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Clay Lays Down the Law on Masks to the School Board

Cover Image for Clay Lays Down the Law on Masks to the School Board

CLAY: Buck, it was a wild night in the mom revolution against masks that I have been predicting. This is playing out all over the country right now. There are parents who are fed up with their schools and their school boards, and they have had enough as it pertains to covid mask requirements. They’ve had enough as it pertains to critical race theory. And I’m one of those parents.

I’ve got a 13-year-old, I’ve got a 10-year-old, and I’ve got a 6-year-old. And I came on, Buck — and you know this. On Friday of last week, we had a first half day of school. They opened up the school, no masks, and everybody could walk in, free and clear. It felt a hundred percent normal. Same thing on Monday. Same thing on Tuesday.

They called an emergency school board meeting, okay? I live in the Nashville, Tennessee, a county called Williamson County. For those of you who might be somewhat familiar with Nashville, it’s a little bit south of town. Franklin and Brentwood are the two biggest towns that are in that county. It’s a highly educated county.

It’s a place where education matters more than almost certainly anywhere in the state, and one of the places where education would matter from the purposes of parents being involved — I would imagine — almost more than anywhere in the country. Over a thousand people showed up for the school board meeting debating whether or not masks should be required.

I was fortunate enough as just a parent, I’ve got a fifth grader and I’ve got a first grader in public schools. I went to public school myself, K through 12, in Nashville. I got to stand up and speak. We’re gonna play that for you. And then, Buck, I’m gonna talk about the experience. I want you to be able to weigh in as well. But this is the very foundation of democracy. Go out, if you are a parent, to your local school board and fight for what you believe in.

This is where the rubber meets the road. This is me. I got one minute here’s what it sounded like.

CLAY: Good evening. I’m Clay Travis. I have two kids in Williamson County Public Schools, a fifth grader and first grader. And you all should be ashamed of the choices that you are about to make.

WOMAN: Mmm-hmm!

MAN: Preach it!

CLAY: We teach our kids that facts matter. That’s why they go to school. The facts are these: Masks don’t work. There isn’t a single scientific data that has ever proven that masks work. Also, let’s talk about risk analysis, which is the key.

I feel bad for all these people walking around in masks, engaging in cosmetic theater, thinking that they are making a difference against covid. They aren’t. Here’s the truth. Our kids, under 25-year-olds? One-in-a-million chance that they are gonna die of covid! They are more likely to be struck by lightning!

They are more likely to be struck by lightning; they are more likely to die of the seasonal flu. Have any of you ever mandated masks for the seasonal flu? Well, shame on you, because every kid in Williamson County schools has been under more danger from the seasonal flu every year than they are from covid. I would tell every parent here: “Don’t let your kids –”

BOARD MEMBER: Time!

CLAY: “– wear masks. Refuse!”

CROWD: (cheers and applause)

RUSH: This is what pushback looks like, and it’s gonna take a lot more of this.

BUCK: So, there we go, Clay. You got a standing ovation from the folks that were at the school board meeting. I saw the video. I shared it last night on Twitter as soon as I saw it. This is what we’ve been talking about for weeks. I had thought for a while now — actually had written at BuckSexton.com about a month or two ago — that it was the pushback against CRT that would be the beginnings of (we just had the voice of Rush there for a second) the pushback from the right against the madness of the Biden administration.

Now it’s starting to seem like it’s the pushback against mask mandates in school and CRT training in school, essentially the socialist indoctrination and collectivization of our children all across the country. You were in Tennessee. This is a huge fight right now in Florida where Governor Ron DeSantis is saying, “If you institute mask mandates, I’m gonna cut your pay as an employee of the state.”

So that’s gonna be a real interesting one. And it’s funny ’cause you’re having, in Tennessee, finally what I’ve been waiting for in New York — and I gotta tell you, man, I’m not seeing it. This is what’s gonna end up happening. You’re gonna have the red states and the blue states. Aand the blue states are desperate to force places like Tennessee, like Texas, like Florida to go along with enough of this stuff, particularly the mask mandates in schools, so there’s no control group for the study, so to speak.

So they can’t actually look at whether masking in schools does anything per capita and have a definitive answer because, Clay, I would… I know you’re a betting guy; I’m a betting guy sometimes. I would bet a large sum of money that if Florida doesn’t have kids masked up in schools, you will see no difference from covid spread in New York City schools which are gonna be masking up their kids like the lunatics these adults are.

