Andrew Clavin dissects 2016’s GOP chaos—Ted Cruz’s constitutional wins, CNN’s Melania Trump gaffe, and a satirical Clinton-Sanders debate collapse—while critiquing hate mail from Trump supporters and David Duke’s anti-Semitic attacks. He argues both Trump and Sanders exploit working-class rage against globalization, warning that retaliatory anger (like targeting Ben Shapiro) mirrors the hatred it opposes, using Room’s resilience theme to contrast political vengeance with constructive change. Clavin pivots to film, praising The Third Man and The Fallen Idol for exposing disillusionment, then teases a return to "repair damage" amid America’s fractured ideals. [Automatically generated summary]
It's time for the weekend roundup of political news.
If Marco is Rubio and Polo is the presidency of the United States, it seems safe to say Saturday's Republican primary sounded something like, Marco, Polo, Marco, Polo.
Marco.
Ted Cruz racked up big wins in Kansas and Maine, sending waves of fear through the GOP establishment, establishment Republicans, issued a statement saying Senator Cruz, quote, must be stopped before he destroys the Republican Party by limiting the power of government and reestablishing constitutional law.
When told that limiting the government and reestablishing constitutional law were actually the principles of the Republican Party, the establishment issued a new statement saying, quote, huh?
Unquote.
John Kasich also remains in the race.
He says he is proving that he is the only adult in the room by refusing to get down in the mud and fight with the other candidates about issues and policies.
Instead, he's learning to play the bongo and taking up macrame.
He also makes an excellent cheese souffle.
Meanwhile, CNN, in keeping with its reputation for going after the most important news of the day, asked Donald Trump's wife, Melania, about Trump's manly member.
Melania assured voters that Donald Trump is the biggest one in the race.
Or has the biggest one.
No, no, is the biggest one in the race.
And I had it right the first time.
On the Democrat side, a debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders ended when Mrs. Clinton pulled off her full face mask to reveal she actually is Bernie Sanders and had been running against herself this whole time.
Senator Sanders continued to insist he was really him, but no one would believe him, and he was carried off the stage, shouting for help and cackling hysterically.
Mrs. Clinton says she is now allowed to take both her own delegates and Sanders because the rules don't apply to her.
In other news, Nancy Reagan passed away at 94.
The former first lady was reunited with her husband Ronald in heaven, where the couple plans to spend the first few days of their reunion quietly weeping for their country.
Trigger warning.
I'm Andrew Clavin and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
All right, we're back.
A lot of news.
You almost got through the weekend without destroying everything and then you let Nancy Reagan die.
I feel you're getting better though.
She was old.
It was time to go, but she will be missed.
She was a great first lady, a true first lady.
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So I was going to be here earlier, but I stepped in some David Duke on my way and had to scrape it off my shoes.
I don't know.
Did you see this thing that he did to Shapiro over the week?
he was attacking Ben for attacking Trump because David Duke likes Trump as kind of the best bet for white supremacists, which is a little unfair, was a little unfair to Trump until Trump sort of stumbled disavowing him.
So he puts out, Duke actually took the trouble to make an anti-Semitic meme.
He called Ben the little chosen one in a tweet, and then he put out this picture.
Do you have the picture that he put out?
He puts this out.
First of all, it's got a typo in it.
These white supremacists are so dumb they can't even put their slurs properly.
But it says, stupid goy, think, think I'm white.
I think that's too many thinks, right?
Think I'm white.
And the idea is he's not, that Ben's not really white because he's Jewish, none of which I think Shapiro cares about at all.
We're going to get back to that.
I want to talk a little bit about the hate speech going on from the Trump people and from just about everybody.
But meanwhile, let's talk.
You know, we've been talking a lot about politics, and it's such a fun, fascinating, terrifying, wild election that it's hard not to talk about it.
But I did see a movie over the weekend, an Oscar-nominated movie that I'd been putting off, trying to avoid seeing, frankly, and finally did watch it.
