BUCK: I woke up this morning and saw the news. I knew it was probably coming. And if someone went back and looked at the transcript of the show, I think I’ve even used the term “preemptive covid measures.” Right? That’s what I said. They’re gonna try to get ahead of it, right, at least in New York and then Los Angeles, San Francisco, the lib cities.
The lib major cities falling like dominoes, but New York is more extreme than anywhere else. Here’s de Blasio announcing there will be mandatory boosters for everyone who wants to go to a public place, mandatory shots for 5 to 11 years olds who want to go to a public place indoors — and perhaps most problematic, a private sector vaccine mandate for literally every single business in New York.
DE BLASIO: We in New York City have decided to use a preemptive strike to really do something bold to stop the further growth-of-covid and the dangers it’s causing to all of us. So as of today, we’re going to announce a first-in-the-nation measure. Our health commissioner will announce a vaccine mandate for private sector employers across the board. All private sector employers in New York City will be covered by this vaccine mandate as of December 27th.
CLAY: I don’t know how anybody is gonna live in New York City if you have any kind of covid sense of normalcy. I also… This is a big-picture question. There are so few occupied hotel rooms right now because so many people, like me, who might otherwise contemplate taking a vacation to New York City, go see the play, take the kids running around in Central Park.
I’ve made that trip. A lot of people who are listening to us have as well. If that is now going to require me to take my 5-year-old to get the covid vaccine so we can go to a museum so I can take him to McDonald’s when I’m walking around in Times Square and he wants some Chicken McNuggets, this is madness, and it is the exact opposite of how to get your city back up and running.
Buck, I used this as an easy example before they even had the kid mandate. My wife and I are gonna get away for a few days right before Christmas. I’ve been on the road all fall, gonna get away with her for a few days. We decided New York City or Florida. Florida was the easy call because there’s freedom in Florida. So I can’t imagine that all these hedge fund guys and all the private equity guys. Why in the world would you keep your kids in New York City when you could move to Florida, Texas, Tennessee — three states that don’t have state income taxes at all — and work remotely? What’s the benefit of being in New York?
BUCK: I think people also don’t realize that it takes — when I say people, the ones make these decisions. It took de Blasio time to put New York on this trajectory into the side of a mountain, right? It doesn’t happen all at once. This is the old joke: “How’d you go bankrupt?” “Slowly then suddenly.” New York, people keep saying, “It’s back, it’s back,” and, by the way, can we just use New York as a stand-in for any major city in a blue state?
So our Houston friends, for example, they’re in a much better spot, blue-controlled city but because the state of Texas is the home of Houston, they’re in better shape. But Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver. You go down the list. All these different cities that are not in Florida, not in Texas, they’re gonna be going through different levels of this madness.
But in New York and San Francisco’s case specifically, it takes awhile for people even when they’ve made the decision to uproot, change their job or move their job, relocate, do these things, and people that were close to it before — and I’m speaking from some personal feeling here — this time around, maybe that’s it. I can’t do this anymore.
I can’t live in a place where I’m surrounded by people, Clay. If you look in the Twitter thread below de Blasio’s tweet announcing this, they’re all people who are saying, “Oh, I’m so thankful! I won’t go to a restaurant until at least a few weeks after the mandate is in effect because then I’ll be triple shotted and I’ll be safe,” and I look at photo, this person must be about 30. They’re out of their minds.
CLAY: And I don’t… Look, De Blasio is out of office soon so one of the first decisions Eric Adams is gonna have to have is does he reinforce these regulations or — because he appears to be somewhat more sane — is he going to say, “You know what? I’m not going to require 5-year-olds to have a vax card to go to McDonald’s. I don’t want to restrict kids’ ability to go to a movie or go to the museum with their parents during the holidays.” Buck, in theory how crazy is this you can’t go see Santa Claus if you’re a 5-year-old in New York City?
