Ep. 336 skewers political theater with Elizabeth Warren’s absurd "Redskins senator" rant and Chuck Schumer’s Statue of Liberty meltdown, while Andrew Clavin celebrates Trump’s travel ban win and media distrust (70% see news as biased). Michael Knowles pivots to July 4th, framing Washington’s battles—Germantown’s dog return, Trenton’s icy crossing—as divine interventions, before critiquing modern ignorance of Revolutionary War history. The episode ties American liberty to sacrifices like Wallace’s Braveheart rebellion, warning freedom is "one generation away from extinction" as complacency replaces vigilance. [Automatically generated summary]
The Senate has released its version of a health care bill and reactions are pouring in.
Make-believe Washington Redskins Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a statement saying, quote, if this bill becomes law, everyone who has ever been born will eventually die.
So many thousands of human beings will lie dead on the street at the bloody hands of Republican serial killers.
It will be like that time the pale face set fire to our teepees and chased my tribe into a trail of tears.
We must respond by attacking the Capitol on horseback with stolen rifles and tomahawks.
Otherwise, the Republicans will just continue purveying the ugly over-the-top rhetoric that leads to violence, unquote.
Senator Warren later issued a correction saying she was not, in fact, a member of the Washington Redskins, but did have a featured role in Dances with Wolves as a squaw who gets into Harvard Law School on false pretenses before being killed at Wounded Knee.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also weighed in on the new health care bill, sobbing uncontrollably throughout a press conference during which he said in part, quote, I haven't been able to stop weeping since I pretended to read this bill.
I just sit on the edge of my bed, clutching my rag doll and crying and crying.
Anyone who saw me would be so filled with pity, they would never vote for this bill.
The Statue of Liberty saw me through my bedroom window and began to cry so hard she rusted and now may never get to Oz to ask the wizard for courage, unquote.
The rest of Schumer's statement was unintelligible.
Hillary Clinton, who used to be someone or other, issued a statement on the Senate health bill after being asked for her opinion by an imaginary reporter she saw in a dream about how she would have won the presidency if it hadn't been for the Russians.
Mrs. Clinton said, quote, this bill sucks.
Everything sucks.
The whole country sucks.
Otherwise, so help me, it'd be me traveling around in a helicopter wearing a big red tie, unquote.
Mrs. Clinton then knocked back her third martini of the morning and dragged on a cigarette, muttering, quote, misogyny, I tell you, if it weren't for misogyny, that big red tie would be mine, unquote.
Former President Harak Bahama, or whatever his name is, also said something about the bill, but who cares?
Finally, there have been some attacks on the bill from the right.
Angry conservative commentator Hank Angry told his listeners, quote, I'm angry because Republicans promised to rebuild Obamacare so they'd get elected, then broke their promise so they wouldn't get voted out of office.
Who ever heard of politicians behaving in such a way?
They should just let Obamacare crash and burn so that millions of Americans suffer, we lose our majority, and then I can be angry about that, which after all is what I do for a living, unquote.
President Trump was unavailable for comment, but did send out a tweet saying he was defecting to Russia where the health care was free.
Marketing Classes and Apps00:03:10
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is ticky-boo.
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunky-dooky.
Ship-shaped topsy, the world is a bibby-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
Want to sing!
Oh, hurrah, hooray!
Oh, hooray, hurrah!
All right, we're back after the long Clavenless weekend, and the news is tremendous.
Michael Knowles will actually be here.
Our Daily Wire scientists have been working around the clock to develop the technology, and we have finally developed this incredible new system of bringing him into the room and having him sit next to me, and we'll share the microphone.
It's not very highly technological, but he will have a bionic arm.
So that's, I don't know, maybe I just made that up.
I can't remember anymore, like what is happening in my imagination, what's happening in real life.
I will tell you that every time, you know, every time I do something new, like I write a book, if I write a book, somebody writes to me and says, give us your bio.
You know, put the bio on the book or whatever new video, put the bio under the video.
And what I've noticed is that my bios, which include like highlights from my career, now include more things that didn't exist when I started working.
So I'm doing a podcast, right?
There were no podcasts just a few years ago.
I've helped invent an app, a storytelling app.
Apps didn't exist a few years ago.
So I'm constantly having to learn new stuff.
And I mean, that's how you keep going, especially in the creative fields and the arts, where things are always changing and each new technology comes along with new ways of telling stories.
