2020 didn’t just lock down a country — it exposed who would think, who would fold, and who would use fear like a political power tool.
And now in 2025, the same voices who pushed panic, punished dissent, and shamed anyone who asked a basic question are suddenly rewriting their roles.
They weren’t calm.
They weren’t measured.
They weren’t “following the science.”
They were following the script.
In this episode, Ryan takes you back through the fear campaigns, the mandates, the punishments, the hypocrisy, and the revisionism that’s suddenly washing over the media like none of us lived through it. Kids isolated, parents drowning, careers ruined, and anyone who stayed level-headed branded the enemy. And now? They want empathy without accountability.
This isn’t nostalgia.
It’s a reminder — of who pressured the country, who weaponized panic, and who’s now pretending they were the rational ones. And why the same tactics still show up in issues like crime, immigration, censorship, and tariffs.
If you lived through 2020 and wondered, “Did everyone lose their mind at once?”
This one is for you.
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00:00:03
The fact is that an entire country lost its mind over a
00:00:07
virus. For the people who stayed calm
00:00:09
were treated like it was never about protecting anyone.
00:00:14
It was a test. Will you obey even when the
00:00:17
rules are nonsense? Now they want forgiveness
00:00:21
without a they punish the wrong people and they did it proudly.
00:00:25
This wasn't public health, it was public control.
00:00:28
And if the government ever tries it again, people aren't going to
00:00:30
be nearly as compliant. The Panic machine only works
00:00:35
when the public trust the people running it and after 2020.
00:00:48
Welcome to Stay in the Fray podcast.
00:00:50
I'm your host, Ryan. This is where headlines get hit
00:00:53
hard, hypocrisy gets shredded, and the absurd are laughed at.
00:00:57
If you want comfort, this isn't your place.
00:01:00
If you want blunt and unfiltered, I'm your guy.
00:01:03
Join me in the fray. All you need to do is just
00:01:07
listen up. All right?
00:01:10
Hey, guys, hope everyone's doing well.
00:01:13
I've got to talk about something that it's been irking me quite a
00:01:16
bit recently. The more that comes out about
00:01:20
what happened back in 2020, the more it eats at me.
00:01:25
I have to talk about it, so I will.
00:01:29
The latest study, yeah, the one raising concerns about the
00:01:33
effects in kids from certain vaccines, was the final straw
00:01:38
for me. Parents are furious,
00:01:41
commentators are blowing up about it, and suddenly all the
00:01:44
voices who spent years shaming anyone who questioned the
00:01:47
narrative are pretending that they're shocked.
00:01:50
I'm not shocked. I'm done with you.
00:01:54
The fact is that an entire country lost its mind over a
00:01:57
virus, and the people who stayed calm were treated like
00:02:01
criminals, not because they were wrong, but because they didn't
00:02:05
kneel on command. We were fed slogans, threats,
00:02:09
guilt trips. We watched politicians throw
00:02:12
parties while kids couldn't even sit in a classroom.
00:02:15
We watched families get split apart because someone dared to
00:02:18
say, hold on. Does any of this make sense
00:02:22
fully? And now we're here in 2025,
00:02:25
listening to those same voices suddenly wring their hands about
00:02:28
kids falling behind, about rising snap numbers, about
00:02:32
childhood stress, about protecting families.
00:02:35
These are the exact people who cheer while children were locked
00:02:38
inside, while working parents drowned, and anyone who pushed
00:02:43
back got labeled as a problem. Now they want sympathy for the
00:02:46
damage they helped create. They want us to forget how quick
00:02:50
they were to shame, punish, and divide.
00:02:55
And now, years later, the same leaders who weaponized fear are
00:02:59
pretending they were thoughtful and measured the whole time.
00:03:03
No, they weren't measured, they were drunk on authority, and the
00:03:08
rest of us were forced to watch the hangover play out in real
00:03:11
time. COVID didn't just test the
00:03:14
country's health, it tested its sanity.
00:03:17
And way too many people failed the moment someone with the
00:03:20
podium told them to panic. This episode isn't a nostalgia
00:03:25
tour, it's a reminder of who pushed the panic, who punished
00:03:29
anyone who questioned it, and who is now pretending they never
00:03:33
cheered while lives were torn apart.
00:03:36
The modern left's playbook carries on.
00:03:38
This is Stay in the Fray podcast.
00:03:40
It is 12/8/2025. Let's roll.
00:03:47
So why won't anyone truly talk about who suffered the most
00:03:50
during the pandemic? It was not the elderly, though I
00:03:54
of course am sad for those who were lost.
