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BUCK: One thing that we’ve been doing, I think, pretty well here is Clay and I have been discussing with all of you based on the data, but also the mind-set of what I refer to as the commies, the health care authoritarians, the lab coat tyrants, the Fauciites. We know what their mentality is so we can often see where they’re going and predict it with some degree of accuracy.

And what you have going on right now is right in keeping with what we’ve been telling you for weeks if not months, which is it will never be enough. Whatever mandates they have gone forward with so far, as long as 1% of the country hasn’t gotten the shot, there will be Democrats out there who feel like not enough force and coercion has been used.

Not enough polarization of the American people has occurred. One of the… I don’t know if you could say the nuclear option for coercion, but certainly one of the great accelerants of this authoritarianism would be the introduction of a mandate to fly in the United States. You gotta get the shot or you can’t fly. Well, this is coming in right now, my friends.

Coming in right now from ABC affiliate in San Francisco, Dianne Feinstein has tweeted out, “We can’t allow upcoming holiday air travel to contribute to another surge in covid cases. Today, I introduced legislation requiring passengers on domestic flights to be vaccinated, test negative, or be fully recovered from a previous covid infection.”

Now, this is interesting, Clay, because at least I will say — while this is overreach and it’s authoritarian — Feinstein has realized the exclusion of natural immunity from the conversation is anti-scientific madness. There’s no argument about this. There’s no discussion.

There’s no good faith, “Oh, but… but, no,” and Fauci — ’cause he’s a little fascist tyrant — has just gone along with what the left the wanted on this. What do you think? Do you think the Senate will get this through? You think that this is what we’re facing this winter?

CLAY: So, this is really interesting, right? We’ve talked about the potential for vaccine mandates in order to fly in the country. It should not happen. I find it hard to believe that you could get 50 senators to agree to this, and I always think about it from the procedural process. Going to fly at an airport is already difficult.

By which I mean if you’ve got friends, if you’ve got family, there’s nobody who’s saying, “Hey…” Unless you’re super rich, I guess, and you have your own private plane, there’s nobody who’s saying, “Hey, do you know what’s really easy and low stress? Traveling during the holidays.” You know just puts me in a great festive mood?

It’s trying to get through security. It’s dragging presents. It’s trying to travel. So what I think about even beyond the stupidity of requiring covid vaccination passports in order to fly in the country, is the application of this rule, Buck. It seems to be really difficult, because are you gonna have gate agents checking to see whether or not people have vaccine passports?

Are you gonna have…? How often is somebody gonna forget their paperwork and they’re gonna show up at the airport? This happens all the time, right? You forget something that you plan to travel with. What are you gonna do about young children who might be 12 or 13 years old? Are you gonna mandate the vaccine for them too?

And much of the airline industry already is struggling. They haven’t had the same level of passenger travel ever since we shut down in March of 2020, and they’ve struggled in order to try to get their businesses back up and running. So I just don’t think that this is going to have a great deal of public support. And also, I say that with this caveat.

If cases were surging in October and November, I think there would be some support. I just don’t think you can get 50 senators to vote for it. I’d rather have the debate in Congress than have the Biden administration just wade in and make it a default rule. That’s somewhat encouraging, at least.

BUCK: It feels like the standard is whatever the level of public hysteria may be based on the media coverage of this at any point in time. Whatever. That’s how they will then gauge the government mandates and overreach. So they’re essentially lining it up with if everyone is freaked out. It doesn’t matter what’s true, what’s not, what’s worked, what hasn’t.

If people are freaked out, the Democrat position on this — ’cause, as we know be this is incredibly politically polarized — we’re gonna do more, we’re gonna go even further. I’ve gotta say, you have also this attitude that we mentioned before of people who are saying, Clay, “You’re a threat to the vaccinated if you’re unvaccinated.” This is the logic that you’ll have from Kathleen Sebelius who was Obama’s HHS secretary. Here she is saying that unvaccinated people, it’s like secondhand smoke.

SEBELIUS: To me, it’s a lot like secondhand smoke. Uh, you have a right to be a smoker. The science is very clear what smoking will do to you, what cancer will be caused, what kinds of health conditions, you have a right to be a smoker. What you don’t have a right to do is smoke next to my desk, to blow smoke on me, blow smoke on my children.

