Ben Shapiro dissects Trump’s anti-media tweets—like the CNN body-slam meme—as voter backlash against perceived bias, citing Joe the Plumber’s treatment and a Reddit user forced to apologize for past bigotry. He frames Trump’s 4th of July victory speech as a populist win while dismissing North Korea’s missile tests as overhyped compared to media threats. Callers debate Christianity vs. border walls, with Shapiro arguing refugees should resettle abroad, and advises a first-time dad to embrace parenthood despite fears. On marriage, he pushes traditional surnames, mocking feminism, before praising Absence of Malice for exposing press malice—all while teasing the show’s move from Cisco to Dallas. The episode blends political warfare with personal advice, ending on a mix of cultural critique and lighthearted chaos. [Automatically generated summary]
It's time for a serious discussion about President Donald Trump's mean tweets concerning journalists.
This is an important issue to every single person in America who has nothing better to do or works in the news media or has nothing better to do but work in the news media.
That leaves approximately 326 million people who don't give a rat's caboose or a hill of beans or even a steaming pile of warmed over macaroni and cheese.
Who tweets what about mainstream journalists?
Still, it's an important issue.
I forget why.
Some recent mean tweets from the president regarded Mika Brzezinski, who seems to do something on television somewhere.
Trump's tweets implied that Mika's a dishonest gas bag with a lousy facelift and the brains of a scooped-out melon that didn't even have brains before it was scooped out because it was a melon, to put it in my own words.
The tweets sent shockwaves of horror from the famous 30 Rock building where NBC is located all the way to the famous 30 Rock Building where NBC is located and where many people who work with Mika were forced to pretend to care whether her feelings were hurt before turning away from her and rolling their eyes and silently mouthing the words, serves her right.
The mean Trump tweets come after six months of Mika and her co-host and husband, Joe Scarborough, continually slinging insults at the president, including calling him a thug, an ass, and a mental defective.
So reading the tweets was kind of like watching a man smacking a loudmouth woman who just won't stop screaming at him.
Which, of course, you should never do.
Although sometimes, so help me, you just want it.
But that would be wrong.
Although just once, I'd like.
But seriously, there is never any reason to smack a woman.
Well, there might be a reason, but still, it's not something you should ever do, which is going to be awfully tough on Joe Scarborough during the days and weeks and months and seemingly endless years of marriage ahead.
What was I talking about?
Oh, yeah, Donald Trump's tweets.
There was another mean Trump tweet that sent shockwaves all through journalism land, from Fantasy Lake where the unicorns hold impeachment hearings, to fake news forests, where the boogaboogas collude with the Russians.
In this tweet, Trump depicted himself putting a body slam on a wrestler whose face had been replaced by the CNN logo.
This tweet immediately caused every single American who watches CNN to turn to the other two with a look of dismay.
Many commentators said this tweet would inspire violence against mainstream journalists as if there were still people who needed to be inspired to hate mainstream journalists.
Other commentators have been expressing the opinion that Trump's mean tweets against the press will spell the end of the Trump administration.
They don't seem to understand that after 20 years of being lied to and insulted by the elite mouthpieces of powerful media corporations, America's actually elected Trump to send the press a message.
For reasons of decency, I can't repeat the message on the air.
Trigger Warning00:02:29
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm for hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-hunky.
Shipshaw, tipsy-topsy, the world is ippitties in.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
All right, we are back after a long, long, clavinless weekend of darkness and despair and the 4th of July, and we are here in Cisco, Texas, and I've got a large audience today.
Here's what you have to do.
It's the mailbag day, so when I say it's the mailbag day, everybody has to give a big cheer so people pretend to care.
Okay, and it's mailbag day.
That was great.
That was great.
Now even I care.
And you may say, you may say, what are you doing in Cisco, Texas?
And what I am not doing is standing online at the post office.
And the reason is stamps.com.
And every time I say this, I talk about the fact that I just hate to stand online.
