CLAY: You’re starting to see some data that what we hoped was going to be a red wave is going to be more akin to what we saw in 2020, which is a 50-50 universe. And I think that is because we saw the red wave in 2021, which swept Youngkin into office in Virginia, nearly gave us a Republican governor in New Jersey, certainly we saw Mayra Flores.

Now, you might be able to argue that Dobbs in June — and this is a probably bigger discussion we need to have — has had an impact on the overall electorate that may be more substantial than appeared initially. But my concern is Republicans are not as energized and we’re going to let Democrats get away with the worst public policy decisions of most of our lives as it pertains to covid because we’re distracted and pay attention to other issues — the Mar-a-Lago raid — and we’re not holding accountable Joe Biden for what actually he has done and the failures of the Biden administration.

BUCK: I think it’s so important, too, because there is some truth to the changing realities of what we knew about covid. And I think everyone needs to understand this ’cause it will come up a lot in the Fauci accountability discussion. When they were saying we need a million ventilators, that was wrong, but they were panicked, it was early, Trump got the Defense Production Act going, Cuomo was demanding it, right? That’s a mistake. That’s just guys, we don’t know and we’re just trying —

CLAY: You might be right. We might need a million ventilators. Let’s be smart and get them anyway.

BUCK: So, there’s a real argument there. And I want everyone to understand. There are different things. “Two weeks to slow the spread” was a mistake, but I do think you can argue that two weeks was made in good faith. But then what happened is, as this moved along, not only did we have more data, but it also became more politicized. It also became more a way of mobilizing Democrats attacking Republicans. And Fauci — and this is the important part — played directly into that. He rode that wave.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Little Fauch was on his tiny surfboard as the wave was cresting of politicization. He was right there. That’s the critical distinction. Because what he’s doing is acting like, “Oh, it was just the data changed and we don’t know.” That’s not true. They knew by the summer of 2020 that masks didn’t do a damn thing. They knew that lockdowns and school closures… When I say “knew,” the data was telling them this, but they pretended otherwise because of the politics.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: And that’s what Fauci needs to be held accountable for, ’cause he’s gonna talk a little about the two weeks and — no, no. We knew. They lied. The libs owe everybody an apology over this stuff.

CLAY: I hope…so, yesterday Fauci went on Fox News, and so did Rochelle Walensky. Bret Baier does a fantastic show on Fox News. I think he does a really good job of covering the news, everything else, and legitimately asking difficult questions at times. Yesterday Fauci came on his show and lied. There is no other way to say it than he went on the show, he went on Fox News, and he lied. I hope they will play many of these cuts today on Fox News to demonstrate that Fauci lied.

Okay. So, right off the top here, I want you to know what the audio we’re about to play is. This, again, Dr. Fauci yesterday on Fox News said he never advocated for lockdowns, he never advocated for shutdowns. That wasn’t his responsibility. Good work out there. The internet never forgets, as we well know, Buck. This is then interspersed during the course of this audio is Fauci advocating for lockdowns, for shutdowns, bragging for all of the things that he claimed yesterday on Fox News he never called for. Listen.

Dr. Fauci claimed yesterday he never advocated for lockdowns or shutting down anything. Except he’s on tape advocating for both. Fauci is a complete and total lying fraud: pic.twitter.com/PIdLH8khmj

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 24, 2022

BUCK: Just so much here that we’re gonna continue to make sense of and be honest about, Clay. The shutdowns didn’t work at all, not even a little bit. There was no part of —

CLAY: Sorry. Let me just explain. That audio is the very first time where he said that. That was yesterday on Fox News. All of those others were receipts. I know you guys can’t see the video. All of those other audio clips were clearly him saying that.

BUCK: So, you heard him there saying how we… Here’s what he said on Bret Baier so everyone can hear it just by way of comparison. Here’s the lie.

Fauci on lockdowns:

“I didn’t shut down anything.” pic.twitter.com/evuLKLeiGh

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) August 23, 2022

BUCK: Okay. So, Clay, this is interesting because he’s going back to the “two weeks to slow the spread” argument, which he then, with the help of Dr. Birx, obliterated and turned into, “No, no, no, we have to keep going, keep going.” There was that critical moment. I have never been dragged so long; so hard on the internet, as when I said we should open fully in April of 2020 as in businesses and stuff, right?

