Ep. 312 skewers media hysteria over Trump-era "hate crimes"—from a gay organist’s self-vandalism to PETA’s Pokémon outrage—while Molly Hemingway dissects Trump vs. the Media, exposing how Comey’s firing became a collusion panic fueled by anonymous sources and DOJ testimony flip-flops. The episode frames Trump as a "troll" exploiting media’s self-sabotaged credibility, contrasting his defiance with Republicans’ fear of press backlash, and ends with a scathing take on speculative journalism’s role in polarizing America. [Automatically generated summary]
Ever since the election of Donald Trump, there's been a disastrous rise in the number of hate crimes.
Let me give some examples, and these are true, ripped from the headline stories that will chill you to the marrow of your virtuous souls.
Shortly after the election, the words Heil Trump, a swastika, and a gay slur were spray-painted on a church by a gay church organist who said he wanted to give people a, quote, reason to fight for good, even if it was a false one.
At Indiana State University, Muslim Professor Azhar Hussein received anti-Islamic threats from Muslim professor Azhar Hussein, who was later arrested and charged with pretending to have assaulted himself in a vicious and intolerant attack that never took place.
The drumbeat of hatred continued at Adolphus College in Minnesota, where horrifying racist flyers were distributed by the Diversity Leadership Council and other social justice groups who later said they wanted to educate people about racism by pretending to be racist, then pretending it was someone else doing it.
As if this veritable plague of upsurging hatred weren't enough to melt even a racist heart of racist stone, ever since the Trump election, many people throughout the country have been seen making the sinister okay sign, forming a circle with their thumb and forefinger with their other three fingers upstanding.
You see this terrifying secret symbol whenever someone is asked, how do you feel about the fact that Barack Obama isn't president anymore?
Or what did you think of Hillary Clinton losing the election?
Or how's Donald Trump doing?
This hateful sign has been identified by the Guardians of Liberty on the left as a white supremacist symbol because the three upheld fingers form a W for white and the O forms a P for power, so it stands for white power except with O instead of P, which would be white hour, which, okay, doesn't actually mean anything, but if it did, I'm sure it would be sinister.
Other racist examples of the racist spread of racism during the racist Trump administration include the drinking of milk, which is of course a symbol of white power because it's white, because it's milk.
PETA, the people for the ethical treatment of animals, issued a video calling milk, quote, and this is a real quote, a thinly veiled allegory for racial purity.
PETA has also called Pokemon a, quote, rosy picture of thinly veiled animal abuse.
Happily, thanks largely to PETA's efforts, all captured Pokemon creatures have now been released into the wilds of PETA's thinly veiled fantasy life.
Now, of course, I don't want to say that the destructive knuckleheads of the left have for too long used false charges of racism to slander and silence those who disagree with their disastrous policies, so that now the left's lack of credibility makes it easy for them to be trolled into comical hysteria by both actual white supremacists and innocent bystanders just looking for a good laugh.
I'm not sure why I don't want to say that.
Now maybe I do want to say that.
Yeah, that's what I want to say.
Texture: The Magazine App00:03:20
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-kunky-dee-dee.
Ship-shaped tipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
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Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
Okay, Molly Hemingway is here, the author of this encounter broadside, Trump vs. the media.
I finished reading it last night.
It only, I mean, it takes an hour.
I'm a very slow reader, but it takes like an hour to get through.
But it's just a terrific book, and we're going to talk about that, and it's a good day to talk about it because the media is out of control.
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Press Conundrum00:10:17
So we're going to be talking, we've got to talk about the media today, but it's not just the media.
You know what it is?
It's like Democrat press reports making Democrats hysteria and then Democrat press reports about the hysteria, which becomes more hysterical.
I mean, over this Comey firing, these Democrats have lost their mind.
And they keep saying Watergate, Watergate, Watergate.
You know the biggest difference between this and Watergate?
One is there's no, you know, nobody has even mentioned what law the Trump campaign may have broken if they talked to Russians.
You know, obviously, we don't want our campaigns meddling with the Russians to meddle with our elections, helping the Russians to meddle with our elections.
But nobody has mentioned any laws broken, anything like that.
Again and again, they say that we haven't got evidence of collusion.
Trump himself is acting, I must say, like an innocent man.
He is just like, thinks the whole thing is ridiculous.
So there's no scandal on one side, and on the other side, the press has lost all credibility.
They have lost all credibility.
I tell you, one of the things you do not hear very often on the show, if at all, is all this stuff about who's in and who's out and what an anonymous source said, Rob Rosenstein, Rod Rosenstein said, you know, and like what this source, they had Comey, what was the big one?