To force me to live in a housing facility where I am subjected to your smoke. That’s a line that we finally, in this country — that delineates what your individual rights are and what you have a right to do to make me sick and make my kids sick. So I think we’re looking at very much the same situation.

BUCK: Except she’s talking about breathing and not smoking. You actually don’t have the right to breathe normally anymore, based on her own analogy.

CLAY: Not only that, it doesn’t end, because there’s always going to be a virus that one person can spread to another person. And in my lifetime, we’ve never sat around and held people accountable for spreading the cold or the flu or whatever virus might move from one person to another, because we understand that in functional society it’s virtually impossible to stop the viruses moving.

Short of these Draconian lockdowns — which some of the crazy Fauciites still support — it is in fact an impossibility to stop. And so why would the logic end there? Let’s say that one day covid descends into being like the flu. The logic that she’s applying there would also apply for the flu or any other virus that might spread from one person to another, and this is why it’s a form of madness.

Now, I do think — and we were talking earlier, Buck, and I think it’s worth pointing out — in the early halcyon days of the vaccine when everybody was talking about how the summer was gonna be amazing and there was no risk and people who got vaccinated were out celebrating like crazy, throwing parties all over the place? All the restrictions got relieved, right?

Even Fauci himself came out and said, “Hey, you don’t have to wear masks anymore.” There was a form of euphoria as the cases were going down. Then in late July when these cases started to skyrocket again and we talked about the rise, the Draconian, authoritarian tendencies rise as case counts rise. So you talked about in the last hour — and I think it’s the, probably, most important question that we face as a country as we roll through the fall and the winter — what are cases gonna do?

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: Because if cases continue to go up, the authoritarian tendencies follow in close concert. If they come down, then there’s a lessening.

BUCK: I will say there’s also been a concurrent situation where the incrementalism of the Fauciites all along has been just two weeks, right? We talk about this frequently: Just two weeks, just a little more, just do this, just do that. The flip side to that coin is that on the other end of the spectrum there are people we keep saying, “Okay. This is the line they shall not cross.”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: “This is where they have gone too far.” Unfortunately, they cross it, and we go, “Okay. Well, you may have gotten us on the employer mandate. You may have gotten away with it this time, buddy.” But they’ve gotten away with it pretty much every time, which is why when you hear, for example, the United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, this guy is… First of all, United Airlines, I can’t say it’s the worst airline.

CLAY: You’ve flown Frontier — sorry, Spirit.

BUCK: Spirit you get what you pay for actually. It’s a good deal sometimes. I don’t know.

CLAY: I don’t have a strong opinion on any airline other than Southwest, which I fly all the time ’cause they’re in Nashville and I like them. But I know that people have strong feelings on airlines, and United —

BUCK: I’ve had days of my life ruined by United Airlines more times than I care to remember. That said, CEO Scott Kirby is saying, “Look, to make an omelet, you gotta break a few eggs. You get vaccine mandates, you gotta fire almost 600 people. Too bad! NBD. See ya later.” Here’s what he says.

KIRBY: Well, look I’m really proud, uh, and gratified that the United team — excluding the people that have applied for religious or medically accommodation — over 99% got vaccinated. It proves that vaccine mandates do work and that you can get a huge percentage of your popu — of your workforce vaccinated. You know, I wish it had been a hundred percent.

But it was never gonna be a hundred percent. But I think 99%, we feel really good about. Um, you know, I feel bad for the 593 people, the less than 1% that are going to leave. But we are focused on doing the right thing for United Airlines. Uh, and it’s great to have it in the rearview mirror for us and the ability to just move forward now.

CLAY: It isn’t in the rearview mirror. This is what we need to keep hammering, Buck. Even if a hundred percent of people were vaccinated, there is still going to be a massive amount of covid for years and years to come, and the idea… We also need to keep slamming this. The idea that a mandate is successful when you are forcing people to do something for their job or else you’re going to fire them?

That is what would typically be called an extortionate demand. If somebody came to you and said, “Hey, either you sell me your house or I’m going to shoot you,” you would have a high level of successful home sales. You wouldn’t then brag and say, “Man!

“A lot of people want to sell their homes; this is a sign of how well our home sale business works.” No, they don’t want to not die. People want to keep their job. Arguing mandates are successful because people follow them is not in any way a justification for the mandate.