And every time I talk about that, somebody writes on in and says it's inline, not online, because they're not from New York.
In New York, you stand online, although I guess if you have a phone, you can be inline and online at the same time.
But I hate to do both.
So I get on stamps.com where you can do everything you do at the post office, except you can do it on your computer.
So you don't have to stop everything, drive to the post office, hope that it's open, stand online, and deal with actual human beings.
You do it right off your computer.
You can buy and print official U.S. postage for any letter, any package, any class of mail using your own computer and printer.
You just put the envelope in the printer, comes out with a stamp.
They'll send you a digital scale so you can automatically calculate the exact postage.
And stamps.com will even help you decide the best class of mail based on your needs.
So there's no need to lease an expensive postage meter.
Right now, you can enjoy the stamps.curvitstamps.com service with a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus postage and a digital scale without long-term commitments.
Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in Klavin.
That is K-L-A-V-S-N-Victor A-N stamps.com and then enter Klavin stamps.com.
You will never have to go to the post office again.
So what am I doing in Texas?
Fireworks Over Heads00:02:42
Nobody seems to know, but we came down here yesterday.
We spent the 4th of July, an excellent 4th of July, with Jeremy Boring, who, as you know, is the God-King of the Daily Wire.
We call him, we don't call him the God-King because he has anything to do with God.
We just call him the God-King because he asked us to please call him the God-King of the Daily Wire.
So that's, yeah.
So, but he was celebrating his eighth anniversary and his high school reunion.
And so we went to the bustling town of Slayton, Texas, population, what, about 4,000 people.
And it was beautiful, and the people were great.
And we set off fireworks, which, as a New Yorker, a guy who lives in cities, I've never really done before.
So, you know, Jeremy and his friends just went out in a field and set up a, it was very dramatic because a storm was coming in across, of course, this open plain.
And so this red dust, this wall of red dust was blowing toward us.
And they started setting off these fireworks.
And I was there with Michael Knowles and Jonathan Hay, who is, you have some new fancy title now.
You're the director of productions, director of production.
Let me tell you how smart our director of production is.
We're setting off these fireworks, right?
And I said, after a while, the three of us are watching.
Knowles and Hay and I are watching.
And I said, I would like to set off some fireworks.
This looks like fun.
And I've never done it before.
So I walked out into the field and joined Jeremy.
And I had a little lighter that I'd been using for a cigar.
And so I pressed the lighter and I set off a firework.
And Knowles said, you know, I'm going to do this and I'm going to use my cigar.
So Knowles stepped up and he touched his cigar to the fireworks.
And Jahey then says, I'm going to do it with my cigar in my mouth.
Okay?
So Jay, these things are taking off.
You've got to understand, these things are taking off.
And first of all, the wind is keeping them low.
So they're exploding right over our heads.
I mean, they're just going out.
And this storm is coming in.
The lightning is going across.
And there's Jahe with his cigar leaning into the fireworks.
And I was thinking, if this thing goes off and blows his brains out, will it make him smarter or dumber?
I don't know how you're getting done.
But he did live, and we all had a great, great time, great Fourth of July.
And the only thing I will say is we found out later that there had been actually two experiences because I had my wife there and Knowles had his fiancé and there were other ladies from the city, from LA.
And they were absolutely terrified.
We didn't know this.
The sparks were raining down on them and then the lightning was coming across and then they were watching their husbands and boyfriends try to widow them and in the morning I got a full report on exactly how frightening it had been from my wife.
But the boys had a good time and all the Texans had a good time.
None of the Texan ladies were afraid.
Only the LA ladies were afraid.
So I guess it wasn't as frightening as all that.
Apology and Threat00:15:51
So there's a lot to talk about today, and there's a lot of news.
And the thing is, I don't even know if we should talk about it.
I mean, there's this North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile.
And, you know, everybody's panicking about that.
They're still a long way from making a nuclear weapon that can fit on the missile.