Comey asked for more funds from Rosenstein, the deputy AG, and then Rosenstein said no, that didn't happen.
You know, he said, well, he asked for it in the Senate.
Today, as I was driving to work, Andrew McCabe, who is now the acting head of the FBI, was testifying.
He came on and testified, and this is what he said about the money.
This is number 10.
Are you aware of that request?
Can you confirm that that request was, in fact, made?
I cannot confirm that request was made.
As you know, ma'am, when we need resources, we make those requests here.
So I'm not aware of that request, and it's not consistent with my understanding of how we request additional resources.
That said, we don't typically request resources for an individual case.
And as I mentioned, I strongly believe that the Russia investigation is adequately resourced.
And by the way, he said this is a significant investigation.
He didn't diss it or anything like this.
But she asked him, this is Susan Collins, I guess from Maine.
She asked him, has your investigation been curtailed?
Because this is the big thing the Democrats are saying.
It's all a great conspiracy to stop the investigation into Trump collusion with Russia.
Has there been any curtailment of the FBI's activities in this important investigation since Director Comey was fired?
Ma'am, we don't curtail our activities.
As you know, are people experiencing questions and are reacting to the developments this week?
Absolutely.
Does that get in the way of our ability to pursue this or any other investigation?
No, ma'am.
We continue to focus on our mission and get that job done.
And this guy, by the way, is a Democrat, or at least his wife was like a Democrat candidate.
You know, this is, I mean, it's just insane.
And the press, you've got to see this press.
This is a little long, but it is worth playing.
The press has become this utter echo chamber of these hysterical accusations.
Here's just a brief compilation of how the Nets are reporting this, starting with Ted Baxter from CBS.
Mr. Trump is the first president since Richard Nixon to fire a law enforcement official investigating the White House.
The timing raises questions.
Comey had just asked for more resources for his investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. election, including possible collusion by Team Trump.
And adding to the White House concerns this week are new indications the investigation may have expanded to include Trump's business and personal finances, based on how the former director of national intelligence cryptically answered this question.
General Clapper, during your investigation of all things Russia, did you ever find a situation where a Trump business interest in Russia gave you concern?
Senator Graham, I can't comment on that because that impacts investigation.
James Comey has said nothing publicly since his firing, Remaining Home.
But FBI insiders tell NBC News that many at FBI headquarters believe he was fired because he would not end the Russia investigation, something the president clearly wanted over, tweeting two days ago, when will this taxpayer-funded charade end?
So let me just pick this apart for a minute.
The cryptic comment of James Clapper, I mean, all through this testimony, these guys, all of them have been saying, we can't talk about this.
It's classified.
We can't bring this up.
And suddenly this is cryptic testimony.
It's cryptic, but they really understand.
And then all that stuff, FBI insiders, lines like that go by in a second.
FBI insiders tell us.
You know, these are anonymous sources.
The problem with anonymous sources, go back and watch all the president's men.
Look at the care they took with anonymous sources.
Look at the anger from Bradley, the editor of the Washington Post, when they would come to him without naming the sources.
Get me some names, get me some real people.
Double check, triple check.
You think these guys are double-checking and triple-checking?
They ain't doing any checking.
And the problem is, as a reporter, I'm not saying some of these stories, by the way, some of the anonymously sourced stories aren't true.
The problem is you can't tell which ones are true.
And that's worse, actually, than them being all, if they were all false or all true.
The thing is, you just can't tell.
And here's the thing.
As a former reporter, I tell you, unsourced stories are excellent ways to manipulate the story or to manipulate the press.
So you go and you say, you know, this is why all this stuff that Bannon's out, McMaster's out, now McMaster's in.
And remember, Trump is a volatile guy, so he's yelling at people one day and they're his best friend the next.
So, you know, I come to you as a source and I say, hey, you know, Bannon's out.
Well, maybe I hate Bannon.
Maybe I love the fact that yesterday Trump went off on Bannon and screamed at Al Bannon that he's out.
You know, they've taken his shoes away and handcuffed him to a chair.
And, you know, an ass insider, he's an insider.
He should know.
And people who know, you know, it's all nonsense.
It's all nonsense because you can't tell which parts of it are nonsense.
And now they're saying now the FBI is rededicated to getting Trump.
You know, the FBI is going to do its job the same way it always does.
They're going to come in.
I'm sure they thought Comey was a drama queen who would really embarrass them.
