Ep. 160 dives into the 2016 GOP Convention’s hidden agenda, where Ted Cruz’s divisive speech—booed for refusing to endorse Trump—exposed factional rifts, while Newt Gingrich and Mike Pence pivoted to terrorism (Orlando, France, Turkey) as a unifying theme. Polls surged for Trump after a $25M Benghazi bet backfire, and Eric Trump’s speech on Central Park renovations overshadowed media outrage over a pro-Trump delegate’s remark, contrasting with Clinton’s "smoking purse" deflection. Clavin argues the convention’s real message was Trump’s family values vs. Democratic hypocrisy, with Michael Moore’s prediction of his victory looming as the ultimate subversion of elite expectations. [Automatically generated summary]
This election has been so full of amazing twists and surprises that only a gormless bozo would try to predict what will happen next.
So let's get started.
Prediction number one.
Now that the nomination of Donald Trump has been confirmed, things should settle down into a more recognizable pattern.
As soon as next week's Democratic convention is over, FBI Director James Comey will announce that he has discovered evidence that Hillary Clinton sold government favors in return for contributions to the Clinton Foundation.
The next day, a metal barrel will be found floating in the Potomac containing sulfuric acid and James Comey's cufflinks and dental fillings.
A few hours after that, blandly sinister Attorney General Loretta Lynch will hold a press conference and announce that the Justice Department will not indict Mrs. Clinton.
Lynch will also announce that she's going to appoint a new FBI director just in case Comey doesn't come to work tomorrow for some reason.
The next morning, the New York Times, a former newspaper, will run a front-page headline reading, Republicans, Republican plans to besmirch Clinton's good name, foiled as Lynch declines to indict.
President Obama will announce that Mrs. Clinton is, quote, the most qualified woman ever to run for president on a major party ticket in a blue pantsuit in 2016.
The major network news departments will end all coverage of the FBI investigation, saying there is no smoking gun.
Whereupon, Mrs. Clinton will quietly drop her purse and quickly kick it under the sofa, saying it isn't hers and she doesn't know what's in it or why it's smoking.
Prediction number two.
After the Republican convention, Donald Trump will get a bump in the polls and go from being within two percentage points of Hillary Clinton to within 15 percentage points.
When someone explains to him that the bump was supposed to go in the other direction, Trump will appear on the Hannity Show to announce the system is rigged.
The Hannity show by then will be on the home shopping network since Hannity will have quit Fox to protest the fact that Roger Ailes was fired just because he accidentally grabbed Megan Kelly's backside while restraining her with a chokehold, which let's face it, could have happened to anyone.
During the first debate, Trump will offer to make a $25 million donation to the Clinton Foundation if Mrs. Clinton will admit that she lied to the nation about Benghazi.
Mrs. Clinton will respond with a ringing refusal saying, quote, that would be utterly unethical like that time I lied to the nation about Benghazi.
Prediction number three.
The final election in November will be a tie, which has to be sent to the House of Representatives.
The night before the House vote, Paul Ryan will have a terrible dream in which he's Superman and has to decide whether to rescue Lois Lane or Jimmy Olson.
He'll wake up screaming until he realizes it wasn't real.
In his relief, he'll turn on the TV only to find it's still July and Donald Trump's nomination is just now being confirmed at the GOP convention.
Then the entire election will start again from the beginning because it's a nightmare.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin and this is the Andrew Clavin show.
All right, I almost made it through.
All right.
It's a lot of drama at the convention yesterday.
We're going to talk about that.
You will hear things here you probably are not hearing elsewhere.
They will challenge your prejudices, so my recommendation is that you put your fingers in your ears now and whistle Disc Dixie very loudly because you do not want your prejudices challenged.
Welcome to everybody watching on Facebook.
I hope we had a glitch last time so we didn't go on live.
We went on live, but we had no sound, which some people said improved the show, but I hope not.
But we're here today, I hope, and so you get 15 minutes of pure joy and wisdom, and then you have to come to the Daily Wire to listen to the rest, or, and you can also subscribe at the Daily Wire, whereupon you can also watch the rest and be part of the mailbag.
We had a great mailbag yesterday.
We will have a great one next week, and you could be part of it if you would just pry your fingers off the lousy eight bucks a month and plunk for the subscription and support us here.