That is why there is Skillshare, because you can't go back to school for every little thing.
You've got to keep abreast of what's happening.
But Skillshare is an online community, a learning community with over 15,000 classes and all kinds of things, design, business, and more.
I've looked at the classes for marketing, how to sell things online.
I've looked at the classes for writing, which was just to test.
You know, you test it on something you know about to see if they're any good.
And the classes were actually quite good.
It was good advice, advice I wish I'd had when I was younger.
And you can learn anything on this site from logo design to social media marketing to street photography, anything you want, unlimited access to all of this for a low monthly price, and that's the price you pay.
You don't have to pay per class.
You don't get in the middle and they say, oh, you know, if you want to finish this class, you have to pay more.
It's one low monthly price, one low monthly price.
It's got all this stuff, Adobe Illustrator for design, logo design, for photography.
They've got street photography, mobile photography, marketing.
They have email marketing, social media marketing, entrepreneurship, illustrations, watercolors, hand lettering, stuff you might just want to do for fun.
I'm learning how to do it for fun.
And they are giving my listeners a month of unlimited access, absolutely free.
Go to www.skillshare.com/slash Andrew.
You get a free month, www.skillshare.com/slash Andrew.
To get a free month of Skillshare, learn new stuff.
Things Are Changing00:14:54
It's good.
So the news is actually kind of amazing today.
Actually, it's been amazing all week.
You know, things are changing.
Things are really happening.
And one of the problems with the news is that they focus, the news always focuses on events, right?
That's what the news is.
It's an event.
Something happens.
But there's also a more general shift taking place.
I want to talk about that too, that I really think is a positive thing.
At least it has a positive aspect.
But today, we had the Supreme Court reinstated the travel ban, the Trump travel ban against several primarily Muslim countries.
And this is a really positive thing.
I mean, they're going to have a hearing on it in October.
They're going to hear the case about the travel ban in October.
But what they said was the lower courts can't suspend the ban until that hearing takes place.
And by the hearing take time, I'm going to learn to speak again by the end of the show.
By the time the hearing takes place, Trump will have, they said that's all the time they would have needed.
That's going to be in the fall.
So that's all the time they need to see what kind of new security measures they need.
But mostly this is important for just giving a slap in the face to the lower courts who just thought, who just joined the resistance to shut down Trump because they don't like Trump and they don't like the way he's thinking and they think they should be in charge of how people think and what the president does.
So I think we're going to have to have a Trump happiness montage for this.
I think this is worthy of a Trump happiness montage.
Yes, the court has ruled it is.
Let's hear it.
We're going to win so much.
We're going to win at every level.
We're going to win economically.
We're going to win with the economy.
We're going to win with military.
We're going to win with health care and for our veterans.
We're going to win with every single facet.
My, oh my, what a wonderful day.
We're going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning.
Yay!
You say, please, please, it's too much winning.
We can't take it anymore.
I feel pretty.
Oh, so pretty.
I feel pretty and witty and gay.
We have to keep winning.
We have to win more.
I love the Trump happiness montage.
We haven't had enough chances to use it, so we're going to use it liberally and often.
And, you know, the news in general is good.
You know, we now know that Trump isn't under an FBI investigation, but Bernie Sanders and his wife, they're under investigation because Bernie Sanders' wife was running a college, and she apparently is accused of having misrepresented the college in order to get a loan.
And there's a possibility that Sanders pressured the bank to get a loan using his position.
And so that's under investigation.
Hillary Clinton is under investigation for something she did.
I can't even, off the top of my head, I can't remember.
It was some country where she may have fiddled with the court system.
And who else?
Obama is under the Obama people.
Loretta Lynch is under investigation for whether she pressured Comey to skewer the email association.
Everybody's under investigation except for Trump.
So this whole thing is just blown up in the Democrats' faces.
Plus, they keep losing.
The Democrats keep losing.
They lost this loss in Georgia.
They've been sitting around going, oh, you know, they're stuck with this Russia thing.
The rank and file is telling the leadership, stop talking about Russia because we keep losing.
But they're raising money off the Russia thing.
And of course, the news, the media cover it.
And of course, the media now is running the Democrat Party.
But Chuck Schumer has got a great idea.
Crying Chuck Schumer has now got a great idea that maybe the problem, the reason they're losing, is because of their policies.
This is some, somebody explained this to Chuck.
A, they said it really slowly, policies, Chuck.
But you've got to listen to this cut from this week talking to George Stephanopoulos.