And it had something to say, I think, about what's happening in the country, had a kind of insight buried in it that I haven't read from anybody else.
I haven't read anybody else talk about it.
So we're going to get back to that.
I want to talk about that too.
But let's just take a quick run through what's happening in the Republican primaries, the Democrat primaries.
We don't care because what difference does it make whether you get a felon or a socialist?
I mean, it's like, you know, it's like they're just opening the prisons to let out their candidates.
But, you know, it was very surprising.
We had Super Saturday, basically, and Ted Cruz really put up a strong showing.
He took Kansas and Maine, and he took them by a lot of points so that even though Trump took Kentucky and Louisiana, I think that Cruz wound up getting more delegates than Trump.
And they're actually in a fairly close race.
It's still a thing.
And then Marco Rubio won Puerto Rico, where I think you get a free umbrella drink and you get to keep the glass as a souvenir.
But both Trump and Cruz are now saying the same thing, that it's time for Rubio to get out.
So here's Trump saying it's time for them to go mono-amano.
I think Marco Rubio had a very, very bad night.
And personally, I'd call for him to drop out of the race.
I think it's time now that he drop out of the race.
I really think so.
I think it's probably time.
You know, I don't think tonight he can get up and rant and rave and oh, he did great.
He comes in third.
He comes in fourth.
Every time he comes in third or fourth, he says, you've got to be able to win.
And he has not been able to win.
And I think it's time that he drops out.
I would love to take on Ted one-on-one.
That would be so much fun.
Because Ted can't win New York.
He can't win New Jersey.
He can't win Pennsylvania.
He can't win California.
I want Ted one-on-one.
All right.
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
I think.
And Cruz said essentially the same thing.
Cruz came out with what sounds like an awful, awful case of the flu.
I mean, he couldn't get through a press conference without sneezing.
He just hope he's going to be able to stay on his feet.
But he basically said the same thing, like Cruz.
Head to head, I beat Donald Trump.
And this entire process has been a winnowing process.
We started with 17 candidates.
We're now down to four.
But I think that winnowing will continue.
It has to be head-to-head.
If it's not head-to-head, then the other candidates are increasing the likelihood that Donald Trump becomes the nominee.
And I recognize every candidate would like to be the one to go head-to-head.
But if you can't win primaries, if you can't beat Donald Trump, and if you haven't amassed enough delegates to have a credible shot at being the nominee, then I think it is incumbent on each candidate to assess, is there a reasonable, is there a viable path?
I know there are a lot of folks in the Republican Party who are making that assessment.
I know there are a lot of the other candidates are considering this.
And I will say this.
Both Marco Rubio and John Kasich, they love this country.
They're not doing this for themselves.
They're doing this for the same reason I am, because we love this country.
We recognize it's in crisis.
And they're stepping forward sacrificially to serve this country and to try to lead it.
And I believe this process will continue naturally, that we will continue to unify and come together.
And I welcome the supporters for every other candidate.
If you want to beat Donald Trump, we're the only candidate that is doing that consistently.
So, you know, fair enough.
I think Rubio really does have to get the message.
There's nothing more for him to do.
I don't even think he's going to win Florida.
He'll be humiliated if he doesn't.
He's done, you know, I think.
And if it's true that he's done, and if it's true, this does not become like a brokered convention, the establishment has already lost.
I have to go off on a tangent for just a minute.
You know, I keep talking about the fact, I really do like Senator Cruz a lot.
I mean, I really think he could be a great president.
I really do.
But I keep saying that he's got, he's facially challenged, basically.
He has something about the way he looks.
So now it turns out this is science, all right?
I got this out from the Ricochet newsletter, which I love.
It's called The Daily Shot.
It's written by a guy named Fred Cole, and I want to mention him because it's written so wittily and so cleanly.
It's just a really good newsletter.
If you get a chance to look at it, get a chance to look at Ricochet.
It's a good site.