00:03:58
It wasn't the immunocompromised. It wasn't the adults doom
00:04:03
scrolling cable news for moral validation.
00:04:06
It was the kids. The one group statistically at
00:04:09
the lowest risk became the group treated like a national hazard.
00:04:12
And for what? To make adults feel safer?
00:04:16
To give politicians a talking point?
00:04:18
To let school boards act like they were solving a crisis from
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behind a webcam. Kids lost everything that
00:04:25
actually builds A childhood. Friends, classrooms, sports,
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birthdays, routines, stability, emotional safety. 2 entire years
00:04:35
ripped out of their lives and replaced with glitching zoom
00:04:38
calls and adults pretending this was necessary.
00:04:43
And now here again 2025, those same politicians are suddenly
00:04:47
crying about childhood regression and rising assistance
00:04:50
numbers as if they weren't the ones cheering while playgrounds
00:04:53
were literally wrapped in caution tape.
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Where was all that compassion back when parents were drowning?
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Where was all the outrage when kids speech and reading levels
00:05:02
tanked? Where was all this concern when
00:05:04
students were isolated, anxious, falling behind and staring at
00:05:09
screens 12 hours a day because adults preferred fear to common
00:05:13
sense? How about taking in their own
00:05:15
CO2 all day long with fucking masks?
00:05:18
Let's call it what it was. Kids became collateral damage in
00:05:22
a political drama written by people who cared more about
00:05:25
looking heroic on television than protecting the generation
00:05:29
that had no voice in the conversation.
00:05:32
Now those same officials want sympathy because the
00:05:34
consequences have finally shown up in the data.
00:05:38
They want applause for acknowledging the problem when
00:05:40
they created the problem and mocked anyone who said
00:05:44
otherwise. Kids didn't fail this era.
00:05:48
The adults in charge did. Spectacularly.
00:05:52
You know what else pisses me off?
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It wasn't just the fear tactics. It was bad enough there wasn't
00:05:57
even the rules, half of which made as much sense as wearing a
00:06:01
seat belt on a playground swing. The real rot showed up when
00:06:05
choice suddenly became a dirty word.
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And all this came from the same crowd that chants my body my
00:06:12
choice every fucking election cycle.
00:06:15
Apparently your body is only your choice when it fits their
00:06:18
moral compass. The moment it didn't, they
00:06:21
turned into the biggest authoritarian hall monitors in
00:06:24
America. People love to talk about bodily
00:06:26
autonomy until the moment the liberal leaders tell them to
00:06:29
line up and salute. Then it suddenly becomes do what
00:06:33
we tell you or lose your job. Do what we tell you, or you're
00:06:37
the reason this keeps dragging on.
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Do what we tell you or you're not welcome here.
00:06:44
That was the moment the mask slipped.
00:06:46
And I'm not talking about the cloth ones that everyone
00:06:48
pretended were magical. For a year.
00:06:52
You had nurses fired in the middle of staffing shortages.
00:06:55
Teachers pushed out police officers, firefighters, military
00:06:59
service members, people who showed up when everything else
00:07:02
fell apart. They were tossed aside like they
00:07:05
were dead weight. People who spent decades serving
00:07:08
the communities were suddenly treated like biohazards because
00:07:11
they hesitated or asked questions or simply said this
00:07:15
doesn't feel right for me. And the best part?
00:07:18
The same politicians enforcing these mandates were caught
00:07:21
breaking their own rules so casually it was almost artistic.
00:07:25
Dinner parties, award shows, private events, mask free,
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packed rooms while kids were still forced to eat lunch 6 feet
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apart outside on concrete. It was never about protecting
00:07:37
anyone. It was a test.
00:07:39
Will you obey even when the rules are nonsense?
00:07:43
Will you comply even when the people making the rules don't?
00:07:47
Will you listen to what we tell you even though we have nothing
00:07:50
to back it? Millions actually said no, and
00:07:54
the punishment was swift. You didn't need to be sick to be
00:07:57
treated like a threat. You just needed to think for
00:08:00
yourself. That was the real disobedience.
00:08:02
And another part that has me livid, it's these reports that
00:08:07
are resurfacing, the ones that commentators like Megyn Kelly
00:08:11
have been talking about recently, highlighting early
00:08:13
findings that some doctors say should have been taking a little
00:08:17
more seriously from the start. We're talking about those case
00:08:20
clusters and cardiac marker studies from overseas, the one
00:08:24
showing inflammation signals in adolescence, the ones that
00:08:27
sparked debate back in 2021 and then basically disappeared from
00:08:31
public conversation. None of these were definitive.