It's hilarious.
This is Chuck describing how they're going to help all those awful, deplorable people they don't like thinking about, but maybe have a vote for some reason.
Just six.
Democrats need a strong, bold, sharp-edged, and common-sense economic agenda.
Policy, platform, message that appeal to the middle class, that resonate with the middle class, and show that it and unite Democrats.
That's what I've been working on for months.
And I've been talking to Democrats, House and Senate, all across the country.
I've been talking to Trump voters.
I was at a Yankee game Saturday night and I sat next to someone, you know, just because that's how the seats were.
We sit in the grandstand wearing, I'm proud to be a deplorable voter, a truck driver.
This economic message platform is going to resonate.
It's what we were missing.
And it's not going to be baby steps.
It's going to be bold.
We're coming out with it this summer within a month.
You will see it.
And Democrats will try to pass it legislatively for a year and campaign on it in 2018.
It's what we were missing in 2016 and in the past.
We know that.
When you lose an election, you don't blame other people.
You blame yourself.
Chuck went to a Yankees game and he met a truck driver.
This was an exciting revelation for Chuck.
He was wearing a deplorable Trump t-shirt and he just, because Chuck, you know, he always sits in the bleachers.
So he got to sit next to the deplorable voter, a guy wearing a deplorable t-shirt.
The look of self-satisfaction on his face, if you can't see it when he says this, he's so pleased with himself that he met.
Did he talk to him?
Did he ask him any questions?
I don't know.
Did he buy him a beer?
Anything?
He doesn't tell us.
But just the fact that he was sitting next to him just illuminated his mind with this need for economic policy.
We thought we just had to tell people which bathrooms to use.
We thought we just had to try to take people's children away to have them operated on if they wanted to play with dolls.
You know, we didn't realize they wanted some help in their jobs and their work.
It's wonderful.
It's a wonderful thing that is happening to the Democrat Party.
They are absolutely, meanwhile, of course, the ranked followers are calling for Pelosi's head.
They're so tired of Nancy Pelosi, an abortion purist, you know, a San Francisco who sells San Francisco values.
They keep talking about, she keeps talking about San Francisco values, and then the Republicans use that on their ads.
So it's like the Democrats lose anything.
But there's more, more good stuff.
But before I just want to remind you that Michael Knowles is going to be here to talk about July 4th, it's coming up, and we're going to discuss that.
But, but, that comes after the break.
So, if you're on Facebook and YouTube, you've got to come over to thedailywire.com.
If you would just subscribe for a lousy eight bucks a month, you could have the whole thing.
You watch the whole thing on the site.
And the prices are going up on July 1st, but they're not going up for the people who've already subscribed.
So, this now becomes an intelligence test, okay?
Because right now, it's only $8 a month.
And if you subscribe now, it'll remain $8 a month.
But as of July 1st, it goes up to, I think, $15,000 a week.
And also, we come and repossess your car.
But for that, Shapiro will come to your home and tell your husband to man up.
I may have made that up too.
I'm not sure.
No longer sure where my imagination ends.
If you subscribe for a year, you get Ben's book, Say It So.
He wrote it with his dad, David, about the championship season of the White Sox, which was 2005, already fading from memory and never to be repeated ever again.
A new YouGov poll on trust in the media spelled more bad news for the old guard establishment news organizations.
I'm reading this news story, which once were considered the incorruptible beacons of the truth, but are now regarded with widespread skepticism on both sides of the aisle.
YouGov found that a total of 70% of Americans agree that news organizations report in a biased manner.
When was the last time you saw a poll in which 70% of Americans agreed on what time it was, on anything?
The one thing we all agree on is the news media stinks.
And Donald Trump, it's the Trump effect.
It really is.
This has brought this to the fore.
He has driven his truck, that truck that Chuck Schumer heard about at the Yankees game.
Trump has driven it into the rotten structure of the media.
And I think it is a big, big deal.
And I know we have to talk about legislation.
We'll talk about healthcare and all that stuff.
But this is important.
This matters.
And here's another thing that matters.
This is from the Wall Street Journal.
A string of protests on college campuses that shut down events hosting conservative speakers has prompted universities around the country to pledge more tolerance for diverse opinions.
But skeptics say they'll believe it when they see it.
John Hopkins University announced Thursday a $150 million effort to facilitate the restoration of open and inclusive discourse.
