Ep. 327 dissects CNN’s push for Trump’s impeachment over his Comey remark, ignoring Obama’s Fast and Furious scandal—where DOJ-linked guns killed Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry—while framing Flynn’s investigation as obstruction despite Comey admitting no wrongdoing. The host exposes Comey’s selective leaks, Rubio’s Senate grilling, and media bias, arguing Trump’s blunt style clashes with D.C.’s norms but lacks authoritarianism. Skeptical of both sides’ narratives, the episode warns conservatives against adopting leftist tactics—like identity politics’ hypocrisy—while defending Trump’s limited-government trajectory over policy missteps, closing with a call to reject moral compromises. [Automatically generated summary]
In a scathing 300-page report, the House Oversight Committee has blasted the Obama administration and former corrupt Attorney General Eric Holder for their cover-up of the fast and furious gun-running scandal, a scandal that was implicated in the death of an American law officer.
CNN responded to the report by calling for the impeachment of President Trump because he made an untoward remark to James Comey.
According to the House report, Holder and Obama's corrupt justice department did everything they could to withhold information from the family of Brian Terry, the American lawman who was murdered by gangsters using guns which Obama's DOJ had allowed them to buy.
Holder regarded the grieving family of the murdered law officer as a, quote, nuisance, even though they were grieving, and the family of a law officer who was murdered by gangsters with guns that Holder and Obama had allowed them to buy.
CNN journalists responded to the report by screaming for seven straight hours about the fact that President Trump had clumsily asked James Comey to let go of his investigation into Michael Flynn.
No law officers were killed in the conversation.
Eric Holder became the first corrupt attorney general to ever be held in contempt of Congress for his refusal to turn over documents relating to the Fast and Furious scandal, which, as I may have mentioned, was implicated in the murder of an American lawman who was fighting Mexican drug dealers who were using guns that Obama's DOJ had allowed to fall into their hands in the scandal that Holder and Obama were covering up.
CNN reported on the House Oversight Committee's findings, saying, quote, unquote.
Not only was Eric Holder found in contempt of Congress for his refusal to turn over documents relating to the Fast and Furious scandal, a scandal which was implicated in the death of an American law officer, but President Barack Obama granted Holder executive privilege so that he wouldn't have to turn over documents.
Obama's actions served to further obstruct the investigation into the scandal, which facilitated the buying of guns by Mexican gangsters who later killed an American law officer, whose grieving family was deemed a nuisance by Eric Holder, who was granted executive privilege by Obama so he wouldn't have to reveal the truth.
CNN commentators say that this amounts to obstruction of justice by Donald Trump because he made an inappropriate remark during which no one died because it was a remark, not one of thousands of guns that had been sold to Mexican gangsters and then used in a shootout in which a law officer died, which Eric Holder then covered up with Barack Obama's help.
According to CNN commentator Anderson Life, quote, Donald Trump is clearly in violation of some sort of law or something and is a doo-doo stinky dink who is worse than Watergate, whatever that was, unquote.
James Comey has now finished his public testimony about the Russian investigation, and law officers are continuing not to die in that investigation the way they did die during Fast and Furious, which Holder and Obama covered up.
This is not CNN.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Indochino: Fit Your Suit00:03:33
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is ticky-by-boom.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-dee-doo.
Shipshape, tipsy-topsy, the world is a bibyzing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
All right, here we are in a show directly from my house.
I'm in the loft of my house.
You may notice that there I saw Shapiro's show from his house earlier, and he had books behind him.
You may notice there are no books behind me.
That's because Shapiro took my books, basically.
They were books.
I swear, they were just this place was loaded with books when I went to sleep last night.
Today, all the books are in Shapiro's house, and my house is empty.
Let's start.
We'll start off with the big news, which is from Mozambique, where people are beheading, killing bald men because the witch doctors have convinced them that a bald man's head is filled with gold.
And I just want to point out that this is the savagery of socialism because it's not your gold.
It's my gold.