I mean, this is one of the things about that letter from Rosenstein was he just quotes again and against so many people who just ran him down.
You know, attorney generals, deputy attorneys generals.
Here's just a little segment of Rosenstein's letter to Trump about what was going on.
He says, Judge Lawrence Silberman, who served as deputy attorneys general under President Ford, wrote that it is not the Bureau's responsibility to opine on whether a matter should be prosecuted.
Silberman believes that Comey's performance was so inappropriate for an FBI director that he doubts the Bureau will ever completely recover.
Jamie Gorlak, Deputy Attorney General under President George W. Bush, opined that the director had chosen personally to restrike the balance between transparency and fairness from the department's traditions.
They concluded that, I mean, it goes on and on, and you just have to wonder, well, maybe Rosenstein really didn't think there should be this guy in the FBI who thought he could usurp the Justice Department whenever he thought that was right.
So meanwhile, the press, on the one hand, has lost all credibility.
And believe me, they are preaching to a smaller and smaller choir because only the people who agree with them are listening to them at this point, because anybody with any common sense can tell that they're just out of their minds with hysteria.
But Trump knows this, and he's trolling them.
I mean, Trump is a genuinely strange character.
I got to say, you know, people sit around.
Is he clever?
Is he dumb?
And all this.
Like, I think he's obviously a very intelligent man.
I do.
But he is a strange dude.
And I guess whether you like him or dislike him determines on whether you think he's out of his mind or just crazy like a fox because he's doing this stuff.
Like, you know, they're saying he's Nixon.
So he invites the press corps in and they think he's going to be, I can't, I think they thought he was going to be with the Russian ambassador and he studies with Kissinger.
He's with Kissinger, you know, Nixon's old secretary of state.
And he's like, you think I'm Nixon?
Here I am with Kissinger.
And here's a brief clip of them shouting questions at him.
Being here, appreciate it.
Why did the fire director call me?
Why did the fire director call me?
Because he wasn't doing a good job, very simply.
He was not doing a good job.
Did it affect your meeting with the Russians today?
Excuse me.
Did it affect your meeting with the Russians today?
Well, the news.
Well, the new FBI director being charged.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
Thanks, sir.
So then he goes in and he meets, he's meeting with the Russians, the Russian ambassador.
You know, the Russian ambassador and the foreign guy, you know, they're all named Sergei.
So it's like, this is Sergei, you know, This is Sergei so-and-so, Sergei Sergei.
He's Sergei Sergei Sergei, you know, because they have those three names, you know, Sergei Sergeanovich and everybody.
And he's meeting with the Russians.
Like he could care less.
He just is laughing at these people.
And he makes, I mean, the foreign minister, I think is what he was.
He came out and he just basically called the Press Corps children.
He said, you look like adults, but you're asking me these questions that mean nothing to me.
He says nothing to me.
And I don't care.
Anyway, it is amazing to watch.
I mean, I'm calling it President Troll versus Planet Hysteria because the press has so beclowned themselves that Trump is picking them off.
Like, you know, they're like bottles on a fence and he's just knocking them off with this trolling.
I think most of the people who like Trump are laughing and the people in the middle are just appalled at the way the press is acting.
That is my guess.
It's a complete guess, but I'm just saying, I don't think in the long run, in the short run, I think this probably will hurt him in the polls because of the way it was handled.
In the long run, I don't think it's going to matter, and they're dreaming of impeachment ain't going to happen.
Stamps.Com Convenience00:02:03
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Media Bias Debate00:15:27
Molly Ziegler-Hemingway.
She's the senior editor of the Federalists, a long-time journalist whose work has appeared just about everywhere, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN.
She was the 2004 recipient of a Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship and is the author of this Encounter Broadside.
Encounter broadside is a great series.
This is Trump versus the Media.
It's terrific.
In an hour, you will get a complete view of the situation.
You can find her on Twitter at MZ Hemingway.
Molly, you there?
I'm here.
There you are.
How you doing?
Great.
It's good to be here with you.
It's good to see you.
I read this book.
I thought it was terrific.
And we're going to talk about it in a minute.
But first, I have to get your reaction to what's going on today.
I mean, it seems like mass hysteria to me.
But maybe I'm not being fair to our friends in the media.
Well, there's no doubt that the firing of an FBI director is a major story.
So it's totally legitimate to make it a big story and to cover it as if it's a big story.
So what's interesting really is the manner in which it's being covered or the particular spin that's being put out.