The University of California at Berkeley, where I graduated and which, of course, is in the heart of darkness, where protesters halted speeches by conservatives Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter is debating bringing in conservative faculty to broaden the spectrum of political discourse on campus.
The very fact that they are talking about this, if they see it through, it will be close to a miracle, but it would be a wonderful thing.
About a dozen schools have signed on to a new doctrine from the University of Chicago that puts free speech above concerns about political correctness.
And look, you know, they're not doing this because of a love of free discourse and a love of conservatism.
They're doing this because the mob is at the gate and the people aren't showing up.
The people will not send their kids to schools where they're going to face riots and be, you know, there's going to be prejudice against them because they're white.
All of this is the Trump effect.
All of this is the fact that Chuck Schumer isn't sitting next to a truck driver because he wants to.
He's sitting next to one because he's got to, because he realizes they've lost the country.
All that little sliver of land between California and New York turns out to hate these people.
They hate these people, and Trump knows it, and they love Trump and the way he talks to them.
They get it.
They get it.
All of this stuff is the Trump effect, and I think he deserves credit for this.
And it brings me to this healthcare bill, which is like a stake in many conservatives' hearts.
And I got to stop here and say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube because we're out of, yes, we are.
We're out of time.
But come on over to thedailywire.com, subscribe, because on July 1st, the rates go up to, I think it's $100,000 a year, right?
But, oh, it's July 10th now?
They've changed.
Oh, okay.
I was told July 1st, but you've gotten until July 10th.
So you've got a lot of time.
This is an intelligence test.
If you like watchingthedailywire.com, it's $8 a month now and will remain $8 if you subscribe now.
But later on, it goes up to $50,000 an hour.
So if we're winning and winning and winning, how come we can't repeal Obamacare?
Here's the thing.
We're not going to repeal Obamacare.
Remember that time they said we were going to repeal and replace Obamacare?
You thought they meant that we were going to replace it with something else.
It is not going to happen.
So why did they say it?
They said it so you would vote for them.
Why won't they do it?
They won't do it because people will stop voting for them.
This is called politics.
One of the differences between politics and talk radio, and in talk radio, you never lose.
You only get betrayed.
See, in talk radio, nobody ever says, oh, we just, we lost.
You know, we lost because the country won't vote for these people, and they're professional politicians, and this is what their job is to get voted for.
And, you know, that never happens.
It's always they stabbed us in the back and they betrayed us and all this stuff.
It's not going to get repealed.
And I'll tell you why in simple sentences, okay?
It's not going to get repealed because they gave something to people and people don't want them to take it away again.
And they won't vote for them if they take it away again.
And if there were a supreme politician as president, a Ronald Reagan-level politician, who was committed with all his heart to repeal Obamacare, it is possible that he would lead the Republicans into that circular firing squad where they repealed it and get the job done.
That is not Donald Trump.
It never was.
You know, he said he told them in a meeting that they were being too mean.
He said, put some more money in there.
Put some more money in there.
And then Paul Ryan came out and said, well, he didn't say that.
And Trump said, yes, I did.
I said it.
Here is Donald Trump explaining that he did call the original Republican plan mean.
Mean.
That was my term because I want to see, I want to see, and I speak from the heart.
That's what I want to see.
I want to see a bill with heart.
Healthcare is a very complicated subject from the standpoint that you move it this way and this group doesn't like it.
You move it a little bit over here.
You have a very narrow path.
And honestly, nobody can be totally happy, even without the votes.
Forget about votes.
This has nothing to do with votes.
This has to do with picking a plan that everybody's going to like.
I'd like to say love, but like.
But we have a very good plan.
We have a few people that are, I think you could say modestly.
They're not standing on the rooftops and screaming.
They want to get some points.
I think they'll get some points.
So that's the president of the United States, right?
That is the guy that everybody looks to as the face of the government.
He's not saying to them, throw this bill out.
Now, the bill has some good stuff.
You know, it does reform Medicaid.
You know, there's a lot of confusion about this because on one side, they're saying, oh, it pumps up the Medicaid spending, but it actually doesn't.
It actually dials it back slowly.
And on the other side, Elizabeth Warren types are saying, oh, it destroys Medicaid.
It doesn't do that either.
It just kind of rolls it back a little bit.
You know, it's like they're screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs about this kind of minor thing.
Obama won this round, and it is painful for me to say it, and it's painful for me to know it.
He won this round by stuffing this down the throats of the American people.