That's why I keep it in my head because it's mine.
So just leave me alone.
You know, this brings me to the question of how well or badly you are dressed.
And I look at yourself.
I mean, if you're watching the show, it's a pretty good bet that you really don't know how to comport yourself in any way or in polite company.
And the thing is, you know, you can go into any store and buy a suit off the rack and they'll take it in a little bit and fit it to you.
But when you get a real suit that is really made directly for you, you just look better.
That's true.
And Indochino, with Indochino, you can do it at a price you can afford because these bespoke suits, these tailored just-for-you suits, are really, really expensive, but not at Indochino.
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Now, we have to open with the most important thing.
Mistaken Attribution00:11:36
I know a lot of you are thinking about James Comey and his testimony and all that, but more important than this, long after James Comey will be forgotten, is the fact that I mistakenly attributed to the poet William Butler Yeats yesterday a poem by W.H. Auden.
And this, of course, will go down in history as one of my rare, rare errors.
But I was talking about Sigmund Freud and I said that Yeats had written a poem about Freud.
Auden wrote the poem about Freud and he also wrote an obituary poem about Yates.
And that's why I got the two of them confused.
Auden, one of the last great poets in the English language.
Anyway, I just wanted to make sure we got this.
All right.
So this is the day that the left has been waiting for, right?
James Comey, the fired FBI guy, was going to get behind.
You know, they were going to get behind the stand in front of the Senate and he was going to testify and the Trump administration was going to be over, shattered by scandal.
You know, Trump weeping in his oval office before they came.
The police came and just lifted him out and took him away.
Not so much.
Of course, we kind of knew this yesterday.
He released an opening statement that he didn't actually make in the Intel hearing room, but he released a statement basically saying there are certain things.
One thing that the mainstream media got right, and this is because now we know that Comey himself arranged for this to be leaked to the newspaper was that Comey did take a memo saying that Donald Trump had asked him for certain things.
He asked him for loyalty.
He asked him to go easy on Michael Flynn, saying Michael Flynn was a good guy, that Michael Flynn had already been fired, and basically this is before he had even taken office.
And he was just saying, I hope you can let this, I hope you can let this go.
He didn't direct him to let it go.
And then I think he said it again a week or so into his presidency.
But the thing that the mainstream media got wrong, oh, what was the third thing he asked for?
Oh, he asked for, this was the big thing, I think, in Trump's mind.
He asked for Comey to go out and make a statement that he was not under investigation.
And this was what the mainstream media got wrong, of course, was that Trump said three times, three times, the FBI Director Comey told him that he was not under any investigation.
And this turned out to be true.
CNN reported it wasn't true.
I think the Washington Post reported it wasn't true.
All their great anonymous sources telling other anonymous sources and then calling on the phone and reading memos over the phone.
All this stuff turned out not to be true.
Trump was right.
Comey told him he was not under investigation.
And you can, you know, think back, remember, this was right after the mainstream media, who is the Democrat Party, lost the election and they went insane.
And it was all because it had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton being a corrupt, terrible candidate.
Nothing to do with that.
Nothing to do with a country sick and tired of Barack Obama's meaningless, harmful policies, nothing to do with any of that.
It all had to do with the Russians.
It was all about the Russian spies.
And they just hammered Trump with this collusion thing.
There was a story in the New York Times about how Trump's campaign people were constantly in contact with Russia.
Comey has now testified that that was largely untrue, that the New York Times didn't know what they were talking about.
So all of that stuff has gone by the boards.
But this was the stuff that was driving Trump insane.
And Trump wanted Comey to come out, as he had for Hillary Clinton, come out and say, you are not under investigation.
So here's the big thing.
So Comey sits down for his testimony today, and all of Washington and all of the left wing is waiting on tenter hooks.
They've been waiting for weeks now for Comey to dump Trump under the truck and say he tried to obstruct justice.
Not so much.
Play clip number two, which basically put an end to the scandal.
Director Comey, did the president at any time ask you to stop the FBI investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. elections?