00:08:35
None of them proved some catastrophic collapse of
00:08:37
Children's Health. But they were signals, early
00:08:41
indicators, and parents were mocked for even asking about
00:08:44
them. Now we're watching the same
00:08:46
doctors come back on shows. Like Megan's saying, maybe we
00:08:51
should have paid a little more attention to those red flags.
00:08:54
Maybe we shouldn't have silenced everybody who just wanted
00:08:56
clarity. And here's the simple question I
00:08:58
keep asking, the one nobody on the left wants to touch.
00:09:02
How are we supposed to know the five year outcomes, the 10 year
00:09:06
outcomes of these things, these vaccines, nobody had taken them
00:09:09
prior. How do we know until five years
00:09:12
or 10 years pass? We weren't allowed to to say
00:09:15
that or ask that in 2021. We weren't allowed to say or ask
00:09:18
it in 2022. We weren't allowed to say when
00:09:21
parents. We were not allowed to say that
00:09:23
when parents hesitated instead of admitting that uncertainty
00:09:27
was real, that maybe honesty would have calmed people instead
00:09:31
of polarizing them, the politicians in charge chose
00:09:34
force. They weaponized shame because
00:09:37
they didn't want to look like they didn't have answers.
00:09:40
But the punishment for thinking differently about your own body
00:09:46
were madding to the core, because the moment someone
00:09:49
refused to fall in line, even politely, their entire life
00:09:52
became fair game. You remember the nurses, the
00:09:56
same people who held iPads so dying patients could say goodbye
00:10:00
to their families, fired, escorted out like trespassers.
00:10:03
Some lost pensions that they'd been spent decades earning.
00:10:07
How about the firefighters? Police officers who showed up
00:10:10
when the world shut down heroes on Monday?
00:10:13
Threats to public safety by Friday, entire departments
00:10:17
gutted because someone dared to say, I'd like a little more
00:10:20
data, please. College students were banned
00:10:23
from campuses not for breaking laws, but for making a personal
00:10:27
medical decision that didn't match the school's PR image.
00:10:31
And parents? They got treated like criminals
00:10:33
for asking questions at school board meetings.
00:10:36
Not hostile, not violent, just asking.
00:10:40
We watched airlines fire pilots, hospitals purged staff,
00:10:44
educators pushed out mid semester, all while politicians
00:10:47
and celebrities broke every rule on camera and shrugged it off
00:10:51
like it was a wardrobe malfunction.
00:10:54
And the censorship piece wasn't just digital, it had real world
00:10:57
consequences. Doctors who raised concerns were
00:11:00
dragged before medical boards. Researchers blacklisted writers
00:11:04
that articles spiked. People lost access to payment
00:11:07
processors. Platforms throttled posts so
00:11:10
aggressively that entire careers evaporated.
00:11:14
And some of these people still haven't recovered.
00:11:16
Lost homes, savings, marriages, lost everything simply for
00:11:22
refusing to treat uncertainty like blasphemy.
00:11:26
All the while, the same officials who demanded blind
00:11:29
obedience were laughing at private dinners, unmasked,
00:11:33
unbothered, untouchable. They punished the wrong people,
00:11:37
and they did it proudly. This wasn't public health.
00:11:40
It was public control. And if the government ever tries
00:11:45
it again, people aren't going to be nearly as compliant.
00:11:49
Here's the part. Would almost be funny if it
00:11:51
wasn't so fucking infuriating. The same people who spent years
00:11:55
screaming at their neighbors, firing workers, shaming parents,
00:11:59
and cheering for mandates are now pretending that they were
00:12:02
the calm, reasonable ones all along.
00:12:05
Welcome to the revisionist phase where the loudest bullies
00:12:09
suddenly want to talk about nuance.
00:12:11
You're seeing it everywhere. Politicians who push the hardest
00:12:14
restrictions are now saying, maybe in hindsight, we should
00:12:19
have stayed. Maybe we stayed closed a little
00:12:21
too long. School officials are quietly
00:12:25
admitting that learning loss is concerning, as if they weren't
00:12:28
the ones chaining playgrounds like crime scenes.
00:12:32
Journalists who mocked dissenters now writing think
00:12:35
pieces about the importance of open debate.
00:12:37
And health celebrities. Celebrities who lectured America
00:12:43
from their mansions on their high horses, now shrugging it
00:12:46
all off like it was just a bad outfit.
00:12:50
The best part? The new talking point.
00:12:53
Nobody could have known. No, plenty of people did know.
00:12:58
Doctors, researchers, parents, teachers, citizens tried to
00:13:02
speak out and they got crushed for it.