Now, everybody thinks that health care is a right.
Now, everybody thinks they have a right to a doctor's work, that you have the right to take a doctor's work, and somehow everybody else should pay for it, and not you.
It's nuts.
It is nuts.
But we lost.
So, the thing is, the thing is, when you lose, right, you move to a better field of fight.
You retreat, you know, you make a tactical retreat, and you fight another day.
It's not abandoning your principles to lose, it's losing.
It hurts, it hurts.
That feeling you feel about you're angry.
That's losing.
We lost this fight.
And it's like nobody will, no talk radio person will say it.
You eat the crap sandwich, and you do it because there's lots to win.
Donald Trump has turned out to be a far, far more conservative president than we had any business hoping given his past record.
He has done a lot of great things.
He will probably, if we can keep him from getting impeached, he will probably get another Supreme Court justice.
Everybody's talking about Kennedy retiring.
Strategy For Survival00:02:20
He hasn't announced it.
He was supposed to.
There were rumors that he would announce it today.
But there's a lot of good stuff that we can win with Donald Trump.
There really is more, far more than I would have thought.
And we just have to get past this thing because if we leave it there, the only other strategy, there's one other strategy, and that's to leave it there and let it collapse.
And if you think they're going to let it collapse and not throw money at it and prop it up, they're not going to do that.
So that strategy doesn't work.
This strategy, at least you have a chance of saying, hey, we did something.
Hurrah.
It's good.
Maybe Tom Price will come in and throw in some regs that open up the free market a little bit.
It could work.
It could move things forward and maybe we can keep the house and not have to go through the whole boring impeachment thing, which isn't going to get them anything anyway.
Let's bring on Knowles.
Now, we're going to bring him in with this amazing technology where he actually walks into the room and sits next to me while Mathis moves the camera so it takes them in.
This took us years to invent this technology.
And the only thing that is kind of high-tech is that Knowles is not actually here.
This is a three-dimensional hologram of Knowles.
So it's more impressive than it looks, really.
How much money did we spend on the studio?
This seems a little bit like a downgrade in my entrance.
We have a fireplace.
There's a fireplace behind it.
But we can't, yeah, we can't Skype you in or anything.
But should I move over?
Move back.
This is more friendly.
I think I'm not sure.
So how have you been?
I've been well.
It's been three weeks.
It's been three weeks, I know.
And people actually missed you.
I cannot imagine what they were thinking.
It is shocking.
You know how I've been spending my three weeks last weekend.
I was with the head of production for the Daily Wire, Jonathan.
We were in New York, and we drank an immense amount of alcohol at Francis Tavern.
Ah, yeah.
Where George Washington gave the farewell to his officers.
Oh, there we are.
There we are.
Yeah, as I said, that is it from Francis Tavern, actually.
Wow, that is the most disreputable group of people that were there since the actual Revolutionary War.
That's at least three grogs in, I think.
At least.
That is Francis' Tavern.
It's a beautiful place.
It is.
It is very cool.
So what were you doing in New York?
Drinking.
No, we were in New York.
We went in.
YouTube flew us in to discuss some issues that conservatives have had with Google and YouTube.
I got to hang out with Steven Crowder.
Appeal to Heaven Worked00:09:38
That was if they told me that in advance, it would have stayed in play.
But wait, that's the Trump effect, too, right?
It is.
And it was great.
They rolled out the red carpet for us.
We had a good productive meeting.
I hope it leads to some changes on YouTube's end.
It's been a little difficult.
And they do seem to be listening, but it is a little difficult.
They do make it a little harder for, you know, it's that mindset that what we're saying is inherently bad and should be shut down.
I mean, that's the left's big success.
And that's why it's so important when the media starts to back off.
That's exactly right.
And I'm more than happy to take the little wins when we can get them.
And hopefully, YouTube is honest.
The other social media platforms haven't flown us out, but let us know.
My phone is on.
And the drinks are on you.
And the drinks are on you.
So let's talk about July 4th.
It is coming, and you've been studying our founding.
I have.
I've been studying it one grog at a time.
And I did.
We studied Washington pretty closely there.
And one major takeaway, I think, from July 4th and the Revolutionary War is that George Washington, to quote King George III, is the best man on the face of the earth.
He was one of the greatest men who ever lived.
One of the greatest men in history, one of the great leaders, truly the father of our country.
Not necessarily the greatest general in American history.
It's an amazing thing.