Cole writes, setting aside all the fundraising delegate counting and the complex arcana of Republican nominating rules, there's an additional barrier that Ted Cruz must overcome as he runs for the highest office in the land.
His face.
More specifically, his smile.
According to George Washington University neurology professor Richard Saitowick, Ted Cruz has a problem with his grin.
You see, most people have what is known as a Duchenne smile, where you raise the corners of the mouth and you narrow your eyes, forming crow's feet.
Cruz has what Saitowick calls an anti-Duchenne smile, where he does part of the mouth thing, but his face doesn't move the way you expect it to, and that's why he looks like a vampire trying to hide his fangs.
In addition, Saitowik said that Cruz's smile and his odd body language combine to make him look less sincere.
Not that he is less sincere, just that he looks that way.
Saidowick says it's a product of evolution on our part to look at Cruz's weird face and not want to vote for it.
However, considering the results on Tuesday and Saturday and the fact that Cruz will be facing off against Hillary Clinton if he wins the nomination, the senator probably shouldn't lose any sleep over it.
So he actually does have a problem with his face.
Bill Maher's Take00:12:24
Now, this is what I want to talk about.
I have always, my policy has always been to say what I think, to say it politely, to say it clearly, to not attack anybody, but just to state my principles as honestly as possible.
I don't want people to forget before I leave the earth.
I don't want people to forget what it sounds like when a man speaks the truth without fear or favor.
It does not sound like Donald Trump.
It doesn't sound like insults.
It doesn't sound like nastiness.
It's just a clean, clear thing that I think I'm not the only person who does it, but I want to be one of the people who do it.
Because of this, my wife occasionally worries that somebody's going to take a shot at me, and she's always, you know, it's always the Islamists because I say whatever I have to say about Islam.
I don't insult anybody's God or anybody, you know, the way anybody prays, but I do say what I have to say about the philosophy behind Islam.
But I have to tell you, I have never, ever received the kind of hate and outpouring of nastiness and foul language that I've gotten from the Trump supporters.
And I want to just address that for a minute.
I mean, I put up a tweet of all the guys raising their hands to swear they'd vote for Trump.
And of course, it looks like they're saying Heil Hitler and all this.
And everybody kept saying on Twitter, what a cheap shot.
And I thought, wait, a supporter for Donald Trump is talking about taking a cheap shot?
Have you no sense of irony?
And then there are these people calling me establishment, which is a joke.
I mean, I don't even know what the establishment is.
You know, I've told this story before, so I'll tell a truncated version of it.
But shortly after the Tea Party rose to prominence, I was driving home past a friend's house who was a big donor to the Republican Party.
And she called me up and she said, there are a couple of major congressmen, Republican congressmen here.
Come and meet them, okay?
And so I was in a room with maybe five people, two of whom were two of the biggest congressmen on the GOP side.
One of them was John Boehner.
I won't tell you the name of the other one because it was a private conversation, but the other one is a very top-ranking GOP congressman.
And he said to me, and we're standing at a bar shoulder to shoulder, having a drink, you know, kind of face to face, just talking to each other.
And I had just been at a tea party meeting where I had spoken that day.
And I said to him, and I brought it up, and he said, yeah, we're going to use the Tea Party.
We're going to use the, you know, that's going to give us momentum to get things accomplished.
And I was so offended by that that I said in a quiet and polite voice, but very directly, do you realize that this is all your fault?
The spending and the not, you know, and allowing the bailouts of the big banks, you did this.
It's not Obama, it's you.
And he pivoted on his heels like a soldier, turned his back on me and walked away, okay?
I have no love for the GOP establishment.
I have zero love for the GOP establishment.
But there's something, and attacking Donald Trump has cost me fans, it's cost me followers.
I got nothing.
I got nothing out of it, okay?
What I see when I look at Donald Trump is a man of bad character.
I see a bull, you know, a bull in a China shop, I see a bully in a China shop.
And when a bull goes into a China shop, it breaks things.
And some of the things you want broken, like the media, you want the GOP establishment, you want to see those things broke.