All right.
So the Clavenless weekend is, we're on the brink of the Clavenless weekend.
I hope so.
While you're listening, while you're listening, I hope you're loading your AR-15s and stocking up on water.
You know, you might want to just put the headsets in and go down into the bunker.
They've been getting bad.
They've been getting bad.
And this one will start with Donald Trump's speech.
So who knows where that's going to go?
And we'll come back.
If anybody's still alive, we'll come back and talk about that next week.
So here's the setup.
What happened last night?
I'm sure you've heard about a lot of it, but we'll go through it.
Trump invited all his defeated GOP rivals to come and speak at the convention.
And, you know, a lot of them did.
Marco Rubio sent like a 94, 84-second tape, and, you know, basically saying it's time for us to come together.
And, you know, Scott Walker did one.
John Kasich refused, and that kind of made him look bad because they are in his state.
And as Trump rightly said, he should have shown up even if it was the Democrat convention.
You know, it's his state.
Thanks for coming, guys.
So he didn't do it.
He wasn't going to do it.
But he invites Cruz.
Cruz says he'll come.
And remember, this has been ugly, ugly stuff.
By the time they're finished, Lion Ted and his wife is ugly.
And remember, he puts a picture of Mrs. Cruz looking, Heidi Cruz looking terrible.
And of course, the best one of all, his father killed President Kennedy, which is that Raphael was somehow consorting with Lee Harvey Oswald to kill Kennedy.
Unbelievable stuff.
But Cruz says he'll show up.
And he sends in his speech, and the speech is vetted.
So they've read the speech.
So now he starts talking.
And he gives, as he opens his speech, he talks about basic, basically, he sets the theme of his speech.
Here it is.
America is more than just a landmass between two oceans.
America is an ideal, a simple yet powerful idea.
Freedom matters.
For much of human history, government power has been the unavoidable constant in life.
Government decrees and the people obey.
But not here.
We have no king or queen.
We have no dictator.
We, the people, constrain government.
Our nation is exceptional because it was built on the five most the end that just dropped up.
Anyway, he sets the idea.
The full and powerful words in the English language.
I want to be free.
Okay, so that's the idea.
America is not just a landmass, it's an idea.
And by the way, people are cheering.
They gave him a big welcome.
They're screaming, hooray for Ted.
Ted is here.
It's great.
Okay, so that's the thing.
And then he goes on.
And by the way, he did open by congratulating Donald Trump.
That's the last time he mentioned him.
He said, congratulations, Trump, Trump, Donald, you know, well done.
You won the thing.
And then he goes on, and then he essentially praises the instinct that lifted Donald Trump to success.
He praises the people for rebelling against the establishment.
Because remember, until Trump showed up, Cruz was the real anti-establishment candidate.
And then many people would argue that he actually was the really anti-establishment candidate.
So he praises them.
This is the second Cruz Cut.
Voters are overwhelmingly rejecting the political establishment and overwhelmingly rejecting big government.
That is a profound victory, and it is one earned by each and every one of you.
People are fed up with politicians who don't listen to them, fed up with a corrupt system that benefits the elites instead of working men and women.
We deserve an immigration system that puts America first and, yes, builds a wall to keep America safe.
So basically saying, you know, some of this Trump got right, some of it you got right.
He rips Hillary Clinton, he does his due diligence as a GOP guy at the convention.
But as he goes on and on, it becomes clear he's not going to endorse Trump.
And like I said, they've seen this speech.
And his people claim, and Ben Shapiro had this exclusively early last night, he had this exclusively, that his people claim that Trump operatives start to gin up the crowd to start to boo him.
And people, you can hear them start to shout, endorse Trump, endorse Trump.
And instead of endorsing Trump, what he says is he tells people to vote their conscience.
So here he is, and the people just booed him off the stage.
Here it is.
We deserve leaders who stand for principle, who unite us all behind shared values, who cast aside anger for love.
That is the standard we should expect from everybody.
And to those listening, please, don't stay home in November.
If you love our country and love your children as much as I know that you do, stand and speak and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.
We must make the most of our moment to fight for freedom, to protect our God-given rights, even of those with whom we don't agree.
So that when we are old and gray and when our work is done and we give those we love one final kiss goodbye, we will be able to say freedom matters and I was part of something beautiful.