00:13:06
What the left really means is nobody we listened to or wanted
00:13:11
to listen to knew. Now they want forgiveness
00:13:14
without accountability. They want empathy without
00:13:17
apology. They want to discuss the
00:13:19
complexity of the moment while ignoring consequences they
00:13:23
created. They want to gloss over the
00:13:26
censorship, the mandates, the punishments, the kids who fell
00:13:30
years behind, the businesses that died, the people who were
00:13:34
smeared, the relationships that were destroyed.
00:13:38
And now in 2025, they're trying to sell the idea that everyone
00:13:41
was just doing their best. No, people were doing their
00:13:45
best, yes, but many leaders were doing their most, their most
00:13:51
authoritarian, their most self-serving, their most
00:13:56
politically convenient. And they have the balls to say
00:14:01
that this current administration is the authoritarian one.
00:14:05
Give me a break. And now that the dust is settled
00:14:10
and the data is becoming public, they want to rewrite their role
00:14:14
from enforcer to victim. That's what they always do.
00:14:19
Victim to sage. To someone who learned a lot,
00:14:24
they learn nothing. They just realized the public
00:14:27
finally feels safe enough to call out their bullshit, and
00:14:31
they are terrified of being remembered accurately.
00:14:35
After everything I just walked through, there's one truth that
00:14:38
sticks out more than anything else.
00:14:40
Crisis didn't change the left one bit.
00:14:43
Crisis revealed the left. For years, they branded
00:14:47
themselves as the defenders of compassion, tolerance,
00:14:51
inclusion. The ones who listen to the
00:14:53
science, who protect the vulnerable, who stand up for the
00:14:57
little guy. But when the pressure hit, when
00:15:01
the country was actually scared, when politicians realized fear
00:15:05
was an easy tool for control, all that branding evaporated.
00:15:09
The masks came off figuratively anyway, and underneath was
00:15:13
something far more authoritarian than most people expected.
00:15:17
You saw it in real time. Their instinct was not
00:15:20
discussion, it was suppression. Their instinct wasn't caution,
00:15:24
it was compliance. Their instinct wasn't
00:15:27
transparency, it was a narrative control.
00:15:31
Their instinct wasn't empathy for differing situations, it was
00:15:35
moral superiority wrapped in outrage.
00:15:38
They didn't ask, what does this mean for families, for kids, for
00:15:43
livelihoods? They asked, why aren't these
00:15:46
people listening to us? And once they realized that fear
00:15:50
was powerful, convenient, and politically useful, they
00:15:53
couldn't give it up. Because when people are scared,
00:15:56
they obey. When people are scared, they
00:15:59
don't question authority. When people are scared, they'll
00:16:03
surrender freedoms they'd never give up during normal times.
00:16:07
And As for the left, that was intoxicating.
00:16:11
It's why rules stop making sense.
00:16:13
It's why hypocrisy didn't bother them.
00:16:16
It's why breaking their own policies didn't trigger shame,
00:16:19
just annoyance that someone caught them.
00:16:22
Because deep down, their worldview depends on one belief.
00:16:26
They know better than you about your health, about your kids,
00:16:31
your risks, morality, your decisions.
00:16:36
And the pandemic gave them a perfect laboratory to test how
00:16:39
far that belief could go. Turns out, pretty far.
00:16:43
And here's the part that they hate.
00:16:45
People remember. And people aren't going to hand
00:16:48
over that kind of power again. Not without a fight, not without
00:16:52
plenty of questions, and not without a lot more resistance
00:16:55
than the last time. When you strip away all the
00:16:58
slogans and the virtue signaling and the moral theatrics, you're
00:17:03
left with a simple truth. They trusted control more than
00:17:07
they trusted people. And that's why even now, with
00:17:10
all the data being public and the debates reopened, they still
00:17:14
can admit they were wrong. Because admitting they were
00:17:17
wrong means admitting that they used fear to gain power.
00:17:21
And once you admit that, you don't get that power back.
00:17:25
People ask me why I'm so passionate about the left's
00:17:29
antics. Why I'm so despised.
00:17:32
Why? Why I despise their actions so
00:17:34
much? Why not?
00:17:36
Why not just ignore them, they ask.
00:17:39
I've tried. I've really tried.
00:17:42
But here's the thing. Their playbook did not end when
00:17:45
the masks came off. It didn't end with mandates.
00:17:49
It didn't even end when the experts quietly admitted that
00:17:52
half the rules never made any sense.