And in fact, when they shoot these things off, they don't actually shoot them for distance.
They shoot them up.
They do this thing called lofting.
So it goes up into the air, really high, almost into orbit, and then comes down.
And it went about 700 miles or something like this.
But they say this could reach Alaska.
So now our president has to figure out what he's going to do about this.
So this is an important thing.
The other thing, by the way, if you're here in Texas, one of the things about Texas is the best-run state in the Union.
Is that fair?
They only let the legislature meet like every two years or something like this.
What a brilliant idea.
What a brilliant idea.
I mean, I hope that was a compromise between like five years and no years.
You know, and you said, finally let them meet two years.
And so they don't have, you know, there's no taxes, there's no income tax.
There's property taxes, but there's no income tax.
Everybody seems to be able to own property and things are, you know, people are left alone and all this stuff.
As opposed to California, which is just falling off.
You know, there are three blue states now: New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut.
They're going bust.
And in New Jersey, we know they're going bust because they closed the beaches for everyone but the governor.
So we know that they're going broke.
But Texas is really run.
So there's all this news out there, and the news is talking about none of it.
The news is talking about Donald Trump's mean tweets.
Donald Trump's mean tweets.
And now, the actual reporters, the press, has started to bully innocent civilians over Trump's tweets.
So Trump sent out this tweet about Mika Brzezinski, and it was rough.
I have to tell you to begin with, there's a polite reaction you're supposed to have to Trump's tweets.
It goes like this.
I don't agree with Donald Trump making these tweets.
It lowers the office of the presidency, but he's got a point.
That's kind of what people say.
I love his tweets.
I think this is why I want Donald Trump in Washington.
These people stink this media.
They hate.
One of the things is when you actually get out of LA.
Now, the people in LA are actually very nice.
It actually, oddly enough, it's a very lovely city.
But when you get out of LA, when you get out into America, people are really, they're wonderful.
They're just so nice to you and they're so welcoming and they're so hospitable and they'll help you.
If you break down on the side of the road, people will surround you and stop and all this stuff.
And these are the people the media has been insulting for 16 years.
You elected George W. Bush.
He's a Nazi.
George W. Bush is a Nazi.
Obama, he's a saint and he disagrees with everything you think and he thinks you're clinging to your Bibles and guns.
He's a saint.
Now Donald Trump, you say, what were you thinking when you sent Donald Trump to the White House?
I mean, they have just insulted and insulted and insulted people.
And people, ordinary people, don't have a voice like that.
They don't have NBC, which is broadcasting to 20 million people.
They don't have CBS broadcasting to 30 million people.
They have a vote.
They have a vote.
They sent this guy to Washington to tweet mean tweets at you, to get back at you for 20 years of insulting them.
So I actually have no problem with it at all.
So now he sends out this, he retweets a tweet that was a wrestling match that he had been in, a stunt he had been in.
And he's body slammed this guy.
And instead of the face on the guy, it had the CNN logo.
So it was Trump body slamming.
Some guy did this on, what is it, Reddit?
He put it out in Reddit.
And Trump, you know, he's just retweeting stuff and he thought it was funny.
And he sends it out.
Now, I want to give you a sample, just a sample, of how the press reacted to what, after all, is a joke, right?
I mean, it's a joke.
Ha ha ha.
Donald Trump body slams CNN.
Here is Carl Bernstein, who used to be a journalist back in the day.
He was kind of the weak link in the Watergate team.
It was Woodward who went on and actually showed himself to be a journalist.
Even in the movie All the President's Men, Carl Bernstein is kind of the weak link.
Here is his reaction.
Listen for a little bit of self-seriousness and pomposity.
First, it's not just anti-CNN.
It's anti-freedom of the press.
It's anti-freedom of speech.
It is a definitive statement by the President of the United States.
And it also goes to the question that many military leaders in this questions are asked questions raised by military leaders in this country now, by the intelligence community, by people in Congress about the stability of the President of the United States.
