders and took the rim off of an outdoor basketball goal.
BUCK: They padlocked —
CLAY: They filled in skate parks in California with sand.
BUCK: They padlocked public playgrounds in New York City. They padlocked them.
CLAY: Crime scene tape! They put up crime scene tape early on around playgrounds all over this country.
BUCK: Any person with their own critical faculties intact knew we had a big problem. There are many times when we could tell we had a big problem early on in this, but when the police arrested the paddleboarder in the ocean in California —
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: — for covid threat because —
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: — “Not allowed to be on the beach, not allowed to be on the open water by yourself, covid!” That was all you really had to see to understand the hysteria.
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