So that was it.
They boom off the stage.
And as he's going into his peroration, his buildup to this, to the end, Trump comes in.
And so Trump stomps on the end of his, you know, he comes in just in the audience and he sits down, drawing the attention away from the climax of his speech.
So Trump really gave it to him.
I mean, he really, you know, he basically invited him, read the speech, said, you're not endorsing me.
I am going to light you up.
I'm going to light you on fire.
And that is classic Trump.
You know, Trump is a vindictive, you know, angry, small man.
He's a small man.
I mean, that's inside.
He's a small guy, and he never forgets an insult.
He never forgets a slight, and he doesn't forgive.
And it's not about the unity of the party or anything like that.
And so he drew him in, and he took him out.
And I think, you know, it was well done, if you like that sort of thing.
Now, the people watching this, of course, divided along predictable lines.
The people who love Trump said Cruz was a jerk for doing this.
He should have endorsed.
The people who love Cruz said Cruz came across as a man of principle and Trump really was small and mean.
I supported Cruz when he was running.
He basically represents the things that I like.
But I have to tell you all this time, you've heard me say this on the air, all this time, I have wondered why people don't like Cruz.
Now I know this was a classic moral error.
Listen to him today making excuses for what he did, sort of putting us that final Cruz cut.
If anyone thinks I was eager to come to this convention and give a speech laying out, supporting a great many of the policy positions laid out by Donald Trump, laying out why Hillary Clinton is utterly unfit to be president, despite the fact that neither he nor his campaign has ever taken back a word they said about my family.
I promise you, I was not eager to do that.
That was not something I was happy to do.
It was something I thought I had an obligation to do.
I had an obligation to go and stand and speak.
And I will say, what does it say when you stand up and say, vote your conscience, And rabid supporters of our nominee begin screaming, what a horrible thing to say.
If we can't make the case to the American people that voting for our party's nominee is consistent with voting your conscience, is consistent with defending freedom and being faithful to the Constitution, then we are not going to win and we don't deserve to win.
That's how you win elections.
Okay.
Now that reminds me of Obama after the police get shot.
He goes out and says, well, I said that we should like the police.
You know, while I was making everybody angry and pretending that there's some kind of racial problem with the cops and the cops are killing black people at will, you know, while I was saying that, I also said that police are nice.
You know, so why is it my fault when people get shot?
Look, Cruz knew exactly what he was doing, just like Trump knew exactly what he was doing, and he made a classic moral error, and this is what it is, okay?
I believe, I'm absolutely willing to give Cruz the benefit of the doubt and say that he's a man of principle and a man of truth.
I hope I'm a man of principle and a man of truth.
But being a man of principle and a man of truth is not the only moral obligation you have, okay?
Morality is not a one-note song.
It's a harmony of obligations to man and God, and sometimes those obligations conflict.
If you are, loyalty is a positive thing.
If you're loyal to something evil, obviously, your obligation is to the good.
But if you're loyal to something good and the truth becomes a problem, you have to make a very, very difficult decision.
People don't trust honest people a lot of times, I've noticed in my life, because they know that they might put honesty above the cause.
They might put honesty above the family.
They might put honesty above loyalty.
But look at it this way.
Let's say I wake up tomorrow and I realize I'm a Democrat.
Suddenly I'm a nihilist.
I have no morals.
All I want to do is kill babies.
And I think like, yeah, now I get it.
I didn't see it before, but now I'm a Democrat.
I have an obligation to still speak the truth, although I don't because I'm a Democrat, so it doesn't matter.
But let's pretend for a minute.
I have an obligation to still speak the truth.
I can't come in here and do it because I also have an obligation to my employers to represent something like what they believe.
I don't have to toe the party line.
I have great employers.
They let me say what I want to say.
I don't have to echo everything they believe.
But I have to come in here and say something on the line of what the Daily Wire stands for and represents, which is easy for me because I stand for and represent the same thing.
If I stop doing that, I then have to go somewhere else.
Let me pause here just a moment to say goodbye to our Facebook friends.
Principles Over Politics00:04:07
Come to the Daily Wire and hear the rest.
This is really getting good.
All right. . All right.
So, you know, I have several obligations.