CLAY: The masks don’t work, Buck, and I should give an update on what happened. So being look. Sometimes you fight and you don’t get the result that you want. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be fighting. They instituted a mask mandate, illogically, for kindergarten through fifth grade. No other ages will have a mask mandate.

BUCK: Wait. Why kindergarten through…? What about sixth graders? I hear they can be very virus full.

CLAY: Yeah. So the argument is because 12-year-olds and up can get the covid vaccine now. Basically, it’s illogical. Because kindergarten through fifth grade are actually the kids that if you are worried about kids and the virus, the younger the kid is, the less I go of an impact it is. The reality is, no matter who you are in school, you are under more danger driving to and from school of death than you are from covid.

So they implemented this now K-through-5 mask mandate, and I don’t know what the next step is, but I will tell you this, Buck. And I posted the video ’cause we were texting and you were saying, “Hey, get some videos. Show what it looks like there.” So I walked out. You could see this is a mom-driven revolution, Buck, and here’s why.

Moms, when we said, “Hey, we need to two weeks to stop the spread,” they took it on their shoulders. The kids got out of school. You know this, anybody who’s got a kid, moms bear so much more of the child-rearing responsibilities. And moms across the country… Dads too. I’m one of them. I’m a dad; I’m fed up. But I think moms uniquely are driving this fight all over the country because they’re looking at the data and they are saying, “There’s no legitimate basis to require my kid to wear a mask,” and the mama bears out there are furious.

I was texting with some friends, Buck. I think this has the potential to be a Tea Party-like revolution led by moms out there. And if you look at the data, the place where elections are decided is the suburbs. That’s where Trump had his failures as it pertained in 2020. He lost white moms; he lost white dads. That’s the issue. That’s the rub of the road here. And I think these are the people that are the most fed up about these mask mandates. And what I saw last night, Buck, it had the feeling of a groundswell.

BUCK: We got a problem, which is that the school district still went with mask mandates even with all these people showing up.

CLAY: Well, sometimes you lose.

BUCK: Right. So let’s be clear: We’re talking about like this is the beginnings of it but we’re up against a determined adversary —

CLAY: There’s no doubt.

BUCK: — here with the apparatus of control —

CLAY: There’s no doubt.

BUCK: — that the Democrats, the teachers unions have. Think about it this way, my man. There are more Republicans in New York City than there are some states —

CLAY: There’s no doubt.

BUCK: — when you look at the way that the distribution goes across the country. You’re gonna have people that are forced to go along with this. What I’m saying is if in Tennessee you’re having school districts not even in Nashville which already is doing masking but in Williamson County, I think everyone needs to understand, they’re doing this to people.

They’re so close right now, Clay, to getting mask mandates reinstituted in Texas. Texas. I was talking to somebody close to Abbott’s office. Texas is under a lot of pressure right now. So while I’m happy, I just want everyone to know we’re defending on our 10 yard line. We’re not about to run into their end zone.

CLAY: There’s no doubt. But I felt even in losing that vote, that school board, I felt emboldened, and I felt better about things than I have in a long time, seeing how many people were willing to show up and fight the thing. Because you lose some battles, you lose some battles, and then you know what you end up doing? Sooner or later, you find a way to win the war.

So I think we’re at… I’m with you. It’s frustrating, and I understand how many people out there feel this way. I think my county and what went on in that school board is emblematic of what many people are feeling all over this country that are listening to us right now. But I’m telling you, for a long time people were taking it and they weren’t fighting back. I’m telling you: The revolution has begun. (chuckles) There are gonna be some losses and there certainly are gonna be some losses.

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: But this mom revolution is real.

BUCK: But the red states that for a while have felt like, “Oh, we’re good. This is a…” I’m speaking from the blue state perspective, ’cause I’m here in New York which, by the way, masks are back in my building now. Mandated. I don’t wear them, but they’re back in my building. Mask mandates are back not only in schools, of course, here but also in about half the businesses.

I went to get a cup of coffee this morning. Guess what? They said, “Put your mask on.” They got the Plexiglas thing.

CLAY: Oh, geez.

BUCK: The Plexiglas thing may be the dumbest, because no one actually thinks that those do anything. There’s no study, there’s no data.