But he doesn't care.
He doesn't care what he's breaking.
He's breaking everything.
And so you can't think, oh, well, he broke that thing and that thing, and that's going to be good.
You know, just think of the way he talks to people.
You know, his supporters love that he tells it like it is.
He calls people without money, if they don't have a lot of money and they attack him, he calls them losers.
Well, let me ask you something.
Do you have a lot of money?
What do you think he would call you?
You identify with Trump.
You think he's speaking for you, but he's speaking to you.
When he calls somebody a nobody because he's not famous, ask yourself, are you famous?
What would he call you?
Are you short?
Are you bald?
Are you fat?
Are you a woman?
Have you got a handicap?
If you disagree with Trump, what do you think he's going to call you?
If he doesn't respect you enough to treat you like a human being, how can he respect you enough to maintain your freedom?
I mean, just last night, I got this awful, awful hate mail accusing me of being a traitor to my country.
And, you know, I was just supporting an ideology.
What ideology?
I'm supporting the Constitution.
It's the Constitution that I care about because I want you to be free because I don't think you're a loser.
I don't think you're a nobody.
I don't care about what you look like.
So when you next see Donald Trump and you're applauding him for the things he says to people, remember, remember that the minute you disagree with him, he will say those things about you.
And we'll get back to that in just a minute.
We're going to read our ad again.
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Oh, and we actually have a picture of Ronald.
Now I actually feel better.
I mean, just associating yourself with Reagan makes you feel better, which is part of the point of Reagan.com.
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Big tech companies scan your emails and target you with unwanted advertising.
I hate, you know, one of the things, I send an email to my wife or a friend saying, you know, I'm thinking of buying this book.
And suddenly that ad comes up, an ad for that book comes up.
They're reading my emails, right?
And the government, of course, is collecting data for whatever their nefarious purposes are.
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Okay.
So now let's get back to the fact that one of the things that is fascinating about Donald Trump is he does put you in bed with people that you usually disagree with.
You know, suddenly I'm watching Saturday Night Live and they're doing anti-Trump routines and I'm thinking, that's pretty funny.
You know, usually I think they're so unfair because they never attack the Democrats.
Never, ever, ever.
Occasionally they'll take a glancing blow very like a kiss off the side of a Democrat's face, you know, and but always, always they're hammering it, hammering at the Republicans.
Now I'm laughing at their material.
I mean they did one where they had they interviewed all the, they did an ad for Donald Trump and everybody said how much they liked Trump and then they would back around from different angles and you saw that they were all white supremacists.
They were Klansmen and Nazis and all that stuff.
And I don't think Donald Trump is a white supremacist, but he is cutting his path to the White House through working class whites, which is, you know, Republicans up till now have been thinking we've got to get out there and win some Latino votes.
We've got to get out there and win, you know, more minorities to be competitive as the demography of the country changes.
And Trump is saying, no, there's still enough white people here for me to win.
And in that catchment area, he is taking in the white supremacists and they love him.
And they're some of the people who are attacking Shapiro, David Duke attacking Shapiro, and also the emails that I'm getting and tweets that I'm getting, who are calling me all kinds of names that they're just caught up in there.
And I don't think Trump is a white supremacist, but he's going out of his way sometimes not to offend them.
So I find myself, you know, I was watching Bill Maher, and Bill Maher interviewed an anti-Muslim extremist.
And a lot of people on the right hate Bill Maher.
I have never hated him.
I've always respected him.
I don't like his sneering.
I don't like his attitude.
I don't like the fact that he thinks he's smarter than he is.
But he always had my pal Andrew Breitbart on his show.
He always had Ann Coulter on.
He always let them speak.
He didn't, you know, they get shouted down by the audience, but he would let them speak.
So now he is speaking up almost alone on the left against Islamic extremism and against Islam as a source of bad ideas.
And he had this woman on, very brave woman named Marhil Raza, who is standing up against the Islamic extremists.
And this is what he, Maher, had to say to her.