Not to my understanding, no.
Did any individual working for this administration, including the Justice Department, ask you to stop the Russian investigation?
No.
Director, when the President requested that you, and I quote, let Flynn go.
General Flynn had an unreported contact with the Russians, which is an offense.
And if press accounts are right, there might have been discrepancies between facts and his FBI testimony.
In your estimation, was General Flynn at that time in serious legal jeopardy?
And in addition to that, do you sense that the president was trying to obstruct justice or just seek for a way for Mike Flynn to save face, given he had already been fired?
Well, General Flynn at that point in time was in legal jeopardy.
There was an open FBI criminal investigation of his statements in connection with the Russian contacts and the contacts themselves.
And so that was my assessment at the time.
I don't think it's for me to say whether the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct.
I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning, but that's a conclusion I'm sure the special counsel will work towards to try and understand what the intention was there and whether that's an offense.
Now, this, remember, is the same guy, Comey, who declared that Hillary Clinton should not be prosecuted, something that was none of his business.
He declared that Hillary Clinton should not be prosecuted because he had no intent to share classified material, even though she did share classified material, exposed classified material.
So he couldn't pronounce.
He can pronounce on Hillary Clinton's thinking, but he couldn't pronounce on Donald Trump's thinking.
Doesn't really matter.
Look, for the next few days, as I told you yesterday, for the next few days, the left is going to scream and yell, but this basically bursts their balloon.
I mean, he said that Donald Trump was not under investigation.
He said it several times.
He said it today again.
Donald Trump was not under any criminal or intelligence investigation.
He was not implicated at all.
He didn't do anything.
He says that the special counsel can figure out whether he was trying to obstruct justice.
At one point, he said, I took this as an order.
But as Eric Trump, as Trump's son tweeted today, he said, when my father orders you to do something, you know you've been ordered.
I don't think any of us could question whether or not this is true.
You know, I just want to give my take on this right away before we have to break.
We're going to have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
But before I do, I just want to give my take on this because it's very rare that Chris Christie speaks my mind.
But yesterday after the show, I walked over to our new digs, the new studio that's under construction, and there was Michael Knowles, and don't think that he was doing any construction work because the day that Michael Knowles does any work whatsoever will be a different day than this one.
But anyway, and he read me basically the statement.
And everybody was talking at once and everybody was commenting and I didn't say anything, but my reaction was almost exactly what Chris Christie's was.
Here's Chris Christie commenting on Donald Trump's relations and discussions with Comey.
Listen, what people don't understand is that they elected an outsider president.
They elected someone who had never been inside government and quite frankly didn't spend a lot of time interacting with government except at the local level.
And so the idea of the way the tradition of these agencies is not something that he's ever been steeped in.
So, you know, I think over the course of time, and we could talk about different examples, what you're seeing is a president who is now very publicly learning about the way people react to what he considers to be normal New York City conversation.
Normal New York City conversation.
That was exactly what I thought.
See, Trump is so used as a construction guy to dealing with New York City Democrats.
He didn't realize that you have to be subtle about your corruption in Washington, D.C. Because if you're a New York City Democrat, you don't have to be subtle because there's no Republican Party.
So he just figured everyone was openly corrupt, though all the officials were openly corrupt the way they are in New York.
This is a case of a blundering New York non-politician maneuvering with a very, very slick, inside, you know, stiletto-wielding political operative in James Comey.
That's what this is.
I don't mean to impugn Comey because I think there's been on the right.
There's been a lot of what a terrible, terrible guy he is.
I don't think he's a terrible guy.
He's a political operative.
You don't get as high up in the government as he did without being a political operative.
He's a very subtle, clever, self-aware political operative.
Trump is a blundering New York guy, used to working in a place where people talk a lot more bluntly than they do in the rest of the country.
I've had this experience with Trump a number of times as a New Yorker where I thought like, yeah, that's kind of what I would say too, where the rest of the country goes insane.