CLAY: Oh, gosh. It’s true!

BUCK: But people put them up there. It is their little security and safety blanket, it’s their little blankie that they grab like a little kid to make them feel safe. Clay, I think people don’t realize right now DeSantis and Governor Abbott specifically are under immense pressure from the media apparatus. Now, I don’t think they’re gonna bend the knee, but that’s where we are right now. They’ve created so much fear. No one looks at the death data.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They’re only looking at cases and hospitalizations in a very localized sense. So, yeah, the mom revolution is fantastic. But as I’m saying, “Man, we’re trying to push for something that is…” It’s crazy that we’re even in this place, and right now you’re talking about a Biden administration that’s discussing a federal, across-the-board school mandate.

So for everyone out there who thought, “I’m in a red state; it’s gonna be okay,” I warned people. Just like I knew Fauci was the worst person ever, I warned them and said, “This White House is not done with you, Texas. This White House is not done with you, Florida,” and it’s not.

CLAY: Here’s what I will say. I am optimistic — and I understand people out there say, “You’re optimistic!” I tend to be an optimist guy. My wife, I drive her crazy by being an optimist all the time. But I’m hearing from a lot of my friends — liberal, left-wing friends that I went to law school with — and, Buck, their kids are not getting to go to school still. Their kids are having to wear masks, and they are fed up. These are people who might have been interested in Bernie Sanders. They might have been interested in Hillary Clinton. They donated money to those people.

BUCK: I wonder, man.

CLAY: I’m telling you.

BUCK: The social pressure to conform with this stuff is great. They may tell you that because they know Clay is a safe space, but I’m worried.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Florida is now the primary focus of much of the media when it comes to covid, of course. There was some CDC misreporting of cases in Florida which of course they thought the number was much higher. They’ve since had to correct that. But now the school board in Broward County is putting forward a mask policy. There are basically local or county school boards that are saying, “We’re going to have masks even though the governor says no masks, no-mask policy.”

It’s always voluntary. This is what they like to leave out. It’s just a question of, ‘Can a school say you have to do this to little kids, 8-year-olds?” Also, the same way that we all know mask up between bites on the plane is for moron authoritarians. We also know that 8-year-olds — and I would defer to Clay, ’cause he actually has kids around this age.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: But 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, they’re gonna pull the mask down, pull the mask up.

CLAY: They’re petri dishes! They’re messes. Give me a break. I think that’s why the question is a lot of people ask, “Is noncompliance the answer?” Should thousands of parents out there in these school districts just say, “Hey, we’re not gonna put masks on our kids,” and see what the school district does. I don’t know what the answer is with kids, but Ron DeSantis is fighting this battle better and I think more aggressively than any governor out there.

BUCK: He’s saying that he’s actually gonna take action against this.

DESANTIS: We’re gonna do whatever we can to vindicate the rights of parents and make sure that parents are in the driver’s seat when it comes to the health, education, and welfare of their kids. They should not be decreed by the government. They should be something that a parent is ultimately making the decision on.

CLAY: Amen.

BUCK: He’s trying to say, “Look, it should be up to the parents, Clay.” But he’s also gone as far as to say that they are considering withholding funds. And it’s so fascinating because when the federal government floats this out there, you can see CNN and all the enablers going, “Oh, yeah, that’s… If they want to pull…” ‘Cause Biden’s saying out loud they may have a federal mask mandate in all schools. He said he’s thinking about it, considering it.

CLAY: Which can’t be remotely constitutional.

BUCK: Hey, neither is extending the eviction moratorium and creating a new one, right? So we know they don’t care about the Constitution. But when a state government which actually has more power about quarantine and health and the things that we’ve had to deal with during covid says, “No masks required,” then — and if you do we’re gonna pull funding for that local — that county, that school district, then it’s tyranny in the other direction, Clay. That’s what they tell us.

CLAY: There’s just no basis in scientific logic for fact for this, and that’s why I would encourage everybody out there. I’m fortunate ’cause I get to talk with you every day and say exactly what I think about the issues that are going on in the world. But the most important job that I have is not radio show host or TV host or any of those things. It’s dad, and so when I talk to my kids and my first grader and my fifth grader say, “Dad, we hate wearing masks in school and all of our friends do, too. Nobody wants them,” you gotta stand up for your kids. And that’s why I would encourage everybody listening to us to do as well.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Clay, if Kentucky is putting mask mandates into place for children, it can happen anywhere.