This is an index of his state of mind visually.
It's very disturbing.
There's nothing lighthearted about it whatsoever.
It is an incitement.
It is definitive, as I say, in the way this president views a free press and its exercise under the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Way to take a joke, Carl.
It's the end of the Constitution.
This joke, because it's them.
It's not Kathy Griffin holding up the president's severed head, which is that's just a joke.
This is an attack on them.
So this matters.
This is very, very serious stuff.
I just want to play one more sample of this as Chuck Todd is interviewing Tom Price, right?
Tom Price is the director of health and human services.
So he's like the guy.
He is the guy in the news because the Republicans are debating their Senate health bill.
So he is the guy you want to have on your show.
This is a coup.
He's on with Chuck Todd.
Chuck Todd has got the guy.
All America wants to hear what's going to happen to our health care.
How is this going to go forward?
And this is what Chuck Todd is asking.
I'm just asking you as a father, if your son tweeted about a woman like that, what would you say to him?
Chuck, you know, this is really remarkable.
You've got incredible challenges across this nation, incredible challenges around the world.
The challenge that I've been given is to address the health care issues.
And your program, a program with the incredible history of Meet the Press, and that's what you want to talk about?
Let me just suggest to you that the American Secretary talk about the challenges.
I'm asking you to suggest to you that the President of the United States want to talk about the American.
Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, you're blaming me for what the President of the United States has spent his entire week focused on?
No.
Listen to me, with all due respect.
The American people are concerned about a health care system that is not providing choices, where premiums are going up, where there are insurance companies vacating markets all across this land, and that's what they want us to concentrate on.
That's what they want us to fix.
So poor Tom Price is trying to give Chuck Todd the news.
He's trying to talk to him about health care.
He's trying to talk to him about the important issues of the day.
But we've got to get to this tweet.
Would you let your son or daughter send out a tweet like this?
If this were your son or daughter, it's an amazing kind of self-importance.
So then CNN does the unbelievable.
They start to track down the little nerd who puts this thing up on Reddit, okay?
And he's been putting up all kinds of, you know, he's been putting up all kinds of anti-Semitic tweets and bigoted tweets and all this.
You see some little crazy computer guy putting up this stuff.
Trump doesn't know who this is, right?
Trump has no clue who this is.
He just saw a funny tweet where he body slammed CNN and he sends it out.
CNN tracks the guy down, tracks the guy down, threatens to expose him, and then the guy apologizes.
He's terrified, right?
He's getting threats.
He's getting death threats.
He takes down the post and he takes down all his posts and he puts out this fulsome apology.
I mean, it's thuggery of the first.
I mean, remember Joe the Plumber?
Does anybody still remember Joe the Plumber?
Joe the Plumber had the temerity to step up to Barack Obama, the precious, and say to him, you know, what's all this spreading, you know, money around?
What's all this socialism stuff?
And Obama gave it away.
You know, he gave away that he actually was a socialist.
He said spreading the wealth around is good for everybody.
And so the press ganged up on Joe the Plumber.
And of course, we on the right kind of, we didn't overreact to it.
We reacted wrongly to it by making Joe the Plumber into a spokesman or putting him on the media.
That wasn't the point.
The point was not that he was a media personality.
The point was they took this guy, a plumber, and exposed his whole life for asking a candidate for president a question.
So here's a guy who puts out funny tweets and memes on the air, and CNN tracks him down and they wangle this apology and then they publish a threat.
They say, CNN is not publishing this guy's name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again.
CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.
Okay?
It's like a nice meme you've got there.
Be a shame if anything happened to it.
Now, I have to show you how this was reported on CNN, Allison Camerada again.
She thinks this is a happy ending.
She thinks that this is what a wonderful thing that we didn't expose his name and he apologized.
It's all good.
Isn't this lovely?
You've got to listen to this.
And then here comes the remarkable part.
He apologized.
He apologized for having done this.