Cruz's obligation here was not to show up.
If he didn't want to do it, he says I had an obligation to come.
He didn't.
He had no obligation to come.
If he can't support this guy, if he thinks Trump is evil, he should say so, but not there.
If he thinks Trump can't be supported, he should say so, but not there.
You don't come to the convention, which is your party, it's still his party.
It's your party's attempt to put forward its nominee in the best possible light.
You don't come there and say, vote your conscience, which is a very, very obvious knock at this guy.
He went in, what he did was he made his principles, he became idolatrous about his principles and about telling the truth.
You know who else does this?
John McCain.
John McCain believes in his personal honor.
In a moment when he was captured and tortured, that made him a hero because his honor was so important.
At other times, it's made him a buffoon because he's put his honor above the things that he should be representing, above the things that he was elected to represent.
He's done it time and time again, where he's put John McCain's honor above the good of the country.
This was Cruz putting his devotion to principles and truth above the good of the people that he is supposed to represent and the people that he is supposed to serve.
And he should have stayed home.
Let's take a look at Ronald Reagan back in 1976, a vicious, vicious fight for the nomination with the sitting president Gerald Ford, who had been appointed, not elected.
So it was fair to primary him.
Reagan went after him.
It was just like hands on throat, like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty going over the falls, and Reagan lost.
And when he lost, he really felt that the country was in bad, bad shape.
And by the way, he was right that Ford was going to lose.
You know, Reagan might have won that election, but Ford lost it.
But he came up, he came up to the stage, he stood next to Ford, and this is what he said.
This is our challenge.
And this is why, here in this hall tonight, better than we've ever done before, we've got to quit talking to each other and about each other and go out and communicate to the world that we may be fewer in numbers than we've ever been, but we carry the message they're waiting for.
We must go forth from here united, determined that what a great general said a few years ago is true.
There is no substitute for victory.
There's no substitute for victory.
And, you know, that made Reagan the next candidate and the next president, you know, because he said, you can say, look, you don't have to tell me that Trump's not Ford.
I know what Trump is.
You don't have to tell me that Trump is anomalous, that he's really bad.
I get it.
If Cruz felt that, if Cruz felt he couldn't stand up for him, then he shouldn't have come.
And to say, oh, well, I said vote your conscience, and they shouldn't have voted me, to say vote your conscience, is to say, screw you, Donald Trump.
And you don't do it at Trump's party.
It's just wrong.
It's making your principles idolatry.
It is idolatry about your principles and about the truth.
Newt tried to straighten it out.
This was one of my favorite moments of last night.
Newt got up and he tried to explain it away.
Listen to this.
Now, I think you misunderstood one paragraph that Ted Cruz, who was a superb orator, said.
And I just want to point it out to you.
Ted Cruz said, you can vote your conscience for anyone who will uphold the Constitution.
In this election, there is only one candidate who will uphold the Constitution.
So, to paraphrase Ted Cruz, if you want to protect the Constitution of the United States, the only possible candidate this fall is the Trump-Pence Republican ticket.
Nice try, Newt.
I liked it.
I liked that he went out and did it.
It was a good move, but no.
Causing Future Problems00:03:07
But let me tell you why a lot of this doesn't matter.
We have been talking all this week about this convention, and the people have been talking about it.
We've been talking about Malani as he stole the speech, and now it's cruz, and there's always been some controversy.
And of course, it's a very divided party and a party that has really been taken over by Donald Trump and his family.
And it's causing a lot of problems.
It's going to cause a lot of problems into the future.
But Newt caught at something that really is going to matter more.
And Mike Pence then picked it up after him and delivered the secret message of this convention and the message that I think the people who are not us, the people who are not the elite commentators, are going to hear.
So let's hear Newt talk about what's really going on in the world, the importance.
If you doubt we are at war, if you doubt that this threat is as real as I say, let me refresh your memory.
On Monday, an Afghan refugee in Germany used an axe and knives to slash and wound train passengers while shouting Allahu Akbar.
Last week, ISIS claimed responsibility after a Tunisian man drove a cargo truck into a crowd in Nice France.
He murdered 84 people, including 10 children, three Americans, and injured over 300 others.
Two weeks ago, almost 300 people were killed and more than 200 were wounded in bombing attacks in Baghdad.