CLAY: Now, they do an idiot governor, Beshear, who they managed to elect who’s a Democrat. So that is a factor. There are only two southern Democrat governors in Louisiana and this idiot in Kentucky.

BUCK: Yeah, but Clay, Abbott had a mask mandate for how many months, right? The point here —

CLAY: I understand it a little bit more last year. There’s no defending it now. Last year people were panicked, there was chaos; you’re right. But the idea that you would be mandating pre-K kids in the state of Kentucky, in the same state where Rand Paul is your senator, and he is making totally logical doctor arguments about what should and shouldn’t happen? I think that’s the challenge for us.

BUCK: There are people who are willing to come forward now a little bit more. One of my huge disappointments is how many of those who are MDs and scientists in some capacity — real scientists, not the lab coat tyrant bureaucrat Fauci — and they won’t come forward because they’re afraid. They don’t want their careers to be tarnished. They don’t want their hospital system to cast them out. I know that there are nurses, ’cause I talk to them and I get notes from them.

CLAY: Oh yeah.

BUCK: I always can tell when it’s somebody from like a major medical system somewhere where in the email it says, “Not for reading out on the air,” and then it will be, “We all wore our masks; we all got sick anyway. We know this is crap, but I can’t say this.”

Clay, at some point you realize, until there is that mass movement, the loons will get their way. This is not gonna be a fair game, because people that believe we have to do this stuff, unfortunately, really believe it. Matt Walsh over The Daily Wire, I saw him. He did the same thing you did, by the way. He went to the school board in Tennessee. He said there were adults practically in tears —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — because they’re afraid their children are going to be die of covid!

CLAY: (laughs)

BUCK: If you’re afraid your kids are gonna die of covid, you’re just ignorant. You’re just not well informed. They don’t care. “Gosh, my children!”

CLAY: It’s true. It’s true, and there were people who showed up at the school board meeting where I was at making those same arguments. And, by the way, I want to give a shout-out. I’m not gonna say her by name, but one doctor got up — neurosurgeon, she’s got five kids in Williamson County schools — and she was one of the people who spoke out. By the other way, the cosmetic —

BUCK: She spoke out against masks?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: What’d she say?

CLAY: She said there’s no scientific basis for it.

BUCK: And she’s a neurosurgeon?

CLAY: Yes. She did a phenomenal job, and she’s a friend of our family. Our kids overlap in schooling and in extracurricular activities. But, Buck, I’m so fired up about this. The doctors who spoke, they put their masks on for the cameras!

They were there all day getting ready to speak to argue for masks not wearing their masks and then what do they do? As soon as all the cameras showed up — cosmetic theater actors — they put on their stupid masks, and they got up to speak in a school board meeting indoors wearing their masks.

You knew when you got to the school board meeting and you saw some of those loser school board members wearing masks at the meeting, they were going to be trying to implement a mask mandate. I’m still super fired up about this, but I feel better having been to that meeting and meeting all the other parents that were standing up for actual science and fact.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: I’ve been telling you about how they’re all-in on trying to destroy the governor of Florida right now over this whole covid situation, the covid surge. I think if you start to look at the numbers, you say, “Hold on. This is going to have the same pattern.” If you look at the overarching theme here, there’s a surge and the cases come down.

Usually it’s about a four-to six-week process. But I still think that’s likely to be what we see in places like Florida and Texas where they’ve had more cases. Fatalities are way down. You’ll never… Fatalities overall nationwide are very far down from what they were. You’re at a rolling average now I think about 500-plus a day, when at one point we were more like 3,500.

The actual peak we were more like 3,500 a day. I think it even got up to 4,000 at one point. So we’re way down on fatalities. You don’t get that sense in the media, and instead what they’re doing… This is the actual narrative, and I know you’re gonna hear this, and Clay, everybody who’s with us and trying to live in a rational, fact-based, normal-person universe will hear this and say, “Come on.”

This is such cheap, weak stuff. It’s so dishonest. Yeah, Governor DeSantis wants people to die. He doesn’t care about people dying. This is what they actually say on these different networks. But, unfortunately, a lot of left wingers believe this stuff, and they actually take it to heart, and it gets ratings over at MSNBC. Here is Joy Reid saying Ron DeSantis’ strategy is kill people.