We're going to have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Before we do, we have to talk about 5-4 and the 5-4 club.
You know, we were talking earlier about looking good and guys looking good, and I don't know about you, but I am not a big shopping guy.
I mean, I am not somebody who wants to take my time wandering through clothing stores.
Basically, at this point, I just wait for Christmas and my birthday, and my wife dresses me.
I mean, that's kind of where I'm at.
But this is a really good reason to join the 5-4 Club because the 5-4 Club is a cheap and easy way for you to get fashionable clothes.
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5-4 is a brand, but they have a lot of other brands.
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So it's really a terrific way to have your wardrobe curated.
It's like having one of those personal shoppers that you get in stores, but you don't have to go to the store.
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And the promo code is Clavin, K-L-A-V-A-N, 54Club.com, promo code Clavin.
And now we must say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Come on over to thedailywire.com and subscribe.
You can have your questions answered in the mailbag.
And if you subscribe for the year, you can get Ben's new book about the White Sox.
Make a great Father's Day gift.
Worry About The Deep State00:15:28
Now, the other thing about the Comey testimony that really struck me, and I got to be honest, I don't blame Comey for this, is Comey is really, really angry and bitter.
I mean, he was fired in a way that I did not approve of.
I mean, I thought Comey definitely needed to be fired.
I thought Trump should have fired him the first day he arrived.
He was behaving in this emotional, preening, drama queen way that I thought really affected his thinking.
He had basically usurped the role of the Justice Department, thinking that Loretta Lynch, thinking, in my opinion, correctly, that Loretta Lynch was so corrupt.
He testified today that Loretta Lynch told him not to call the Clinton investigation an investigation, just to call it a matter.
Classic socialist thinking, if you change the word for something, it changes the nature of it.
So he was really getting pressure.
He saw Loretta Lynch meeting with Clinton and all this stuff.
But he did deserve to be fired, but he did not deserve to be fired, basically pulled off the stage with a hook the way he was and not really informed and not brought in and said, thank you for your service.
So he made this opening statement where he really went after Trump.
And he spent a lot of time impugning Trump's character in a very like, I'm the Boy Scout.
Trump is the sinister politician way, which is nonsense.
They are both very, very practiced politicians.
Let's play Comey's cut number one.
Although the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI director, the administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader.
Those were lies, plain and simple.
And I am so sorry that the FBI workforce had to hear them, and I'm so sorry that the American people were told them.
I worked every day at the FBI to help make that great organization better.
And I say help because I did nothing alone at the FBI.
There are no indispensable people at the FBI.
The organization's great strength is that its values and abilities run deep and wide.
The FBI will be fine without me.
The FBI's mission will be relentlessly pursued by its people, and that mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States.
I will deeply miss being part of that mission, but this organization and its mission will go on long beyond me and long beyond any particular administration.
And he goes on and he says, the FBI is strong, the FBI is brave, and gosh darn it, people like me, you know.
This emotionalism from Comey is really what makes me suspicious.
You know, there was nothing, every time Comey starts to explain his thinking about why he said something in public and why he didn't say something in public, it really, that's when I start to lose all faith in the guy.
I don't believe he's a bad person.
I don't believe he's corrupt.
I don't believe any of that stuff.
But he really is a guy who looks out for himself, who makes sure that he comes across well.
His statement that he wrote down about his relationship with Trump is a story that he's telling about this kind of bully.
He really, by the end of it, he was talking like a little girl.
He was saying, you know, why didn't you report this?
This is the big question.
Why didn't he report it?
If he felt that it was disturbing, if he felt that Trump was trying to obstruct justice, why didn't he report it?
Well, I was confused and I was weak and I didn't know.
It's like I expected him to faint.
It's like, oh, and the one who went after him for this was Rubio.
I mean, Rubio really had some good questions.
And this exchange, I thought, was really an important one.
As you understood it, he was asking not about the general Russia investigation.
He was asking very specifically about the jeopardy that Flynn was in himself.
That's how I understood it, yes, sir.