There seemed to be an immediate consensus that Donald Trump fired Jim Comey, a man who is deeply unpopular across the political spectrum, who's been embroiled in bad decision-making for the better part of a year and who people have been calling for the firing of for the better part of a year.
They believe that Donald Trump fired him because he was directly over target in a grand Russian conspiracy and that this was the smoking gun that they had been waiting for.
And that particular angle is what I think makes people see it as hysteria because it is.
Right.
I mean, because it's just no, there's no possibility that the FBI is going to say, oh, Comey's gone, drop the Russia thing.
You know, forget that.
Well, there are many reasons why that would be an inaccurate way to spin the news.
And one of them would be that Director Comey was leading the agency, but not the investigation per se.
The investigation would continue.
Another would be that while we have had a lot of anonymously based reports for six months about how there's an impending huge issue that's going to definitely implicate Trump in treason, we haven't actually had any evidence of it.
And I'm not saying that there couldn't be evidence of it, but if you take a step back and you think about all those breathless headlines and all of the nefarious motivations that have been ascribed to Trump himself, and again, the bar is not bad hiring decisions or bad decision making, but literally treason.
I don't think we're anywhere near that point.
And so that's why people should be skeptical of that storyline without more evidence.
Now, in this broadside encounter, I love this series, by the way.
It's so great, you know, because it gives you an hour.
It gives you so much information.
And you did a particularly good job, I think, in this.
One of the things you point out, and this has been driving me a little bit crazy, is the media has basically put forward this narrative that, you know, before this we were objective, but Trump is just a bridge too far.
And now we have to cast off our super cloak of objectivity and really cover Trump as the fascist he is.
But that's not true, right?
I mean, there is a history here that before Trump even arrives.
Right.
I think, again, there might be like competing points here.
One would be that they really do treat Trump differently than they have treated everyone else previously.
But yes, the idea that they used to be objective and now things are so serious that they can't do their journalistic diligence, due diligence, is just obviously not true.
And in fact, I would say that Trump is a good result of a media approach that no longer became tenable for a huge set of Americans.
So you saw for decades, really, that there was anything from minor to major spin put on Republican candidates.
I think that in a really big way, the treatment of Mitt Romney, who regardless of what you think about his politics or whether you thought he should be elected over Obama or not, really can't argue that he wasn't a decent guy.
And he was presented in the media as just a horrific monster.
And I think that something broke for a lot of people at that point.
They realized there was no fairness in the media, that they would run after literally Mitt Romney shouting, what about your gaffes?
While covering up for any legitimate scandals in the Obama administration.
And they would turn things that were actually good, like he tried to hire women and he put the resources into actually hiring women into a gaffe about binders full of women.
These types of things.
I think something just broke and people decided we can't play this game anymore where the stakes are, where everything is so unfair.
And I think that did contribute to the rise of Trump.
And it's not just politics, too.
It's really media approaches to many different stories within and outside of the political realm.
There seems to be this strange reaction on the side of the media and side of the news gatherers that as people have become more and more aware of their biased bias, they've become more biased.
I mean, this idea that Trump has put forward that they are enemies of the American people, it actually has some substance.
I mean, I don't believe that they are enemies of America, but they do seem to feel that the Trump voters specifically, but maybe just Republican voters in general, are the bad guys.
Right.
I think there is sort of a social contract the media violated where you do work, you think that the media have all this power.
You give them access under this idea that they will work to help out the civic civil conversation and that they will at least accurately describe things on both sides.
And when you have media that in the last couple of years did stuff like roam the countryside looking for heretics who didn't share their very same views on sexual politics or whatnot, that does feel like they're an enemy.
And I think it's reasonable that people feel deeply hurt and betrayed by the media when they're telling so many false stories, not just about things that they know personally, like their own views and seeing how their own views were characterized by the media, but also big stories about treatment of, like, for instance, the Rolling Stone story about the fraternity that was accused of doing a gang rape and it turned out it was completely untrue.
When you break that contract, I think people have every right to be deeply upset.
And that is going to, and that's what you see.
So.
Well, you know, you're raising a really important point, and you raise it in the broad side, too, that it's not just news stories.
It's not just factual news stories, because this thing about fake news has gotten to the point where it's just being thrown back and forth so often, but it is also the big social questions that have now been posed as if there is one side, the left's side, and then there's hatred on the other side.
Those are the two sides.
There's what the left wants and there's hatred.
And I can see, I think that there's a debate to be had, for instance, I mean, now the debate has been shut down by the Supreme Court, but there's a debate to be had over gay marriage, say.