Not like, go cough on old people and don’t worry about it, but life needs to go on. You cannot shut down the economy. This is crazy. And Fauci is just lying to everybody. The game they play is, “Oh, I didn’t make the decision; so I didn’t create the shutdown.” And the Biden administration or at that point the Trump administration was saying, “We had to trust our experts so we turned it over to them.” So, who’s responsible? Nobody’s responsible. That’s the game.

CLAY: And let me just clarify one thing to correct it. Neil Cavuto’s show, not Bret Baier’s show. So, that was Dr. Fauci yesterday on Neil Cavuto’s show claiming essentially that he had nothing to do with the shutdown because to your point, Buck, I’m not the president. I can’t order a shutdown. No, you can just advocate for it as thoroughly as you possibly can. You can leak to every media source imaginable that it needs to happen.

And you can say that our shutdowns were not even Draconian enough, which Fauci has said for a long time. This guy is such a liar that it infuriates me that he would go on television even to this day and be trying to argue against what he directly advocated for, for years, Buck. And he needs to be held accountable not only for the shutdowns and the lockdowns but for the fact that he advocated for vaccine mandates. He defended them. For the fact that he said, “Hey, if you’re in the military and you won’t get the covid shot you shouldn’t be able to be in the military anymore.”

And I want to mention this. And maybe we can do this a little bit later. But, Buck, did you see we’ve been asking the question about the boosters. They came out and said — which I think is crazy — they’re trying to roll out the boosters, and I think anyone who gets a booster basically, they’re worthless, like the covid shots themselves but for about six weeks or so, the data would reflect. Look, Buck, they are saying now, you can’t even get this booster until you go and get your initial two shots.

BUCK: That’s hilarious.

CLAY: I haven’t gotten my initial two shots. We know that doesn’t work —

BUCK: You are so many shots behind. We’re gonna be talking about how you need shots one through 15 in three years.

CLAY: We made jokes about this. But they specifically are saying, like, let’s pretend that suddenly I was like, I gotta get the covid shot. I’m not going to, but I wanted to get this booster, even though it’s also gonna be way behind ’cause it keeps evolving and you’re basically chasing a virus. But let’s presume I wanted to get the booster. I can’t. I have to go get the two shots that are two years old now and have virtually no impact before I can actually get the booster shot. I’m gonna be a pincushion.

BUCK: So, you know how we were able to early on analyze that the lib media, you know that they are in just attack Trump mode because every story that they had to retract, everything they got factually wrong, it was always on offense against Trump.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: And there’s — we understand —

CLAY: He always looked bad with everything — they never got something in his favor wrong.

BUCK: Everything statistically that you could just think of would indicate that that’s tells you all you need to know, right? So, that’s one part of it. The same thing is true of Fauci but in a different way. There was never a point at which Fauci upset MSNBC-watching, triple masked wine moms, not once during the pandemic. The people who were the most freaked out, the most Draconian, authoritarian, and really thought that this was how we save lives and all that stuff, he never upset them.

He never spoke up against the excesses. So, Fauci never came out and said, “You know, maybe letting tiny children’s fingers turn blue outside eating lunch at school and masking up between sandwich bites is a little excessive.” Never. Never once. And it’s because he knew that he was playing to a constituency. The constituency was PBS watchers and listeners, CNN lovers, and Democrat, hard-left lunatics all across the country. That’s who team Fauci was. And he knew it.

CLAY: Which is funny, Buck, because remember Leana Wen at CNN who was — she was saying if you’re not vaccinated, you shouldn’t be able to leave the state, for instance, you shouldn’t be able to get on an airplane? She was one of the Fauciites of the largest magnitude. She has a piece in the Washington Post today where she argues, hey, I don’t think masking makes sense for kids anymore. My kids aren’t wearing masks.

And I read the piece, and she basically completed a 180. She’s where you and I suddenly are after having been a Fauciite. But I went into her Twitter feed, and there was just an unmitigated sense of betrayal. All these covid terrified lunatics were in her mentions saying, how could you ever come out against masks? How could you ever argue that your kids shouldn’t wear masks? It’s crazy to see. Fauci won’t do it, though.

BUCK: And to give us a full sense of the sudden transformation of Leana Wen, she was advocating for blocking people from public life —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — who will not get the shot. She was a, “Sorry. No school, no movies, no restaurants, no nothing for you if you won’t get the shot.” And now she’s like, “Well, masks for kids is like really stupid and crazy.” And guess what. There are still libs out there, you know? I might have to go have another visit to Asheville so I can see all the people wearing their N95s outside in 90-degree weather and have the Asheville lib Mafia come after me again like the loons they are.