And as you perceived it, while it was a request that you hoped you did away with it, you perceived it as an order, given his position, the setting, and the like and some of the circumstances.
Yes.
At the time, did you say anything to the president about that is not an appropriate request?
Or did you tell the White House counsel that is not an appropriate request?
Someone needs to go tell the president that he can't do these things?
I didn't, no.
Okay.
Why?
I don't know.
I think the circumstances, as I said earlier, I think the circumstances were such that it was, I was a bit stunned and didn't have the presence of mind.
And I don't know, you know, I don't want to make you sound like I'm Captain Courageous.
I don't know whether, even if I had the presence of mind, I would have said to the president, sir, that's wrong.
I don't know whether I would have.
But in the moment, it didn't come to my mind.
What came to my mind is, be careful what you say.
And so I said, I agree, Flynn is a good guy.
I mean, that's crap.
You know, that is ridiculous.
The guy is a top law officer in the country.
He has a responsibility.
If he feels that the president is trying to obstruct justice, he has a responsibility to report it.
There are plenty of places to report it.
He says that he went back to the FBI and they kind of consulted with the top leaders there and decided, no, they're not going to tell the FBI agents because they might be intimidated by mean Mr. President Trump.
You know, it's just that those stories that he tells about why he says certain things and why he doesn't say other things just really are suspicious.
And Rubio asked him one of the best questions he was asked today was, everything leaked about their investigation except one thing, the one thing that President Trump wanted them to say, which was that he wasn't under investigation.
That was the one thing that didn't leak.
Why was that?
Comey said, I don't know.
It's an easy guess.
It's an easy guess.
I mean, this is the deep state in a battle with Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump, did Donald Trump behave well?
No.
Should the President of the United States sit down and say, dump the Flynn investigation, even suggest it?
I don't think he should.
I think that's, what's the word?
Inappropriate is the word of the day.
I think that's really inappropriate.
It is very New York-y.
It is very much a matter of inexperience.
I keep saying, and the anti-Trump people keep yelling at me about this.
Trump is a guy who learns things.
I don't think he'd do that today.
I think his new FBI pick is going to be an independent guy.
I think he gets it now, that this is not New York.
This is not where you sit down over a pastrami sandwich and say, dump the Flynn investigation.
He's a good guy because the press corps is too powerful.
The press corps is all Democratic.
The press corps is in with the deep state.
You just don't do it that way in Washington.
You've got to be a little bit more subtle with your quid pro quo, although there's plenty of quid pro quo to quo around.
You know, what we're going to watch for the next couple of days, I was watching last night, I was watching TV last night, and it was insane.
I mean, if you took as a baseline, if you took Brett Baer's special report panel and you listened to them talking, having a very civilized, intelligent conversation about obstruction of justice and who did what to whom and where Trump was wrong and where he did something inappropriate and where Comey was blowing things out of proportion, this whole thing, people on both sides, people running the array of Trump supporters, anti-Trump.
Charles Krauthammer was always pretty much solidly conservative, but not necessarily for any particular person.
Perfectly sensible.
Then I turned on CNN, and so help me, it was just like people screaming, screaming about things they knew nothing about.
Oh, it was obstruction of justice and hang the men.
It was just embarrassing.
And I have to say also, I turned on Hannity, and Hannity has turned Comey into a cartoon villain, and I don't buy that either.
I mean, this is, like I said, these are political guys at the very highest level of politics.
You do not get to the, I don't care what anybody says, you do not get to the highest level of politics without being good at politics.
You know, you don't stumble into these places.
You don't stumble into the Oval Office.
You don't stumble into the FBI directorship.
These are guys who are good at what they do.
Two men facing off, both of them looking out for their own best interests.
Trump doing it clumsily and inelegantly and inappropriately, and Comey doing it subtly and with a stiletto and bringing out the long knives, leaking information.
The fact that he admitted that, I mean, to me, that's just embarrassing that he did that.
A lot of embarrassing stuff.