Donald Trump, I think, is a very dangerous man with some very dangerous ideas, including his ideas about Muslims.
I don't think we should bar all Muslims from entering this country.
We need Muslims in the fight against terrorism.
But I will say this, and I've said it before on this show.
If Americans have to choose between a party that won't even say the phrase Islamic terrorism and Donald Trump, especially if there is another attack, they'll choose Donald Trump.
And then things are going to get even worse for Muslims.
So it is in their own best interest to come out on the side of principles that are liberal, Democratic, Western principles.
Absolutely.
So suddenly here I am thinking Bill Maher is doing the work of God.
You know, and you think, well, what a weird thing for me to be sitting there going, yeah, Bill, I love that guy, Bill.
You know, that really feels strange.
But here's the thing, okay?
When David Duke, a white supremacist, attacks Ben Shapiro, I can't help noticing that Black Lives Matter also call Ben names.
They also attack him.
And I've said this before, that David Duke and Black Lives Matter are the same people, right?
They think they're on opposite sides of the fence, but they're really the same people.
You think Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are on opposite sides of the fence.
But listen to Bernie Sanders at the debate last night talk about trade, okay?
Okay, talking about trade deals.
In 1960, Detroit, Michigan was one of the wealthiest cities in America.
Flint, Michigan was a prosperous city.
But then what happened is corporate America said, why do I want to pay somebody in Michigan a living wage when I could pay slave wages in Mexico or China?
We're going to shut down.
We're going to move abroad.
We're going to bring those products back into this country.
Those trade policies.
As much as any other set of policies, has resulted in the shrinking of the American middle class.
And I'll tell you what else it did.
It's not only job loss by the millions, it is the race to the bottom so that new jobs in manufacturing, in some cases today, pay 50% less than they did 20 years ago.
How stupid is that trade policy?
That's Donald Trump.
Play just a piece of the Donald Trump.
I like fair and smart trade.
Because every trade deal we make stinks.
It stinks.
All right, just stop there.
They're the same people appealing to the same anger, okay?
The thing about, listen, trade is a complicated issue.
Free trade is a complicated issue.
I can fix things.
I have a skill.
If you give me the right tools, I can fix almost anything in a house, okay?
If my faucet leaks, I can fix that.
I can put a new washer in the thing.
And if you bring in a plumber, it's going to cost $100 for five minutes of work.
But it's going to take me two hours of work because I'm not a plumber.
I'm just going to be able to do it.
It's going to take me a long time.
I'm going to have to crawl under.
I'm going to have to turn off the water and all this stuff.
I can be doing stuff that makes more money than that in two hours.
And I can have the plumber in and throw him the hundred bucks.
And I can say, he charged me too much.
But he charged me a lot less than it would have cost me to do it.
And that's the way trade works.
When Bernie Sanders is saying, oh, that description of Detroit is pure fantasy.
When the unions had workers getting paid too much, when the government regulated the car industry too much, when the government of Detroit sucked all the money out to buy votes for their corrupt Democrat governments for however long they were in there, a long, many, many, many decades.
That's what killed Detroit.
But when those jobs go overseas, right?
See, Bernie Sanders never thinks about who's paying for anything.
If that guy, if that union auto worker is getting paid a lot of money, what Sanders calls a living wage, what Trump would call a living wage, you're paying for that when you pay for the car.
And he's paying for it when he pays for the car.
It lowers everybody's wage.
But when the job goes overseas, all the prices come down, all the prices come down.
There are more jobs.
There's more money for Americans.
But that guy lost his job.
That guy lost his job.
And if he hasn't been retrained, if he doesn't go anywhere else, he's an angry guy.
And he's either going to go to Bernie Sanders or he's going to go to Donald Trump and they're going to tell him the same thing.
See, it's the principle of opposites.
If something black is standing on your foot, you're going to think the way to solve it is with something white.
Odd Solutions Even Worse00:08:58
If something odd is bothering you, you think the way to solve it is something even.