REID: What is the strategy behind killing children in your own state and letting children die of covid? I can’t figure it out!

MILLER: I think the strategy, as macabre as this sounds, is “project strength at all costs, own the libs at all costs,” and that’s what it comes down to. It doesn’t come down to any policy. They’re not counting the numbers of how many people are dead or alive. They’re not concerned about the well-being of their own citizens.

It’s, “How can I project that I’m against Joy Reid, that I’m against Dr. Fauci, that I’m against the elites? I’m against the people on the coasts and the brown folks and the black, folks,” right? Like, that’s it. That’s all this is about, and so they’re doing that at the expense of their own citizens.

BUCK: I guess at some point, all the soy milk has seeped into this guy’s brain. Clay, people just don’t want their kids wearing masks because it’s dumb! It’s actually not, “Oh, I voted for…” I’ve always hated this! I’ve hated it from the beginning.

CLAY: Buck, if I told you right now that you needed to wear a football helmet when you drove around in your car in order to make yourself safer, that might well be true if you got into an accident.

BUCK: Oh, it would definitely protect me from head injuries. Cyclists have made this argument before.

CLAY: Yeah. NASCAR drivers wear helmets in their NASCAR race. They wear them in F-1 cars because if they get in accidents — and they’re more likely to get in accidents – -the helmets keeps them safer, okay? A helmet in a car would make everyone safer. If every time we got into a car we had to put on helmets.

But it would also be wildly uncomfortable and not actually make you that much safer relative to the actual data. So what frustrates me about people like those losers on MSNBC that we just heard talking is, they’re not actually analyzing risk. Adulthood is about figuring out how to analyze risk.

And raising children is about teaching your kids how to analyze risk safely while still becoming an independent adult themselves, right? This is what the entire purpose of raising a child is! “Look both ways when you cross the road, but don’t refuse to ever cross a road because you might get hit by a car if you do.”

You have to balance risk in order to live life, and when you are requiring masks — which do not work! That’s what they’re missing. It’s all cosmetic theater. They don’t work, and they particularly don’t work for young kids that are not (laughing) very good at keeping their masks on in the first place!

BUCK: Clay, to your point about understanding risk and figuring out what’s acceptable, what’s not, they keep falling back on… We had Dr. Makary on, remember.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: He’s talking about masks on kids has all kinds of bad effects. And they always say, “Masks work.” There may be some minimal, impossible to actually quantify benefit, and you’ll have doctors say that.

Makary said it’s the fourth in the mitigation, fourth in the mitigation strategies. Meanwhile, why is it the one that people are the most insistent about? Because it’s visible, because there’s political tribalism involved, and because people want to think that by doing something so minimal, they’re showing that they take this seriously and they’re smart. It’s a personal branding exercise for a lot of people.

CLAY: None of the data reflects — and this is why we’re fortunate, thank God, that we have a federalist system in this country and we are able to have different states making different decisions. What that has shown us is that virtually everything that a state like New York and California, for instance, have done — and they’ve been very Draconian.

They filled in skate parks with sand. They took down rims on basketball hoops. They wouldn’t allow you to go to the beach or the parks in California. None of that stuff actually impacted whether or not covid spread. It was all a bunch of bunk.

BUCK: But to the federalism point, Clay, they managed to get around to all of this by convincing… Florida, as great as Florida was — and I had two brothers who moved there during the pandemic and I spent a lot of time in Florida during the pandemic. You had to mask up in Miami. People forget this. It was better than other places.

CLAY: But they did have every school open. Yeah. It wasn’t perfect, right?

BUCK: It wasn’t perfect. So the truth is what we really needed was one state to just say, “We’re not doing this.” (laughs)

CLAY: South Dakota basically refused to do anything. That’s a different state.

BUCK: Really even Kristi Noem at the beginning, there were some restrictions. There were some mandates about distancing and all the rest. Now, that was early, to be fair. She also has a very red state legislature that kept her from, I think, caving more on some of these things —

CLAY: It was all geographically quite a bit different between South Dakota and Miami.

BUCK: I love South Dakota. I’m not disrespecting South Dakota. But I’m just saying from an epidemiological perspective, per square mile, it’s a little bit like being in Mongolia or something. It’s not a very dense place.

CLAY: No doubt.

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