So what you're going to see, so you see this incredible division in our country.
You see this incredible, you know, when they talked about alternative facts, we were living in this world of where people just see different things.
And this is this argument that's been going on on the conservative side between with Dennis Prager sort of representing one side and today or yesterday David French at NRO.
These are two great guys, French and Prager.
They're both really good guys, really honest guys, trying to see their way clear.
You know, honest people see things differently and have disagreements.
There's nothing wrong with that.
That's part of going forward in a time of change, which we're in.
So Prager has been saying, well, you know, we're in this civil war between the left and the right, and the left is a danger, a clear and present danger to the American polity, to America's way of life.
And French and other people who oppose Trump say, well, Trump is also a danger because he's a danger to the conservative movement, which is the guarantor of our freedoms.
In other words, they're saying that Trump is going to corrupt us and pollute us.
And I've taken a kind of a different tack.
I mean, my tack is about liberty.
I sort of see liberty as the heroine tied to the tracks.
And how do we rescue liberty?
You know, that's my thing, because Donald Trump is going to come and go.
I know it doesn't seem like that now.
He's such a huge figure, and he is a huge and entertaining figure.
And for me, of course, who is just here to be entertained, that's a positive on his part.
But I'm always looking at what is happening to my liberty.
And the things I worry about with liberty is I worry about the Democrats.
I worry about their big government because I know the bigger the government, the less liberty I have.
I worry about the deep state who basically feels that they are responsible to no one, that they can leak information to undermine the president, that they can overturn the results of a legal election.
I worry about that.
I worry about the media because the media has become so dishonest, so one-sided, so hysterical, and so unintelligent.
They really don't know what they're talking at anymore, that they are damaging the polity.
You know, when I look back over the presidents of my lifetime, they've almost all been bad presidents.
Take it, say, after Kennedy.
I won't judge Kennedy because he was kind of interrupted, as it were.
But we had Nixon, we had LBJ, we had Clinton, we had Carter.
With the exception of Ronald Reagan, our presidents have been mediocre to bad.
Our presidents have been mediocre to bad.
And I really do believe that is the influence of television.
It is the dumbing down of our polity of our populace by putting things in terms of good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, good-looking and not good-looking, charismatic and not charismatic.
I think when you have time to make a case when people had to go around and basically meet people more on a one-to-one level, there was less of this TV effect.
And I think that this has affected us.
It has driven people down.
So I think the media is a danger.
The mainstream media is a danger to our form of government.
And that doesn't mean they should be censored, of course not, but they should be opposed.
They should be exposed and opposed.
And I worry about the authoritarianism and corruption on the left because they feel that they are so right.
They don't like the people, so they don't like democracy.
So they don't mind using the Supreme Court to pass legislation.
They don't mind covering up, and they don't mind when their politicians cover up.
And when I look at Trump so far, the two things I worry about with Trump in terms of my liberty are, is he corrupt and is he authoritarian?
I'm now convinced that he's not authoritarian.
Maybe he's authoritarian in his heart.
That's none of my business.
But he hasn't even appointed the people who we need to run the government, which is what an authoritarian would do.
He just thinks it's all going to be fine because he's Trump.
And so he's not an authoritarian, so I'm not as worried about that.
I'm a little bit worried still about will he be corrupt?
He hasn't shown himself to be truly corrupt in the way that damages liberty.
So far, it seems to me the government is working much better.
The one thing, though, that I do understand, that I really do understand from the people who continue to oppose Trump and who are always hammering him and picking him.
See, I just go on his direction.
I'm worried about his direction.
Is he headed toward liberty or is he heading away from liberty?
If he's headed toward liberty and he stumbles along the way and he does some things I don't like, okay, I can live with that.
But as long as he's heading toward more liberty, smaller, more limited government, more constitutional government, I'm fine.
You know, that's the thing.
I'm not going to say, oh, he did that wrong or he did this wrong or he said this or he did this.
You know, that's not, I'm just not worried about that because the direction is what matters.
