Governor Glenn Youngkin Reclaims Virginia for Sanity

BUCK: We want to start with actually some really encouraging news. Clay and I covered the incredible win of governor — now governor, just sworn in, just taken the office — Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. Now, Virginia is a state that had been trending very blue in recent years. Youngkin had a big win over Terry McAuliffe. He’s come into office, and he’s come in swinging right away. On his first day, he has ended the state mask mandate for public schools.

He ended the covid vaccine mandate for state workers, banned critical race theory from the classroom, and he is setting himself up to be — right away — following up on the promise, the initial promise of his campaign, which had to be with parents’ rights in education and a more-sane view of governance in the state of Virginia overall. Here he is on making sure that parents’ rights are protected.

YOUNGKIN: The fact that that tweet came out from Arlington County within minutes of my executive order? What that tells me is they haven’t listened to parents yet. You know, if there’s one thing that hopefully everybody heard in November, it is time to listen to parents. So, over the course of this week, I hope they will listen to parents, because we will use every resource within the governor’s authority to explore what we can do and will do in order to make sure that parents rights are protected.

BUCK: So, Clay, you and I both have the experience — it’s kind of funny, actually, ’cause you’re a Nashville guy; I’m a New York City guy — of spending considerable time in our nation’s capital.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: And Arlington, Virginia, is really just an adjunct or an annex of Washington, D.C. It is very blue — there are actually some very, very wealthy counties there per capita — and tends to be a Democrat stronghold. As soon as the governor comes in and says, “There’s no more mask mandate in schools,” Arlington puts out a tweet saying, “Well, we’re just not gonna go along with that.” I think this is so interesting, the noncompliance. When libs are in power with this stuff, it’s, “We have the power to do it.” The moment they lose the power, it’s, “We’re gonna do it anyway.” Youngkin is saying, “The parents are the ones I represent here.”

CLAY: Well, and I just want to emphasize again how much of a ridiculous battle this is. If you want your kid in an N95 mask, if you want your kid triple masked up, you have the right to do that as a parent. What all of these Republican governors are saying is, “We’re just not gonna allow the mandate to continue to exist,” and I saw this as soon as the news came out that he had been inaugurated, these first actions.

We should also mention, by the way, that his top advisor now on covid is Dr. Marty Makary who has been on this show a great number of times and has given consistently fantastic advice as it pertains to what children should be doing in particular with covid. Buck, this probably won’t surprise you, but as soon as that happened, in the headline in the Washington Post… Did you see this headline?

The Washington Post: “Governor-elect,” this was right before he was signed in, “Glenn Youngkin has named a respected physician who opposes blanket vaccine mandates and downplayed the threat of the coronavirus to children as his lead adviser on pandemic response.” Now, the Washington Post headline says he “downplayed the threat of coronavirus to children.” Did he downplay the thread, Buck, or did he accurately share data on what was going on with children and covid?

Because this to me is evidence of how unfair the media can be. This is not an opinion piece, right? If somebody from the Washington Post wanted to write an opinion piece — and I’m sure they will — “Glenn Youngkin is endangering children everywhere by ending the mask mandate and hiring Dr. Marty Makary to be his new adviser on covid related issues,” that’s an opinion piece. I disagree with it. You disagree with it.

Many of the people out there in audience disagree, and probably the majority of Virginia voters who put Glenn Youngkin into office would disagree with it. But that’s their right as an opinion piece. What happens is, this gets disguised as news as if his opinions on covid and children are somehow downplaying. (chuckles) He’s just shared you will the actual data! You’re not downplaying anything when you share the legitimate data when it comes to kids and covid.

So I give credit to Glenn Youngkin for coming out, making that decision to hire Makary. Ladapo, by the way, also a fantastic hire that Ron DeSantis has made as the Florida surgeon general. These are guys that are incredibly well educated, that are at the very peak of the intellectual rigor that you would want for a doctor and scientists advising policy to represent, and yet they immediately get attacked. But I love it. “Elections,” as Obama said, “have consequences,” and if I’m in Virginia right now I’m loving the immediate actions that have been undertaken by Glenn Youngkin.