He wasn't the smartest man.
He wasn't the greatest general.
He was just a man of virtue.
He was a man of virtue.
And, you know, there's this incredible story.
After the Battle of Germantown, it was a massive Patriot defeat.
A lot of officers killed, a lot of infantry killed.
And at the end of the battle, the dispirited Patriots find a little dog, and they realize that it belongs to General Howe.
It belongs to the British general.
And George Washington sends the dog back with a little note.
And his, so a great man, not necessarily the greatest general.
But that makes the story of the founding all the more unbelievable because the deck was so stacked against us in every way.
And very often, it was seemingly random events like weather that turned pivotal battles and gave us a win in the war.
So it's like Providence.
It was Providence, I think.
I think it's no coincidence, but it may be Providence, that one of the earliest flags that we flew was the pine tree flag.
And the pine tree flag said, it's a white flag with a pine tree on it, and the text says, appeal to heaven.
An appeal to heaven.
Now, that line comes from John Locke's second treatise on civil government.
And the line is, where the body of the people or any single man is deprived of their right or is under the exercise of a power without right and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment.
Wow.
Wow.
I did not know that.
I never heard of that flag before.
One of the first.
It was actually the first flag that a foreigner saluted because Washington flew it on American ships or six American ships.
So in other words, Locke is saying that if your rights have been taken away and you have no other earthly, you have no way to appeal for your rights on earth, then you have the right to appeal to them.
We appeal to the king.
The king says no, we go over his head, we appeal to his boss.
And this is one of the elements of American exceptionalism, right?
Because of America's unique founding and unique place in the world, unique history, we also have a unique role to play in the world.
And Lafayette, if George Washington is the father of our country, Lafayette is like our French stepdaddy.
And the Marquis de Lafayette predicted in 1825 that America would save the world.
Really?
He did.
And Congress held a dinner for him.
And he gave a toast, and he told them to the perpetual union of the United States.
It has always saved us in a time of storm.
One day it will save the world.
And it turns out he was true.
He was right.
When we marched in and saved them during our back-to-back World War Championships, actually the nephew of Lincoln's cabinet officer Stanton said, Lafayette, we are here.
arrived and it's that's very touching it is It is very touching.
The Lafayette role is interesting because Lafayette admired George Washington immensely.
Oh, yeah, he loved him like a father.
He loved him like a father.
And I think he enlisted in the American Continental Army at age 19.
And he went back after the American Revolution and led the Paris National Guard and protected the Bastille.
So he saw the Bastille being torn to bits, and he had the key to the Bastille, and he gave the key to the Bastille to George Washington.
And I think this highlights the difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution.
One given by Providence and an appeal to heaven, one an appeal to the other place down below, probably.
You know, a similar line of thought as Edmund Burke.
Well, you know, you know, there's a legend, I don't know how true it is, that one of the reasons they stormed the Bastille was that the Marquis de Saad, from whom we get sadism, who was in fact a satanic figure, was in the Bastille and started revving up the crowd and getting saying, they're killing us in here, you have to get in here.
And that is a, yeah, so I'm not sure whether that is a true story, but it is a legend.
It's certainly true.
I don't know whether it literally happens, but it's certainly true.
This providential aspect to the American Revolution, I think it's clearest in two battles, this appeal to heaven.
I think the appeal to heaven worked.
The first is the Battle of Brooklyn, which we walked all around when we were in town drunkenly in our stupor.
But it was in the late summer of 1776.
The British Army has surrounded Washington.
There's basically no way out, and they need to evacuate to Manhattan.
The evacuation didn't work.
They had started to do it, but there was a miscommunication.
And General Mifflin, another officer, began to evacuate his troops too early.
He didn't believe the order.
There was a lot of confusion.
By the time Washington caught up with them, he said, Good God, General Mifflin, I am afraid you have ruined us.
The British win here.
The war is basically over.
But just as day breaks and the British are about to see what the Americans are up to, a heavy fog rolls in over New York.
A heavy fog rolls in and conceals the evacuation.
Washington is the last man left.
He steps onto his boat.
At 7 a.m., the last American troops land in Manhattan.
9,000 troops evacuate, surrounded by the British, not a single casualty, no loss of life.
Oh, because of the fog.
Because of the fog.
I love it.
Because of an appeal to heaven.
And then, of course, the greatest example of this is the crossing of the Delaware.
I was worried you were going to leave it out.
I couldn't.