What I do understand from the anti-Trump people is, you know, if you ever look at the way at true leftism, it's amazing how often it accomplishes the opposite of what it sets out to accomplish.
So you see feminism, right?
Feminism is supposed to enable women.
And instead, feminists are, they're like a cartoon of what anti-female men think women are like.
They're irrational, they're shrill, they're weak because every time they hear an opinion that they don't like, they faint dead away.
They're constantly whining, they constantly complain.
They really are like a caricature of what someone who didn't like women would be like.
The women I know who are not feminists are nothing like that, right?
So feminism actually turns women into the cartoon of people who don't like women.
Same thing with the race identity politics.
Now you have blacks saying, we want to be segregated, you know, at colleges.
We want our own dorms.
We want our own classes.
We don't want you on our campus.
We want an all-white day.
You think like, wait, wait, you know, wasn't this supposed to be, wasn't the civil rights movement supposed to be about ending segregation?
How did it get to be the exact opposite of what it is?
And the reason, I think, is pretty obvious.
The reason is, is that the left adopts the values of the people they despise.
So the Black Lives Matter types or the identity politics types have adopted racism.
They are now the racists.
And they say, well, we can't be racist because we're the minority.
Don't matter.
It does not matter.
They have adopted racism.
And if you adopt the same philosophy, you'll get to the same place, right?
So it doesn't, I always say the devil doesn't mind who does the hating as long as the hating gets done, right?
So that's the thing.
If you adopt your enemy's ideas, you will get to the place your enemy was going.
And that's why black people are segregating themselves.
Same with feminists.
They have adopted male values.
They think that being strong means being strong like a man.
Any man who has lived with a woman, any man who has gotten to know and love a woman, knows that women are very strong in a different way.
They have different kinds of strengths and they see the world a different way.
And all of that makes life more beautiful and more interesting and more three-dimensional.
But if you adopt that a strong woman has to look like Wonder Woman, has to fight like a man, has to be able to ride a, you know, pilot a fighter plane like a man, has to do science like a man, whatever it is, then you're going to wind up with women who are second-rate men because men are going to be better at being men than women will be.
If you, in fact, keep to your values and say, hey, excuse me, but you're not respecting my values, you're not giving me a chance to express my values, you're not counting my values in your society, then you're going to have victories as that kind of feminism, I guess it's called equity feminism, I can't remember what that's called, but it's just regular old-fashioned women's liberation, then you're going to have some victories and you're going to win your side.
Worries About Conservative Excuses00:05:04
So what the people who are against Trump are worried about is that we are adopting the values of the left in Donald Trump, a lifelong Democrat, a guy we don't want to see ourselves, you know, the conservatives, we don't want to see ourselves making excuses for authoritarianism.
We don't want to see ourselves making excuses for corruption, as for eight years the mainstream media did with the corrupt Obama administration, which was genuinely corrupt in the IRS, in the Justice Department, in all the ways that matter.
They were genuinely corrupt and authoritarian, and the mainstream media turned a blind eye.
And that's why we say, well, why should we listen to you now?
But of course, we don't want to become that guy because if you become that guy, if you adopt your enemy's values, you will reach your enemy's goals.
And you know, this, I will end the week because the Clavenless weekend is now upon us.
I will end the week by just talking a little bit about practical religion.
You know, in the Gospels, you know, you'll hear Jesus say stuff that like, you know, forgive your enemy, forgive those who hurt you, love your enemy.
And as somebody once said, I think it was C.S. Lewis, he said, everybody's in favor of forgiveness until there's something to forgive.
I cannot remember who said that, but everyone's in favor of forgiveness until there's something to forgive.
And you will hear Christians, you know, talk about forgiveness and love until they themselves have something to forgive.
Well, As a white guy looking at black people, you know, I know, I know the best thing they can do is let the past go.
Let past offenses and bigotry and slavery and all the rest let it go.
But it's easy for me to say, I don't have to do it.
And they say, well, you shouldn't talk.