BUCK: The fact that he comes in as well and bans by executive order CRT teaching in the classroom fascinating to watch so many of the libs running around saying there’s no CRT in schools and then when you say, “Well, we’re gonna ban the attaching of CRT in schools,” they completely freak out. So it can’t be both of these things. They can’t have it both ways. Here he is just saying the new governor of Virginia we’re gonna remove this kind of politics from the classroom.

YOUNGKIN: Starting today, we will raise standards. We will raise teacher pay. We will invest in facilities. We will invest in children with disabilities. We will remove politics from the classroom and refocus on essentials. Yes, we will remove politics from the classroom, and we will focus on essential math and science and reading, and we will teach all of our history, the good and the bad.

BUCK: Isn’t it fascinating, Clay, that when he says things like we will focus on teaching math and English, you know that the national teachers unions — and a lot of the education commissars out there — bristle at that. Somehow, they get upset about a refocusing on what schools are really supposed to be doing in the first place because they’ve recognized — and they’ve used for a long time — the schools as indoctrination factories.

They’re teaching kids to think about the world particularly about America a certain way, and so all you have to do is see their response to someone saying, “Let’s focus on the actual nuts and bolts of an education and a lot less on teaching whether it’s critical race theory or some other form of left-wing indoctrination in the schools,” you can always tell who’s effective by how much the left hates them. The left is really starting to hate Glenn Youngkin, which is a great sign.

CLAY: Well, and also, I think it’s hard for them to attack him — and this is, I think, a representative sample of what Republicans can take as we move into the 2022 midterm. I saw a data point out there — I’m sure you did too, Buck — Gallup does a regular poll on which party is favored in the moments going on right now. Every quarter, they had a constantly running poll. Republicans have moved to plus five, which is the highest level Republicans have been nationwide since 1994 effectively in terms of the national response and what people are saying.

I think Glenn Youngkin-like candidates are incredibly difficult to attack because, one, Glenn Youngkin is very smart. Two, he is primarily a business and data-based guy. He’s going to look at the facts, make a rational analysis of the facts, and come up with a policy that fits those facts. And what Democrats have failed to recognize is they’ve basically — while they’re trying to wrap themselves and say, “we’re the party of science,” they basically — have become a party that is very anti-facts.

Whenever facts are uncomfortable for Democrats, you know what they do? They immediately call the person who is sharing those facts a racist, a sexist, a homophobe. That’s their only attack. They don’t engage in intellectual debate anymore. The Democratic Party has become very much of a leap-of-faith party, and so you have Glenn Youngkin and he’s laying out these basic facts here and he hires Dr. Marty Makary who’s going to help him analyze those facts.

And the way that Republicans are sort of putting Democrats into a tough spot is they’re making Democrats just go back to the old tried and true attacks of “everything is racist,” and it doesn’t land on guys like these who are hyperrational. I think those punches are becoming weaker, as we talked about last week. That boy who cried wolf, everything-is-racist angle, eventually people stopped turning just like in the old children’s story, even when the wolf shows up, people won’t recognize it anymore.

Democrats have so overplayed their hand, they don’t even really know what to do, and I think you’re seeing that with the voting rights bill in national, Buck, as well which is supposed… Remember the deadline that Schumer put in place was today, Buck. He was saying, “We have to have this done by Martin Luther King Day,” and now he’s bumped it to later in the week. They’re going to lose, and that story is not working.

BUCK: Jen Psaki responded to the Governor Youngkin order on masks. Remember, they always frame this as a ban on masks. That’s not what it is.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: It’s you don’t have to wear a mask — and, by the way, that would have been far more acceptable to me all along. If people want to wear masks, that’s one thing, if you want to be on a plan, masking between bites like an idiot, that’s up to you. But the fact that I have to do it too is the objectionable part. The fact that people have reasonable emotional health and rational ability to think through things, we shouldn’t be forced to cater to the neuroses of libs who watch too much MSNBC.