Crossing of the Delaware is probably just the greater version of this, the larger version.
It's Christmas night.
It's Christmas night.
It's Christmas night, 1776, because our Lord paints with a subtle brush.
He speaks as loud as you need to hear.
So it's Christmas night, 1776, and Washington is going to surprise the Hessian troops and land on the morning of the 26th.
By the way, he wasn't really going to surprise them.
There were spies in the American camp.
They knew he was coming.
There were defectors, deserters.
The troops are so delayed.
Washington is so delayed by various obstacles and weather that by the time they land, day is going to break.
They landed so late that the Hessians thought they weren't going to come.
They thought they'd called it off.
There were three attempted landings.
Two didn't work.
But once again, the freezing rain, the snow, this terrible winds actually turned the battle because the Hessians gave up on them.
By the way, there's no evidence that they were drunk.
There's this rumor.
No, that's right.
There's really no evidence.
They were waiting.
They said, let them come, let them come.
But Washington was ready to make a retreat.
And it was just impossible to cross with all of these ice floats.
And he wrote later, he said, as I was certain there was no making a retreat without being discovered and harassed on repassing the river, I determined to push on at all events.
And it won us perhaps the most pivotal battle of the war, the Battle of Trenton.
It turned everything around.
It turned everything around.
And the before, the moment before, the desperation, the blood in the snow, the people walking without shoes.
I mean, young guys without shoes walking in the snow.
I mean, it was an amazing act of courage on Washington's part.
I mean, just an amazing act of boldness to do it.
Boldness, of faith, of confidence.
Yes, yeah.
And when you think of it, it's very easy to think of American exceptionalism and the war, even in the abstract sense of providence, you know, an appeal to God over the divine monarch's head.
It was literally, it was tangibly an appeal to heaven because the weather just kept winning battles for us.
Well, you know, I mean, I don't like to push too far because you never want to seem to be speaking for God, but just the fact that you could have a room with Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, Washington all in the same place.
You know, those are chess pieces on a board being moved into place in an amazing, providential way.
I mean, and people, you know, it is wonderful to see the young people today and how much they appreciate that.
Like, not at all.
Every single thing they had was not only given to them by those people who, you know, and those guys dying in the snow, but given to them by God who arranged it.
In fairness, they've never heard of any of the battles we've discussed.
They haven't learned it.
Or gong or gotten it.
As a matter of fact, that's true.
All right.
Well, thank you very much.
That excellent, excellent report.
And next week we'll be in Texas, I think.
I guess we're going to be coming live from Texas.
We'll come live from Texas, and we're working on a separate podcast together.
Promoting Freedom00:08:58
We'll talk about that later on.
We'll promote it a little bit.
But thank you for being here.
Good to be back.
Yes, it's good to have you back.
All right, stuff I like.
Oh, wait, do we?
I have to let you move the camera around and everything.
It's amazing to me.
You can't believe this.
That robots have come into this room.
These guys, they look like people, but they're actually just androids moving the cameras around.
The technology here.
You've got to spend all the money.
The technology is unbelievable.
This guy, he looks just like Jonathan Hay, but he's actually a hologram of a, he's a hologram of an android.
I mean, that's how advanced we are at the Daily War.
We back on?
All right.
All right.
Stuff I like.
To celebrate the oncoming of the 4th of July, I want to show, you know, patriotism is a very hard thing to capture well, right?
It's very hard to, you know, it just becomes corny really fast because everybody loves his country and what are we talking about and all this.
And that's why I wanted to choose a couple of works of art that are about America without being about America, that are about the things that America has given the world that have now become part of our consciousness without our even knowing how precious they are and how unique we are to have injected the ideas into the world.
So that is why I want to talk about Braveheart, obviously one of the greatest films of all time, Mel Gibson's, one of his two masterpieces, I guess, Braveheart and the Passion of the Christ.
But this is the story of William Wallace, 13th-century fighter against the British in Scotland.
And here is the famous scene where, with the British about to, you know, just this powerful, powerful imperial force coming down on the Scots, Wallace is trying to unite all the warring tribes of Scotland who say, if we run away, we'll live to fight another day.
And here is his famous speech.
I am William Wallace.
And I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny.
You've come to fight as free man.
And free men you are.
What will you do without freedom?
Will you fight?
Against that?
No!
We will run!
And we will live!
Aye!
Fight and you may die.
Run, and you'll live at least a while.