BUCK Can I just give…? Clay, it’s completely insane. I mean, I actually woke up this morning furious.
CLAY: I would imagine so.
BUCK: They’re destroying my hometown. Imagine if… I know that Nashville is a lib city but there’s enough red there that it can’t get so crazy. The problem with New York is what everyone understands. Okay, yeah, Florida might be close to electing a really awful governor in Gillum, but about 50% of the state is red so there’s a limit to it. In New York —
CLAY: There’s a check.
BUCK: Yeah, there’s some check on it if they go too crazy. In New York City, it’s eight to one Democrat to Republican, maybe seven to one. So they can be as loony as they want in the city and they get away with it. Same in L.A. same in… Well, San Diego, I assume, is probably pretty close. My friend Joe Borelli who’s on the city council here I know very, very well, great guy. Probably see him on Fox News sometimes.
He tweeted out right before we came on air to give folks a sense of this, the real implications of the policy. In the Bronx — which is a borough of New York City, folks; which is heavily minority, certainly a solid majority minority, maybe even something like 70 or 80%, although I don’t know that number. I know it’s majority. I don’t know the number. I’m just guessing.
But “In the Bronx, with 15% unemployment, 28% of residents will no longer be eligible to work on Dec 27, including 44% of black young adults, as a result of de Blasio’s vaccine mandate…” They’re gonna fire everybody! They’re gonna fire all these young minorities who are showing up getting a paycheck doing a job? That’s really the plan? But, Clay, look what they did to people at their hospitals. Look what they’ve done to people on airlines. They will fire them. I guess so.
CLAY: This is where people need to get lawsuits filed in a hurry, because you could potentially get an injunction to take you through the first of the year when de Blasio is no longer the mayor. And if Eric Adams were smart, he would go ahead and quietly do away with these rules, citing all of the legal challenges that are in play and if you end up with the injunctions, it could take months to get a final result.
And hopefully by then, you’re into the spring and sanity is starting to govern again because — as we’ve talked about — there is a seasonality associated with covid much like cold and flu. As it gets warmer all over the United States, the number of covid cases will decline except in the super-hot parts of the country, ’cause that’s when everybody goes inside and uses their air-conditioning.
BUCK: And here’s where I want people to pay attention to this from the rest of the country, because I can hear our friends listening in Florida, in Texas, in Nebraska, in the Dakotas, in Idaho, whatever in all red states all across the country. I can hear them say, “Yeah, just get out of the blue states.” Here’s the problem, folks. The notion of preemptive covid measures which has been lingering in the background all along is a huge step toward forever lockdown, forever covid mitigation.
Because it’s not a question of even where the numbers are. It’s for a disease that we know, Clay, you just said it’s seasonal, right? It’s endemic. It’s out there. It’s gonna keep spreading. Well, if you have to get ahead of really bad covid numbers, you have a built-in justification for forcing this every year because, “Oh, my God. If we don’t do it, covid will come back!” That’s what people have to see in this. You don’t think the federal government, the Biden administration sees it that way? Trust me. They do.
CLAY: Well, what needs to happen is there needs to be a revolt in New York City. Even if it’s seven to one, that one needs to rise up and start to protest against these regulations like, Buck, to be fair, we’ve seen all over Europe. Our media doesn’t give a lot of coverage to it, but as they have instituted Draconian lockdowns in Austria, in Germany, in England, there have been massive collections of people out in the streets revolting against it.
I think what happens is, to your point, we’re divided quite a bit by red and blue, and so people like me who live in Tennessee or if you live in Texas or Florida or any of the red states, you have a degree of protection in terms of what your governor is going to allow even if your mayor might be a Democrat, whereas people don’t feel the need to speak out here.
Because, honestly, the world’s not any different, really, for people who live in Tennessee. The only time I know there’s covid is when I go to the airport. Otherwise, everything’s a hundred percent normal. And so I think that’s the questions. We need people in blue cities and blue states to finally say, “Enough!”