Oh, did we lose her?
All right.
Well, then I will continue to talk until we get her back.
One of the things that Molly points out in Trump versus the Media is it's not just about news stories.
It's not just about who did what when.
It's also these social questions that have been posed in this completely unfair dichotomy between what the left says and hatred.
So for instance, for instance, you know, there's a debate to be had where one person says, you know, I think that marriage should be redefined to include gay people.
We now accept them.
Social society has changed, social opinions have changed.
And the other side says, well, marriage is a central building block of society.
Like, whether you're looking at the Bible, whether you're looking at the creation myths of the Greeks and Romans, they always start with a man and woman getting married, and that becomes the foundation of society.
When you redefine that, when you redefine that, you are making it – have I got her?
Yeah.
Okay.
There you are.
Okay.
You know, I was just making the point that there is a debate to be had about on the one side, there's people who say now it's time to include gays in the definition of marriage.
That's one side.
And the other side is no, you know, this is a central building block of society.
Don't mess with the definition because it's a load-bearing wall.
That's a debate to be had.
I understand that debate.
But the debate that now it's time to include gays, and if you don't want to do that, you are a bigot like the guys who stood with dogs and stopped the marchers in Selma.
That's not a debate.
That actually is not true.
And that is the way the media posed it.
Right.
And in fact, I think for years you had the media not even accurately describe the nature of the debate.
It was treated as on the one side, there are good people who care about love.
On the other side, are these people who have no reason to care about the definition of marriage at all other than religious bigotry?
And they are very dangerous and need to be shut down.
That is so deeply unfair to the seriousness of both sides' arguments.
And it is also just damaging to how we interact with each other as neighbors.
And when you hear each other's arguments, you can do a much better job of predicting negative unintended consequences of changes and just working together.
And, you know, we are a nation that has always been full of many different people.
And it's important that you have good conversations, that you understand that.
And so, yeah, on big, important issues like how you define marriage or things like simply how you describe a political debate that's going on in the country.
I think you saw all of the problems that the media have in terms of ignorance of religion, religious people, what matters to a lot of people in the country outside of D.C. and New York.
All of those problems came to bear in their coverage of this election.
And so what's most surprising to me is not even that they were so humiliated by their coverage and by the just profound rejection of the narrative that they were forcing on people, but also that they didn't do anything to fix it in the aftermath.
That's amazing.
Yes.
They had two options.
They could basically admit how much they were wrong, focus on facts as opposed to pushing narratives, make systematic changes to bring in new perspectives into their newsroom and maybe make systematic changes so that not everybody is based in New York or Washington, D.C. or L.A.
They chose not to do that.
They did none of those things.
They promoted people who did the worst job during the election or they elevated them to different papers.
And they seem very invested in continuing this narrative and proving people that they were wrong to reject Hillary Clinton and the media and to take a risk on Donald Trump.
What is it you think that Trump did specifically?
Why did Trump get this?
I mean, certainly Republicans have been complaining about media coverage since I can remember.
I can't remember a time when they didn't complain about media coverage.
But what is it that Trump did specifically that took advantage of this situation?
I mean, he obviously knew that the moment was right, that time was right, and he knew what to do with this.
What was it exactly that worked for him?
It's a really good question, and I'm not sure if I have a great answer.
I've always kind of viewed it more as both Trump and the media feed off of each other.
They're almost in a codependent, like a negative, codependent relationship where they both feed off each other and benefit from each other, but you don't want to be around either of them.
And so, you know, profits have been good for newspapers and subscriptions have been good for newspapers and other media outlets.
And Trump won the presidency.
But I don't know if it's been good for the country the way that they interact with each other.
But clearly, Donald Trump had nothing but experience working with the media and seeing how to take advantage of news cycles.
He really is a student of communication and how people pick up on big topics.
He really, for instance, figured out how much people hated the media and he uses that to his advantage.
I don't know why the media keep falling into the traps that are set there because, you know, like you take the Comey story and I really don't think they have any idea of what it comes off like to people outside of their bubble.
They have no clue.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, like, it is slightly more elevated hysteria than what they said about the Easter egg roll, but that they said it about the Easter egg role makes it harder to take them seriously here.
Exactly.
But anyway, I think partly it's that he simultaneously cares and doesn't care.
He cares deeply about his image, but he doesn't care when people call him names.
And so many Republicans, they are living in fear and terror that someone in the media might characterize them poorly or be mean to them.
And that's just a fear you have to get over immediately.
They're like abused children.
