BUCK: Clay, this one was almost too much. This one was almost too much. You know that Jen Psaki went out and said that Florida was not doing enough to reopen schools. The state of Florida is somehow not an open state on this issue. I just wanted to hear the governor fighting back again this one. Here you go.
DESANTIS: The White House press secretary stands in front of that podium and lies through her teeth every single day, and usually about the state of Florida. The other day she said, “Florida hasn’t done enough to get schools open.” Are you kidding me? I remember them criticizing me when we did this almost two years ago! We were the only big state to have every school district open for in person. And we did that way before Biden was even president. We didn’t need the Biden stimulus money for that. We did it, we opened them, and yet they’re saying Florida didn’t do it, and you look right now all the school closures across the country; you don’t see that happening here like you do there.
BUCK: Unbelievable.
CLAY: I want to give Ron DeSantis direct praise on this, my personal experience. Okay. When I was doing our sports show, Buck, Ron DeSantis came on and said — one of the first people I can ever remember saying it — not only are schools gonna be open in Florida this fall, we’re playing every sport event in Florida, right? And people out there listening to in Florida remember how controversial of a decision that was.
He was saying that in June and July of 2020 ’cause, remember, schools start early in the South (chuckles) because a lot of people play football. That’s one of the reasons. But you’re in school usually in the South by August. And, Buck, I’ll tell you this. We had this direct conversation in June and July of 2020. My wife and I, we’re fortunate; we’ve got a place in Florida. We were gonna relocate our family to Florida to have our kids attend in person public school in the state of Florida if Tennessee wasn’t going to have in-person schooling.
We were gonna uproot. We got three boys. We were gonna pick ’em all up, pack ’em in the car, and go right down to Florida and enroll them in Florida public schools because I was so psyched about DeSantis coming out in June and July of 2020 and saying, “Not only are we gonna have schools open, but if your kid plays a sport, if your kid is involved in an extracurricular activity, we’re gonna do that too,” and he did it. And do you know what the data reflected?
It didn’t harm the kids. There was no massive increase in overall covid infections because of schools being open. We just had that conversation, Buck, about Flint, Michigan, for instance. Gretchen Whitmer’s state up there. There are still kids not able — after almost two years, since “15 days to stop the spread,” there are still kids unable — to get an education in many parts of this country. It’s a disgrace.
BUCK: Just think of how pathetic the propaganda is here coming from Psaki at the White House. Florida hasn’t done enough to open schools? It’s not even effective in trying to speak to the Democrat base. Everyone knows that’s completely crazy. But I think they’re in a place where they’re desperate. Clay, this is like saying Aaron Rodgers — my new favorite NFL player — is not a good enough quarterback. I think he’s a pretty good quarterback. (laughing) I think saying that he shouldn’t be playing football would be kind of crazy, right? Ron DeSantis, dare I say, is the Aaron Rodgers of quarterbacks.
CLAY: The Aaron Rodgers of governors?
BUCK: I’m sorry. (lauging) Of governors. Thank you.
CLAY: I think even Ron DeSantis would be like, “Hey, I don’t think…” I know Ron DeSantis a big sports fan. Even he who might have strong self-confidence, I don’t think he would call himself the Aaron Rodgers of quarterbacks. He did, by the way, play baseball, which is I think one reason why he was so aware of the importance of keeping schools open for athletics.
He played baseball at Yale, I believe. Good baseball player growing up in Florida, went to the Little League World Series. You know this, Buck — and I’ve seen it because of what I do for a living, and everybody out there who has been involved in sports knows this. There are a lot of kids that go to school so they can play on a sports team, and what you have to hope is — and you know this from coaching yourself.
What you hope is, if you keep those kids in the classroom, eventually that lightbulb goes off. What I would always tell kids is, “Use the ball, don’t let the ball use you,” because if you’re a talented athlete, people will take advantage of that athletic ability and keep you eligible in school, and you hope that lightbulb goes off for a kid and they say, “Wait a minute. Even if I’m a tremendous athlete, by the time I get into my thirties, I have virtually no ability to compete at a high level anymore, but your brain can continue to refine itself years and years.” Athletic mortality is a young age, and that’s why I think keeping the sports leagues open in addition to the schools is so important.