Two days before that, radical Islamists in Bangladesh killed 20 hostages, including three American college students.
A few days before that, at the Istanbul airport in Turkey, ISIS attackers armed with guns and bombs killed 44 people and injured hundreds more.
Last month, a radical Islamist in Paris stalked a French police officer to his home where he murdered the officer, tortured his wife to death in front of their three-year-old son while streaming it all on social media.
He was pondering out loud whether to kill the three-year-old when he was killed by police.
Two days before that, an attacker pledging allegiance to ISIS killed 49 people in an Orlando nightclub and wounded dozens more.
All this in just the past 37 days.
37 days.
37 days.
I mean, that's what he's talking about.
And Pence got up and he continued talking about the economy.
We won't do that cut, but Pence has done a good job picking up Mitch Daniels' recovery of the Indiana economy, which has been producing jobs, unlike the rest of the country, has been producing jobs so quickly that people are actually joining the workforce.
Not only is the unemployment, see, our unemployment rate across the country is going down because people are dropping out of the workforce, but in Indiana, the unemployment rate has dropped just as fast, but people are going into the workforce, so there are fewer people actually out of work.
And that is what Pence has done.
But Pence got at the message that I think the people are going to see.
Play the second Pence cut.
But I've seen this good man up close.
His utter lack of pretense, his respect for the people who work for him, and his devotion to his family.
Pence's Economic Recovery00:08:10
And if you still doubt what I'm saying, remember, as we say back home, you can't fake good kids.
How about his amazing children?
Aren't they something?
These are the true measures of our nominee, chosen by the voters as the right man for these times.
This is the outsider, my running mate, who turned a long shot campaign into a movement over in the other party.
You know, if the idea was to present the exact opposite of a political outsider, the exact opposite of an uncalculating truth-teller, then on that score, you got to hand it to the Democratic establishment.
They outdid themselves this time.
See, that's what I think people are going to take away from this.
What Trump did is he made a virtue out of a problem.
He knew that the party doesn't like him.
He knows he's running against his own party, basically.
He knows that people are going to diss him.
He knew the press was going to report him.
He stocked the place with his kids, and his kids did a great job, I have to say.
His sons, especially, were very poised, obviously loyal, obviously full of affection for the man.
And I think what people are saying is I think that that's what people see.
See, like, look.
We're sitting here talking about Melania Trump, and she said three sentences, two paragraphs, whatever they came from.
You know what people thought when they saw Melania Trump?
I can almost guarantee this.
The women thought, nice dress.
I wonder if I could get a knockoff of that dress.
You know, it's at my local store.
And the guys were thinking, nice body.
I wonder if I could get a knockoff of that body at my local bar.
I mean, people liked her.
She was attractive.
She had that funny accent.
She was obviously having a hard time talking.
I don't think people cared a rat's petute whether he took a word from Melania.
And people are sophisticated now.
They read the press.
They know exactly what's going on.
I don't think, you know, they had this whole big splash about Al Baldassaro, the New Hampshire delegate for Trump who said that Clinton should be lined up and shot.
And now the Secret Service are investigating him like it's a threat and all this stuff.
A Democrat National Committee delegate who is pledged to Hillary Clinton tried to murder her husband the other day and nobody's reporting anything about it.
You know, people looked at Cruz and they're going to have their opinions and if they hate Trump, they're going to like Cruz.
If they hate Cruz, they're going to like Trump and all this stuff.
But that's not what people are going to see.
First of all, Trump is going to make a speech tonight.
He's going to live and die on that speech.
That's what everybody's going to remember.
That's what everybody's going to tune in to watch.
But on top of that, they're going to take away this image of a guy whose kids stand up for him.
He made a virtue of necessity.
The party wasn't going to support him, so he brought in the people who did support him.
And last night, Eric Trump made one of the best speeches of the evening, talking about the fact, and this is true because I was there, that in 1986, the city said they're going to redo the Bowlman Skating Rink, which is this nice little skating rink in Central Park.
For two years, it went on while they poured millions of dollars into it and did nothing, which is typical of New York construction, by the way.
6th Avenue, the avenue of the Americans, was under construction for 10 years, for 10 years, because the unions screw up and it's all graft and all this stuff.
Trump looked out his window and said, that's disgusting.