And Jen Psaki here responds to Youngkin’s order with — and this is the White House press secretary, everybody. We all know that.

First of all, all the variants are transmissible. So what the heck is that supposed to mean? And everyone needs to understand this is in the context of the big push now has become N95 masks and double masking for kids in schools. I don’t know how many of you have actually tried to wear an N95 mask for long periods of time, even medical personnel will tell you it’s really uncomfortable.

It’s much… It’s harder to breathe through. It’s heavier on your face. This is crazy. But this is where they’re going because they’ve had to admit the cloth masks do not stop the spread of the Omicron infection in any meaningful way, and so Jen Psaki is one of these parents who wants your kid, if you live in Virginia… I know a lot of you don’t live in Virginia; most of you don’t. But if you do live in Virginia, she wants your kids to have to wear an N95 mask now in school. That’s where we are, Clay. It’s gotten pretty insane.

CLAY: Well, and, again, the science doesn’t support it in any way. I think we need to talk about that a bit more because Jen Psaki has tried to lean on her fact of being a parent as evidence of why everybody should have to make the same choice that she makes. Why is that true at all? I think we need to continue to emphasize the fact that this is not a parental mandate that you can’t wear a mask. If you’re terrified, have your kid wear a mask. If you’re not, you shouldn’t be forcing it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We wanted to play this cut too, because there’s a lot of discussion about how exactly the Republican Party in 2022 should balance their relationship with Donald Trump. Maybe we get into at the top of the next hour, Buck, the discussion. They’re trying to create some conflict, the media is, between Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, and Donald Trump, who also is in Florida right now. I’ll talk about why I think that’s going on. We can discuss that at the top of the second hour. But first Glenn Youngkin talked about keeping Trump, while allusion embracing his policies. “The great big bear hug,” he said. Listen to this.

YOUNGKIN: What we did in Virginia over the last year was give everyone a great big bear hug. We, in fact, embraced all Virginians. And I’ve said before that I so deeply appreciated President Trump’s support. We brought together a coalition of folks that had never been in the room together, forever Trumpers and Never Trumpers, moderates, Democrats. We campaigned places that Republicans have historically not campaigned, and that resulted in record vote letters in all minority communities. What we demonstrated is that this is about bringing people together.

CLAY: I think it’s a fantastic answer, Buck, for everybody out there — Republican politicians — that’s being asked, because they’re gonna keep saying January 6th and the 2020 election, keep trying to drag you into the past at 2022 gets closer and closer, I think Glenn Youngkin nailed it and showed every Republican statewide but also congressional candidate how you embrace what Donald Trump represents while simultaneously trying to go out in your individual districts or states and grow the overall brand of the Republican Party.

BUCK: I also think, Clay, that as we look forward not only to the midterm elections, but to the presidential election a few years from now, the best thing that a lot of these Republicans can do that are governors is show how much better governance is in states like Florida and now in Virginia than what you’ve seen in the blue, locked-down madness epicenters out there, right?

New York and California have been miserable, psychotic, neurotic places to live for going on two years now. Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and now Virginia are going to be places that people can look at and say, “Hold on a second. There was a better way.” That governance… As you said, elections matter. It is the best thing or the most memorable thing I think Obama ever said, “Elections have consequences.” They do, and they are gonna have real consequences in the state of Virginia as well.

And I think look that he doesn’t waste any time, Youngkin isn’t wasting any time. He comes right in — just like DeSantis did, by the way — and starts going right after the issues that he ran on and is holding the line on it so far. So it’s early, but all indicators are good. You know, there’s some movement from the attorney general of the state of Virginia that I wanted to get to.

CLAY: Yeah, it’s fantastic. I love that they were lined up and ready to go as soon as they took office to deliver on the promises that they made to people all over Virginia. It was a monster win. But sometimes people win, and they don’t actually follow through — as all of us out there listening know — on much of what they promise. That’s one of the big issues with politicians today is that trust factor. Glenn Youngkin immediately delivered, and so did his attorney general and his lieutenant governor.