You're a white man.
But that's exactly wrong.
Because it's easy for me to say, I can tell them the truth that it's too hard for them to reach.
I'm not saying it's easy to do these things.
So as a conservative, as a conservative, I know we cannot live wholly in opposition to the left.
And this is the one place where I do see what the anti-Trumpers are saying.
I do understand that this is a moral hazard.
Trump is a blunderbuss.
He blunders around.
I mean that both in the fact that he goes off as a loose cannon sometimes and he blunders around as he did with Comey.
We don't have to pick on him every time he makes a mistake.
He's inexperienced.
We can say, let's let him learn.
Let's give him a chance.
Let's see where he goes.
We don't have to do that.
But we do have to watch ourselves.
We do have to watch when we're letting him off the hook for something serious.
I think this Comey thing has turned out to be a bust.
I think Comey has burst the balloon of the anti-Trump left.
And I do not think that it is being too easy on corruption to say that Trump acted as an inexperienced New York developer, an inexperienced showbiz guy in dealing with Comey.
He did not do anything illegal or corrupt, although he did do stuff that I would say was inappropriate.
And I think that we have to watch ourselves.
We have to remember that we don't want to reach the goals of the left.
We can't adopt the values of the left, even if they deserve it.
Even if they deserve it.
That's what makes the things that Jesus said so hard.
You know, people think about religion and they think that God or religion or Jesus are trying to steal your fun.
You know, when he says these things to you, you think like, ah, you know, you're making me, you're giving me such a headache, you know, God, by saying these things.
He's actually just giving you good personal advice.
He's telling you how to stay wise.
You know, if anybody can look around, I'm sure you've had this experience in your life that when you meet somebody who may not be the highest, have the highest IQ, but they are loving.
They are wiser than people you'll meet who have very high IQs but don't know how to love.
That's what the gospels are trying to get you to.
They're trying to get you to wisdom.
They're trying to get you to wisdom because wisdom works in the world.
And so as we go forward with this, I think this Russian thing, I think this Russian thing is over.
I think you're going to hear it drumbeat in the media.
It's going to go on.
Not the investigation into what Russia did in the election.
I don't want to misspeak.
That part we have to find out more about.
But I think the Trump collusion story is basically over.
They're going to make a lot of noise in the coming days and maybe even the coming weeks to make it seem like it's still there.
I think it ended today.
The Trump-Russian collusion story is basically a bust.
And I don't think we, the conservatives, have to be worried about that or arguing about that anymore.
And I think we can let Trump off the hook for that.
But as we go forward, we do have to watch that.
We don't develop the values of our enemies.
Because if we do, we'll have the countries that are, the country that our enemies want.
The Clavenless weekend is upon us.
It's sad.
I know.
It's terrible.
But they're building our new studios.
I guess we're probably not going to get in there next week.
So we'll probably still be broadcasting from my house next week a little bit.
So Shapiro, bring back my books.
All right.
Enough of this.
All right.
We will see you on Monday.
The survivors of the Clavenless Weekend will gather here.
Stuff I like.
You know, we were talking all week about narrative poetry.
And when I mentioned The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, a lot of people wrote in and told me about a musical version of it by Lorena McKennett.
It's very long, so we'll just play a minute of it as we go off.
But the Clavenless Weekend begins now.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
Survivors gather here on Monday.
I'll see you then.
Survivors Gather Monday00:01:07
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the ghosted trees.
The womb was a ghostly galleon tossed upon the cloudy seas.
The road was a reaping of moonlight over the purple moor.
A highwayman came riding, riding, riding.
A high-wigman came riding up to the olden door.
He had a franchise cocked hat on his forehead, a bunch of lexus chin, a cord of claret velvet, and bridges of roundo skin.
They fainted but never wrinkle.
His boats were up to the fine.
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle.
His crystal butts a twinkle.
His rapier heel to twinkle unto the jewelled sky.
And over the cop as he clattered, I clashed in the darkened yard.
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.