00:17:54
Nope, the left keeps the same fear machine running with
00:17:59
everything else in our country. They just swapped the labels.
00:18:02
This is the same crowd that told you you were going to kill
00:18:05
grandma in 2020 and are now telling you Trump's going to
00:18:08
turn America into a war zone if he makes the streets safer.
00:18:13
Deporting illegal illegal immigrants is somehow an act of
00:18:16
moral evil. Tariffs will destroy the economy
00:18:20
even though they've done the exact opposite.
00:18:23
Late night talk show hosts are being silenced from the same
00:18:26
side that cheered when real censorship crushed people during
00:18:29
COVID. It's the same tactic every time.
00:18:33
Fear, panic, shock, obey. They don't debate, they don't
00:18:38
persuade. They just scream that the world
00:18:40
is ending if you don't think how they want you to.
00:18:43
And here's the problem. Here's the problem I think
00:18:46
they're running into now. In 2025.
00:18:49
Fewer people are buying their bullshit.
00:18:52
People remember how they were treated.
00:18:54
People remember how dissent was punished.
00:18:57
People remember who weaponized fear and who tried to keep them
00:19:01
calm. People remember the hypocrisy,
00:19:05
the punishments, the lies, the rules for thee.
00:19:09
The panic machine only works when the public trust the people
00:19:14
running it. And after 2020 and
00:19:17
up-to-the-minute today, I think that trust is gone, burned dead.
00:19:24
You see it everywhere. Democrats losing working class
00:19:27
voters, parents flipping school boards, minorities walking away
00:19:31
from the party that took their loyalty for granted.
00:19:34
Even liberals are saying shit. Something feels off here.
00:19:40
People fled their COVID narrative.
00:19:43
Now they're fleeing their 2025 narrative because it's the same
00:19:46
script and the audience is finished pretending that it's
00:19:50
compelling. Let me make this personal for a
00:19:53
second before I wrap up. I never got the shot.
00:19:56
I am proud as hell about that. People joked.
00:19:59
You know my future kids are going to glow in the dark or
00:20:01
some bullshit. Meanwhile, at this rate, my
00:20:05
sperm might be a blue chip commodity by 20-30.
00:20:09
And not because I'm special, but because I stayed calm when the
00:20:13
country pushed panic like a drug.
00:20:15
I didn't scream at my neighbor. I didn't treat strangers like
00:20:18
contagion. I didn't let politicians turn
00:20:21
fear into religion. And now that the dust is
00:20:24
settled, it turns out people who kept their heads weren't the
00:20:28
threat at all. They were the warning.
00:20:31
The left used COVID to test compliance.
00:20:34
Now they're using crime, immigration, censorship, tariffs
00:20:38
the exact same way. Same script, different crisis.
00:20:43
But the country's changing. People are not cowering anymore.
00:20:47
People aren't swallowing the narrative whole.
00:20:50
People aren't mistaking fear for morality.
00:20:54
The fear mongering worked once, but now it's 2025.
00:20:58
We remember we're done and the playbook has lost its magic.
00:21:05
We remember 2020. We remember the punishments, the
00:21:08
smug lectures, the silencing, the hypocrisy.
00:21:12
We remember exactly who treated us like problems instead of
00:21:15
people. And now, after everything that's
00:21:19
come out, after all the rewrites, after all the walk
00:21:22
backs, after all the no one could have known nonsense, their
00:21:26
power has never looked smaller. Their panic tricks have never
00:21:30
been weaker. Their moral high ground has
00:21:32
never been emptier. Here's my question.
00:21:36
Why won't they apologize? Why won't they admit what they
00:21:40
did? Why are they still pretending
00:21:42
that they were the responsible ones?
00:21:44
I'll tell you. Because admitting the truth
00:21:46
means admitting the whole House of Cards was built on fear,
00:21:50
pressure, censorship and emotional blackmail.
00:21:54
It would be showing the other team their playbook.
00:21:58
But we figured it out anyway. And I'm doing my best to make
00:22:01
sure those plays never work again.
00:22:04
Because once people stop being afraid, they stop being
00:22:08
controllable. So yeah, that's it.
00:22:13
Like and subscribe and all those things, comments.
00:22:16
I loved listening to you guys, reading what you have to say.
00:22:19
I hate asking for it, but it really helps.
00:22:24
We've got to grow. We have to keep growing as a
00:22:26
community. We are a team.
00:22:30
You're the ones keeping the conversation alive.
00:22:32
Spread it, share it, push it forward.
00:22:36
So stay sharp, stay awake, stay unafraid, stay in the fray.
00:22:43
Love you guys, Just listen up.