BUCK: This is also why — and I have to keep saying this. I use the term “mandated child abuse” by Fauci — I mean it — when you see what’s going on across the country because it’s psychological abuse for a lot of these kids, to be separated, to be kept at home away from their peers, to be masked up all the time. And then on top of that, all these other things, the Democrat narrative is, “Oh, we’re fine.
“Schools are open again, for the most part. Biden himself said 95% open.” Hold on a second. First of all, the fact that that number is not a hundred percent two years into this is disgusting. It’s disgusting. It’s unacceptable. Put that aside. And, by the way, if we were in a bad flu season and you had, you know, 20% of the faculty of one school that were sick, yeah, of course, shutting down for a day is okay. But that would have been normal before, right?
That’s not necessarily a covid thing. Look, if you got people sick you might take pause just so people can recover and come back into the classroom. You’re not doing this forever zero-covid policy. So that’s one part of it. But also, there’s a dishonesty, Clay, about how things are normal for kids in blue states, whether it’s New York, Maryland, California, you name it. Things are not normal. They do not have sports. They do not have after-school activities.
They are segregating kids right now in Loudoun County, Virginia, in rejection of the governor’s order. It’s lawless is what they’re doing. They’re segregating masked and unmasked kids in the school building, and so I guess technically that’s open in-class learning, but they’re separate out these kids based on whether they want to wear masks or not. Very happy to see — I don’t know if you saw this, Clay — there are some students showing up at schools in Loudoun without masks even though the school district is saying you have to wear masks anyway. ‘Cause what they’re doing is lawless — and if they kick any kids out, they should be sued, there should be action taken.
CLAY: No doubt. They’re standing in the schoolhouse doors. We had Joe Biden try to compare American senators to George Wallace. We have a direct historical connotation here because Carrie Lukas, I believe, who we talked to yesterday said that there are security guards standing on the schoolhouse steps not allowing children without masks on to enter into the school. And, Buck, I’m glad you mentioned that 95% number.
Because Biden in his press conference made a big deal about how, “Hey, you know, 95% of schools are open.” That 5% that’s not open is overwhelmingly minority kids, right, that are not able to go to school — and 95% isn’t good enough, to your point. It needs to be a hundred percent. Imagine if Biden had said, in response to police misconduct, “Guys, there’s way too much attention to police misconduct here 95% of the time police cause no issue at all.
“I’m really upset that you guys in the media focus on that 5%.” Democrats would impeach him. They would say, “Wait, you’re saying that the George Floyd incident is overplayed and that it shouldn’t be representative of the larger context,” even though it’s way fewer, right, than 5%. What would you say, 99.9%, I would imagine, of police interactions with civilians are completely without inappropriate behavior.
And here he’s saying 95%. One-in-20 kids, again, overwhelmingly representative in that one in 20 are minority kids, which is supposed to be the base of the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party claims that they care about them so much; overwhelmingly that group is represented here — 95% is not good enough when it comes to kids in school.
BUCK: The metric should also be not whether schools are open. Are schools back to normal?
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: Full-scale normalcy. Number of kids in the classrooms, no masks, all activities, full-scale normalcy — and, of course, no vaccine mandates. So this fight is far from over. But you’re noticing one of the ways they try to prevent the mobilization of sanity against Fauci tyranny is by saying, “What’s the big deal? Schools are open. Everything is fine.” That’s a lie. Everything is not fine, even in places where schools are open. I think it’s important that we remind everybody of that.
CLAY: And I think also, by the way, some good news. I’m sure you saw this. We haven’t mentioned it yet on the show. Denmark has become another sane country. Come February 1st, they’re eliminating all covid restrictions in their country.
BUCK: Everything.
CLAY: No masks.
BUCK: Everything.
CLAY: Zero restrictions. They’re going back a hundred percent to normal. That’s what England is doing. That’s what Scotland is doing. I’m sure there are other European countries that are considering doing the same. And tomorrow when we talk to the trio that wrote that Atlantic piece about how masks in schools have zero scientific support.
Again, The Atlantic is not known to be a source of right-wing propaganda as it pertains to masks. This a very traditionally left-wing magazine. And the fact that this kind of article is occurring there is symptomatic, I believe, of sanity starting to penetrate. It was there with the Bill Maher show and Bari Weiss. There is an underpinning of sanity that is starting to rise up even on the left side of this country.