But those opposite things turn out over and over and over again to be the same things.
That's why Shapiro is under attack by David Duke and Black Lives Matter.
They think they're opponents.
David Duke and Black Lives Matter, if you put them in a room together, they'd be punching each other out.
They think they're opponents.
They're the same guy.
Donald Trump, the people supporting Donald Trump, saying conservative, conservative, conservatives, they think Bernie Sanders are the end of the same guy, the same at playing to the same thing.
So this brings me to Room, okay?
I didn't want to see this movie Room.
It's about, I'm sure you've heard about it.
It was an Oscar-nominated Brie Larson was the star.
She won the Oscar.
It's about a woman who has been kidnapped seven years ago and is kept in this little room.
And now, where this guy comes in and routinely rapes her.
You know, it's not a violent rape.
It's just she has no choice, but if she wants to survive, if she wants him to bring her food.
And five years ago, she had a child.
So now she has a son in this little room, and she's raised this son.
And to keep him sane, she's basically taught him there's nothing outside the room.
That there is television and there's the room and then there's outer space.
You know, that's kind of what she has taught him.
And it's very, very moving.
And of course, there's no spoiler.
If you see the trailer, you know that it's basically about their life in the room and their life out of the room afterwards, where they have to readjust.
And I didn't see it because I didn't want to see this woman abused for two hours, basically.
The whole thing was very icky to me, okay?
Let's play this one scene.
This is the best scene in the movie.
Just a terrific scene where she finally realizes she's got to do something about this.
And she has to explain to this little boy, her son, who she adores, that there is a world out there.
And this is the scene.
Do you remember how Alice wasn't always in Wonderland?
She fell down, down, down, deep in a hole.
Right, well, I wasn't always in room.
I'm like Alice.
I was a little girl named Joy.
Nah.
And I lived in a house with my mom and my dad.
You would call them Grandma and Grandpa.
What house?
A house.
It was in the world.
And there was a backyard and we had a hammock.
And we would swing in the hammock and we would eat ice cream.
A TV house?
No, Jack, a real house, not TV.
Are you even listening to me?
When I was a little older, when I was 17, I was walking home from school.
Who was I?
You were still up in heaven, but there was a guy, he pretended that his dog was sick.
What guy?
Old Nick.
We call him Old Nick.
I don't know what his real name is, but he pretended his dog was six...
What's the dog's name?
Jack, there wasn't a dog.
He was trying to trick me.
Okay?
There wasn't a dog.
Old Nick stole me.
And what a different story.
No, this is the story that you get.
He put me in his garden shed.
Here, room is the shed.
See, this is the story that you get is the ultimate statement of realism, and it's the thing that politicians never tell you.
Ted Cruz comes as close as you can to hearing this is the story that you get.
It's not the story that you want.
It's such a touching scene because she's telling him the truth and he can't, he does not want to hear the truth.
Now, like I said, I didn't want to see this story because it's upsetting.
I'm kind of a wuss when it comes to watching women abused on screen.
And part of the reason I think that men don't like watching these things is because all men have aggressive, you know, daydreams about women.
And they also have the corrective moral idea that they, you know, that this is wrong.
It was part of what we were talking about last week about the black moth syndrome.
Things that are appealing to you are even more appealing if you take them to the extreme.
But if you take them to the extreme, sometimes they become immoral.
So you might have passionate feelings for a woman that can be translated into aggressive daydreams.
And one of the things that men do to correct those daydreams is they have daydreams about punishing men who do bad things, saving women from danger.
That is a self-corrective moral voice that men have in their ears.
And they hate these guys who pick people apart.
And you have fantasy.
I mean, that's half of the suspense stories that I write, that everybody writes, are about hunting these guys down, taking them out.
And I didn't want to experience, I didn't want to watch the movie because I didn't want to experience the rage that I feel when I see women treated like that because it's intense.
The brilliant thing about this movie, and again, no spoilers here, but the brilliant thing about this movie is the guy is never even discussed after they get to the part about how these people recover from their experience.