And dying in your beds many years from now.
Would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!
And everybody cheers and they went off and win, I guess that's the Battle of Sterling Bridge.
They went off and beat a superior British force.
Now, I lived in England when this picture came out, and of course, the British are depicted as evil and oppressive and all this, so the British didn't like the picture that much.
And a lot of the reviewers started picking on it, saying it wasn't factually correct, and they would pick on little things in it that I just thought were silly movie things.
But one reviewer pointed out that the Scots weren't fighting for freedom the way Mel Gibson and we understand it.
They were fighting freedom for most countries at most times and most places has meant the right of their race to not be conquered by another race, the right of Scotsmen, and he's trying to unite the tribes into a united Scotland, not to be oppressed by the British.
It did not mean the right, as we understand it, to be left alone, to do as you wish, to think what you want, to worship as you want.
It never meant that.
It never meant that until the British idea took flower in the American Constitution.
And this idea of liberty of thought, of liberty of action, the thing today where Gorsuch added a commentary to a Supreme Court decision where he talked about our right to practice our religion.
These things were won by blood.
You know, they were won by blood over centuries.
These ideas that were embedded in the words of Christ and were embedded in the traditions of the Greeks that came down and flowered in this moment, this moment on July 4th when we declared our independence, but also this moment when the Constitution was written and embedded them in the Bill of Rights.
These are the things, these are the things that conservatives are always getting sentimental about and loud about and defending because they have taken so long to construct and it is not worth getting rid of them even to get somebody else to pay your doctor's bills.
I mean, that is not a good reason to throw away these things that so many people have died for and thought for, not thought, thought, that people have spent their lives trying to find a way that imperfect human beings can live in the closest thing to perfect freedom.
Now, we mentioned Steve Crowder before.
I got to put on this wonderful, wonderful parody because Steve was talking about the fact that Europe has essentially lost the plot of this freedom.
So that they are allowing Muslims to come in and establish no-go areas.
They're allowing Muslims to come in and establish Sharia courts.
They are allowing Muslims to come in and basically say that these rights that have been won in the West exclusively over time and, as I said, found their finest flowering in the American Constitution, you know, it's not worth getting killed for.
It's not worth having the people blow you up.
Just act as if you don't, you know, if you fight back, then the terrorists win.
So Crowder, in his inimitable fashion, does his version of the scene from Braveheart.
Would you trade all the days from this day to that day for just one chance to stand before your enemies and tell them they may take your freedom of speech?
Guys no, I I hear you William.
I just I I think you're blowing it out of proportion a little bit.
They're blowing up our countrymen.
They're taking the freedom of speech.
For God's sakes, they tried to rape my wife.
See, the key word there is tray.
They didn't actually rape your wife.
Okay, they raped my wife.
They actually raped Jimmy's wife and Patrick.
They raped me and myself.
Yeah, they tag teamed them, didn't they?
I mean, think about it.
Rape takes like, what?
10 minutes?
Or six.
Or six?
If you don't resist?
And they just ran a train on Patrick.
I mean, wars take years, sometimes decades.
They can cost thousands of lives.
I guess I'm saying in all of that, what's a little terrorism and rape?
What's a little terrorism and rape?
Crowder, he is hilarious.
It's great stuff.
But the point is, of course, that we're used to it.
We're used to being free.
We don't think you can lose it.
Ronald Reagan's warning that freedom is always one generation away from extinction and that you have to keep fighting for it over and over again and that you have to suffer the battles and the wars and the things that because people want to take your freedom away.
People want to tell you what to do.
They want to impose their religion on you.
They want to impose their way of life.
They want to force you to cater the gay wedding that you don't believe in.
They want to force you to love only the people they think you should be able to love.
They want to force every, just about everybody wants to force somebody to do something and to stand up for that liberty, which it does take wars.
It takes sacrifice.
And after a while, liberty provides wealth.
Wealth provides laziness and flabbiness.
And after a while, you just don't want to sacrifice all the wonderful iPads and homes and surfboards that you've acquired through your liberty.
You don't want to sacrifice those to defend your liberty.
So films like Braveheart, even though they are anachronistic, they remind us of what it is we're fighting for.
And Crowder's parody reminds us of who we've become in the interim.
Good stuff.
All right, tomorrow, we're back.
The Clavin week begins, and then we're moving into a long, long, clavenless weekend.
So you have to just savor every moment that we're together.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show, and we will be back again tomorrow.