How often do you hear someone who creates a video that goes viral then say this?
This is what he told CNN.
I would like to apologize for the posts made that were racist, bigoted, and anti-Semitic.
These are the other posts that were on his account.
I am in no way this kind of person.
I would never support any kind of violence or actions against others simply for what they believe in, nor would I carry out any violence against anyone based upon that or support anyone who did.
went on.
He was so...
But then why is there so much stuff on his account?
He deleted it.
But why was it there in the first place?
Because, I mean, in his apology, he says, you know, he thought that these things were sort of funny.
He liked getting a rise out of people on the ground.
It was so obvious.
He also went on to say that he had become addicted to the hate, addicted to the ginning up of people, because this is what happened.
He has a medical condition.
Honestly, he has a problem.
The reason that I think this is so notable, Chris, is because this is a very full-throated, I think, genuine, honest apology.
He has also asked that we not reveal his name or whereabouts, and we at CNN are honoring that because he's apologized, and he thinks that he would then be in danger and at risk if other people knew his name.
We get it.
We understand that.
So I don't know.
I just think that this is just a very interesting addendum to this whole story.
It was certainly not the outcome I would have thought once we tracked him down.
You know, and I think it's actually a nice thing.
That's a nice thing.
It's a nice thing we blackmailed and bullied this guy into silence and apology.
He's cringing on the floor.
CNN, listen, I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, but the mailbag is coming up.
So you've got to come over to the dailywire.com.
You can hear it there, or you could subscribe for a lousy eight.
It's still a lousy eight bucks a month, right?
Till when?
July 10th?
July 10th.
The prices go up to, I think, $15,000 a minute, isn't it?
And then, so you want to get in, but they won't go up if you've already subscribed.
So subscribe.
If you subscribe annually, you get Ben Shapiro's new book, and you can ask questions on the mailbag.
So come on over to TheDailyWire.com.
So to me, I got to say, I just find this utterly disgusting.
I mean, I find it utterly disgusting that a corporation the size of CNN or any media, because the media has so much power.
They have so much power.
They just turn a button and they reach a million people, 20 million people, so many people.
And this guy is like in his mother's, here's what I think we should do.
I wish I knew how to make memes.
You know how to meme.
Knowles knows how to make memes, yeah.
I think we should all make these memes.
And I don't want to see anything disgusting.
I don't want to see people's heads, you know, on pikes or anything like that.
But let's just keep them coming.
You know, put CNN's face on anybody who is like falling on a banana peel or dropping down a flight of stairs.
Anybody who's like being, you know, like the, you know, the, who is a wily coyote blowing himself up?
Put CNN, just put him out, just keep putting them out there because they can't come after all of us.
We've got the numbers.
They can take out one of us, but they can't take out us all.
Meanwhile, meanwhile, President DeDonald is having the time of his life.
He could care less.
They keep saying somebody in the Washington Post actually wrote an article saying this could be the end of the Trump administration.
And I thought, I couldn't hear you from outside the bubble.
You know, I couldn't hear you outside the iron bubble.
This could be the end of the Trump administration.
This is the purpose of the Trump administration.
This is why people like the Trump administration.
So the president goes up and he's giving, I guess, a 4th of July speech in D.C.
And he just went off on the press.
The fake media is trying to silence us, but we will not let them.
Because the people know the truth.
The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House.
But I'm president and they're not.
We won and they lost.
The fact is the press has destroyed themselves because they went too far.
Instead of being subtle and smart, they used a hatchet.
And the people saw it right from the beginning.
The dishonest media will never keep us from accomplishing our objectives on behalf of our great American people.
Will never happen.
So we cut that for brevity, but the cheers when he said, I'm the president and they're not, we won and they lost.
They went on for about, it went on for about five minutes.
I mean, it was like this long standing ovation.
People just cheering and cheering and just, you know, showering the guy with love.
Is there anybody in America when he says the press tried to stop us, we won, they lost?