They call him Old Nick, which is a name for the devil.
So they're just telling you he's evil.
He's in the movie a little bit.
And then he disappears.
It's on TV in the background that he's arrested, he's put in prison, he disappears.
And the effect that it has, it has this magical effect on the film.
It is the best thing about the film, is that you realize that he doesn't matter.
He doesn't matter.
That you're wasting your time hating him.
That the only story is her story and the boy's story.
The only story is the story of love.
And that is actually true in real life.
And that's why the movie is elevated above itself.
I mean, it's a good movie.
I don't think it's a great movie.
But that idea really elevates it.
It's the same idea that's in Revenant, that for all the hatred that's going on, the only real story is the story of love.
And I know that bad guys and bad things have a punch above their weight because it's easy to destroy something.
It's hard to raise a child, easy to put a bullet in him.
You know, it's hard to build a building and invent planes.
Easy to fly a plane into a building.
You know, those things are easy.
You know, you can dance in the street and celebrate, but you did the easy thing.
It's hard to create, easy to destroy.
So bad people have this power.
But when you react to them, you become them.
That's the point.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
When you react with rage to these, you know, I know the establishment has screwed you.
I know the GOP establishment has screwed conservatives.
I know it.
I know the media screws us.
And I'm as angry about it as you are.
I really am.
And I know that the Republicans have ignored the people who have been put out of work by free trade policies and by globalization and all those things.
But when you react by sending this bully into the China shop, when you react just with the hatred, just with the anger, just with the rage, you just become what you hate.
And you might say, yes, but now we'll be on top.
We'll be the winners.
It's not good.
You're in a country.
A country has borders.
A country ends.
If we're not all working at the same thing, the idea of freedom, where each of us kind of contributes to that, we're not working on anything.
So before you write me your next hate letter and before you start sending memes out about Shapiro, just consider, we're losing fans over this.
We're not gaining anything.
We're doing this because we believe in something.
And it's our only reason.
We don't get anything out of it.
So it's the only reason is because we know that when you react in your rage, when you react in your anger, you become the thing you hate.
Stuff I like.
If I had to pick a favorite movie, I mean, I would never do that because I don't believe in favorites in the arts, but if you said you must pick a favorite movie or die, it would probably be The Third Man, which is a wonderful British spy film directed by Carol Reed and based on a Graham Greene story.
I think it was actually a Graham Green screenplay that he later turned into a novel.
Most people have heard of The Third Man.
It usually takes third place on every list of great films.
It's usually Citizen Kane and Casablanca and The Third Man.
I love The Third Man.
I just think it's great.
The year before he made The Third Man, Carol Reed made another Graham Green story.
It was based on a story called The Basement Room, I think, but it was called The Fallen Idol.
If you can find this film, it's sometimes on Turner Classics, but if you can find the film The Fallen Idol, it's about a little boy in London who is the son of the French ambassador.
And the ambassador is always away, so the little boy is alone, and he adopts as a sort of surrogate father the butler, who is played by the great Ralph Richardson, one of the great lords of British acting.
And he just adores this butler.
And the butler, to entertain him, tells him all these stories of heroism and what a great guy he is and builds himself up until he becomes an idol in this boy's eyes.
But the boy, simply by traveling through the rooms and kind of being ignored, starts to realize that his idol is not what he thought he was.
And it's how he reacts to that.
It is a tense, excellent suspense story that almost, I don't think it ever leaves this little house, this big house for the ambassador.
But it's just terrific.
And so if you love The Third Man like I do, if you've never seen The Third Man, you should see The Third Man first because it's a great film.
But if you love The Third Man, you should watch this film, The Fallen Idol.
Is one of the truly great suspense films ever made and holds up terrifically even today.
We're done, but the week is just beginning.
The week is just beginning.
We'll repair the damage that you did while I was gone.
And this time we will instruct you until you can stand on your own and save the country.
And then I'll simply walk away into the sunset and disappear.