I'll take it over.
He took it over, and within six months, under budget, he fixed it.
It's now one of the most beautiful landmarks in the city, that skating rink.
I mean, in the winter, it's just one of the most beautiful things.
That's what they're talking about.
I think that's what the people are going to take away from this.
And Michael Moore, you know, I hate to say it, but Michael Moore gets it.
He was on the Bill Maher show.
Listen to what he said.
One of the things I've been concerned about this week is that we're all sitting, as you refer to, the bubble.
We've been sitting in our bubble, having a good laugh at this total, as you said, show.
But the truth is, is that this plays to a lot of people that he has to win to become the next president.
And I have to say, I mean, I'm sorry to have to kind of be the buzzkill here so early on, but I think Trump is going to win.
I'm sorry.
You know what?
Boo if you want.
I am glad you're saying that.
Everybody don't want to say it.
No, no.
The enemy is complacency.
Say it every day.
See, Michael Moore, I'm not saying that Trump is going to win.
I can no way predict this election anymore.
But I do truly believe that the people are seeing a different election than the rest of us, that those of us with our faces buried in the newspaper, those of us with our faces buried in each other's faces as we talk about this, are not seeing what the people are seeing.
I know Trump is disliked.
I know women especially dislike him.
But still, I think he is in with a shot because he's smart enough to know what he doesn't have and what he does, what he can sell and what he can't sell.
Even the fact that he transformed his business into a licensing corporation shows that he knew what he had.
He knew what to do.
So it's going to be really interesting.
We'll be back.
If the country survives the Clavenless weekend, we'll be back to talk about it after a speech.
That will tell the story.
Yeah, I'm going to do this anyway.
You know, I wanted to talk about movie songs because I once talked about the fact that movie music, this is stuff I like.
We have moved off the election to stuff I like.
That movie music is some of the best music around.
But movie songs are really funny.
You know, there always used to be a song in a movie that they would just throw in because why not?
They were just entertaining you.
They didn't know what they were doing.
So, you know, like you'd be in the big sleep, and Lauren Bacall would suddenly sing some song and it had nothing to do with anything.
But somewhere along the line, they decided that the song, maybe this was as a sales stool, the song had to have the name of the movie in the song.
So they started to write these stupid songs, like the one From Here to Eternity.
Here's Sinatra singing from here to Eternity.
You vowed your love from here to eternity.
So true it never would die ridiculous, right?
From here to Edith, you know, the titles from here to eternity was from the old drinking song, you know, Gentleman Soldiers Out on the Spree, Damned From Here to Eternity.
So they turned it into this stupid love song.
So comedians started making fun of this, and the two best versions of this were Bill Murray doing Star Wars.
This is him making fun of this tradition.
Ah, Star Wars!
Nothing but Star Wars!
Give me those Star Wars Dallas!
Ah, Star Wars!
I love that.
But even better, I think, although it's very close because they're both really funny, was Mel Brooks and his Alfred Hitchcock takeoff, High Anxiety.
This thing where he sat on top of the piano and sang this song: Hi Anxiety, whenever you're near, Hi-Axiety, it's you that I fear.
My heart's afraid to fly, it's crashed before.
But then you take my hand, my heart starts to soar once more.
High anxiety.
Okay, my favorite part of this is when he goes, Hey, Ziety, which makes absolutely no sense.
But just to remind you, as we leave this Claven week into the dive into the Clavenless weekend, just to remind you that every now and again, somebody got it exactly right.
Here is a terrific song by Henry Mancini and Leslie Bracuse, the guy who wrote all those Anthony Newy hits, like Who Can I Turn To when Nobody Needs Me and all this stuff.
And they wrote this for this really little Audrey Hepburn Albert Finney movie called Two for the Road.
It's a beautiful, beautiful song, which I've been heard occasionally to sing to my wife after a couple of drinks.
So I will leave you with this lovely, lovely movie theme, Two for the Road.
Any Place We Chance To Be00:00:49
And I will see you next week, those of you who survive.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Crawl back here from your bunkers when you can.
If you're feeling fancy-free, come wander through the world with me.
And any place we chance to be will be our rendezvous.
Who, for the road, will travel down the years, collecting precious memories, Selecting souvenirs and living life the way we please?