They are always waiting for the media to go off and slap them around.
And they really, and it makes them cowardly, I think.
And I think Trump does, he is appealing.
I mean, I have all kinds of problems with him, but he is appealing in that he doesn't care about these people who obviously don't care about anything but their agenda at this point.
All right, I have one last question because you write wonderfully.
You bring up this point about, have I still got, if you can get her back one more time, I want to just ask her one last question.
It really, what I was going to talk to her about is how much of the information that we get is worthless.
And she quotes Michael Crichton a lot.
And Michael Crichton points out that speculation is almost always worthless because no one knows the future.
You know, that is why.
People don't know the future.
So when somebody tells you what's going to happen, you know, it's interesting, but you just don't.
Again, it's the same thing with sourced stories.
You don't know which guy, somebody's going to be right.
If everybody's making predictions, somebody's going to be right, but you never know which one it is.
And so it's always one guy who was right the last time who then gets the, you know, he gets, he's now Merlin and, you know, Gandalf, and he gets the wizard cap, and he's the guy they turn to.
And then the next time he's wrong, and somebody else is going to.
So that kind of speculation is absolutely worthless.
And there's another thing that Molly writes about in this Trump versus the Media, about the fact that when you got her back?
Bring her back on.
I'm going to let you go after this, Molly.
I'm sorry we keep losing you.
You know, you write all this great stuff, quoting a lot of Michael Crichton about speculation and how it's worthless.
But now I'm going to ask you to speculate a little bit.
When you see a tangle like this between a media, as you say, the firing of Comey is a big story, and I would never say it wasn't.
It genuinely wasn't.
It happened in a shocking way.
But when you see a tangle like this, what do you expect, say, just speculating over the next like five or six days?
How do you expect this to turn out?
Is this going to, you know, are the Republicans going to collapse and appoint a special prosecutor?
Or is this going to blow over like everything else the media has done with Trump?
I really don't know, but I do think it's interesting.
You had testimony today from the acting attorney general that debunked most of the stories that have been out there thus far, such as that the deputy at DOJ had threatened to resign.
He's publicly, actually, that's a separate thing from the testimony.
He's publicly said he didn't threaten to resign and he wasn't going to resign.
You had claims that Comey got fired because he asked for more resources.
Even the fact that he asked for more resources.
End Clavinless Weekend00:03:15
All right, let her go.
But it is, I mean, she was, she seemed to be about to say some of the stuff that we've been saying.
Let me just repeat, Molly Hemingway.
She's a senior editor at the Federals.
She's been a Fox contributor recently.
She's just been terrific.
You can see how, like, she's just really informed, really smart, really articulate.
Find her on Twitter at MZ Hemingway and get this encounter broadside, Trump versus the Media.
It's really good.
One of the reasons I felt it was so good, I was so impressed with it, is because bias is a hard thing to pin down.
It's a hard, you know, when they're not outright lying, but they're just being biased.
It's a hard thing to pin down.
And she pins it down and she really shows you how it happened and the effect it had.
The entire series, the Encounter Broadside series, is excellent.
Obviously, some are better than others, but this is a particularly good one, Molly Ziegler-Hemingway.
Find her at MZ Hemingway.
You know, I hate to say this, but I think the Clavin Week is coming to a conclusion.
That's like it was, you know, it was like, I think the Clavenless Week came a little early for Mr. Comey, but I think for the rest of Washington, it's just beginning.
So I have to leave you here.
I'm going to leave you.
I always like to end with some music.
I'm going to leave.
You know, I'm not a big Beatles fan.
Every time I say that, I expect an arrow in my head.
I just expect to take it in the neck.
People are so passionate about the Beatles.
And it's not that I think they're bad, they just don't speak to me.
You know, I've always loved lyrics, and their lyrics are, you know, she loves you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, it's like, I just, I just never got that.
And as it went on, and their lyrics became kind of confusing and bizarre and acid-laced, I just never, I was never that taken with them.
But there are songs that I like.
And Paul McCartney, this is post-Beatles, he wrote this really, I think it's an obscure song.
I was asking people here if anybody knew it, nobody knew it.
But it is, it's not only a beautiful little tune, this kind of wistful little tune, but it has these great lyrics where he personifies.
It's called, we in the literary business, we call this personification, which is when you take inanimate objects and you give them personalities, the personalities of people.
And this just imagines stuff getting thrown away and the kind of lonely, wistful feeling that this stuff, why are you throwing me away?
And it's just a really, really nice lyric.
We will end with that going into the Clavinless weekend.