Is there anyone who doesn't believe that?
You know, in other words, even if you don't support Donald Trump, if you don't like Donald Trump, even if you voted for Hillary Clinton, there can be no mistake which side the press is on.
There can be no mistake who they represent.
They represent the Democrats.
They represent the left.
And Trump knows it.
And it's us against them.
And look, you can talk about the moral hazard.
We need a free press.
We love the free press.
It's kind of, in a way, things are working better under Donald Trump than they were for the last eight years because at least the press is antagonistic to the people in power, where for the last eight years, it was like looking the other way and everything.
You know, you want to use the IRS to target ordinary citizens?
Fine, that's fine.
You know, it's like, whatever, you know, you want to, your attorney general is corrupt.
That's okay.
That's fine.
You know, so at least the press is sort of doing what they're supposed to be doing.
In a way, it's working better.
But they just don't like the fact that he fights back.
And I think for most Americans, certainly for the Americans who elected him and for me, who was only a reluctant voter for Donald Trump, I love to watch it.
I love to watch it.
I think these people have been, have abused their power.
They have abused their power, and they've abused it in the worst possible way, which is they've abused it against people who don't have power.
Adam On ISIS00:02:44
It's one thing, if ABC wants to go after CBS, fine, you know, that's fine.
But when they're going after, they're going after every person who ever voted against their will, whoever voted against the things that the press will.
I just want to play one more thing, and then we'll get to the mailbag.
That Scott Adams, who has been one of the best observers of Donald Trump, he's the guy who does the Dilbert cartoons.
He's a very funny guy.
And he was just, he went on and he did, what is it, Facebook Live, I guess, Periscope.
Is that what they call Periscope?
And he goes on and he does these periscope things on Facebook Live.
And he was talking about the fact that, you know, we're beating ISIS.
I mean, ISIS is basically in Raqqa, their capital, and they're being destroyed.
And this is after Mathis changed the policy to annihilate them.
You know, we got rid of lead from behind.
It's like, let's annihilate them.
And now they're being annihilated.
So this is Adam's remark on the death of ISIS.
And on the surface, again, it looks like President Trump gave General Mattis, you know, a very capable general free reign to handle this thing.
And it looks like he brought it to, with the help of the Allies, of course, to a fairly speedy success point.
You know, we're not done, but it looks on the surface like these things are good.
But imagine how much faster ISIS could have been defeated if Trump had never tweeted that thing about Morning Joe.
Because you know the ISIS fighters who are over there, they're probably under fire.
You know, they're ducking down and stuff.
And then suddenly they get an alert on their smartphone and they pull out the phone and they're still shooting, of course.
But they're reading the phone.
It's like, President Trump tweeted what?
Throws down the phone, grabs up two guns, rededicates himself to the fight.
And now it's a much tougher fight.
I mean, how many people died in ISIS territory just because of that tweet?
I mean, more than a few, right?
I mean, I'm not saying he killed millions, but even one person is too much.
So that's how many people died because of that tweet.
So many people.
Even one would be too many.
So that's got Adam.
So what you've got is this nothing.
Basically, the North Koreans are building a missile that eventually they will want to use to destroy us.
Our president is trying to figure out how do you deal with that.
The options are not good.
We don't have the tactical nuclear weapons off.
But what the press are angry because they were body slammed in a meme by Donald Trump.
I just think we should churn out these memes.
I think we should spend the next two weeks, meme after meme after meme.
See it, CNN dropping off cliffs, you know, their beds falling apart, anything, anything we can think of.
Public Figure's Dilemma00:13:54
All right, the mailbag.
Woohoo!
We have Lindsay Boring, who was singing last night at the 4th of July.
She was doing great, and her husband, Will, was playing guitar.
He was fantastic.
I mean, he was doing that riff from Hotel California, one of my least favorite songs, and he actually made it sound good.
He was really, really tough.
All right, the mailbag.
Sir Andrew of Clavingham.
My relationship with my dad has always had a deep rift.
It's a long story, of course, but the long and short of it is that he forced me to recognize his flaws and imperfections way before I was ready.
Now, my question: do you credit religion solely for allowing you to come to a level of acceptance with your father?
If you did not have a steadfast connection to your Christianity, do you still feel like you'd have reached that level of clarity and acceptance?
I can answer this question in two stages.
Before, I was very stubborn about accepting God.
And as long as I was miserable, which I was for the first 28 years of my life, as long as I was miserable, I refused to come to God because I thought that would be a crutch.
I could only come to God when I had solved my emotional problems.
So I got therapy and I worked on it and it really was great.
And it lifted me above the anger I felt at my father, who was just, he just never took to me.
We never got along.
We were always at daggers drawn.
And it lifted me above the psychological problems that your father gives you because your father is your world, basically.
He is your model of manhood.
He's what you want to be.
And if you look at him and think, I don't want to be that, then you're at war with yourself because you still want to be your father, but then you don't.
And it really creates this terrible tension.
I worked that out.
I worked that out in secular terms.
I worked that out as talking to a shrink and working it through and all those things.
It was only when I came to Christ that I forgave him.
And that's a very different thing.
And that was an immensely freeing moment in my life.
And it was a willed thing.
It was not an emotional thing.
I did not say, I emotionally forgive him.
I said, I will myself to forgive him.
I will forgiveness for my father.
You know, look, he was a good, the funny thing about my old man is he was a good guy.
He was not a bad guy.
People loved him.
He was a great guy to work for.
He treated my mother great.
My marriage is based on his marriage.
I would not have the spectacular marriage I have if he had not been so nice to my mother.
It was just something about me that just got on his nerves, and he was constantly trying to break my will, and I'm a very stubborn guy, so I fought back, and that's what it was.
So it took me, and, you know, again, he had the power.
I was the little guy.
The little guy is always, you know, my sympathy is always with the little guy.
And so it was through Christ that I forgave him, but I'm glad, I'm glad that I worked through it in secular terms as well.
I worked through my anger.
I worked through the chinks in my mind, the knots in my mind that that relationship with my father had caused me.
But forgiving him was a truly remarkable experience.
It was just like letting go of this weight, you know, having this weight on your shoulder suddenly turn into a balloon.
I don't know.
I can't speak for everybody.
I don't know if you can do that without Jesus.
I really don't.
But I couldn't, and it was a wonderful, wonderful experience.
From Seamus, is supporting the temporary refugee ban or a border wall contrary to Christianity?
Not to my mind.
You know, they always sell these things to you on grounds of compassion.
Look at these poor people coming over.
They're coming over from Syria.
What are we going to do?
How can we not put them in Michigan?
You know, what's wrong with you?
We have all this wonderful place in Michigan.
But just because they're using those words, that doesn't mean that it's the most compassionate thing to do, where you might be able to set up refugee camps in their own country so they can go back.
It might be bad for Michigan to bring in a lot of people who aren't in favor of the kind of government we have, of the kind of freedoms we have, of the kind of Christianity.
It might be bad for America, which might in turn be bad for the world.
I think it is.
I think a lot of this has to do with a group of people, a small group of elite people who have a vision of a world without nation states because they think they're going to be in charge of it.
And people like us, George Soros has said it as much.
George Soros has said, the greatest obstacle to world peace is the United States of America.
And that's his opinion.
So he wants to get, this gets rid of it, you know.
So no, not at all.
Just because they use Christian words, just because they sell it to you in Christian terms, that doesn't mean it's a Christian thing to do.
All right, from Michael.
Hi, Andrew.
I just found out my wife is pregnant.
Congratulations, I hope.
I'm turning 30 in August, and my wife and I both have fine jobs and loving parents.
We are very lucky in ways many people aren't, and I'm grateful for that.
I know this is how life moves along, but I am absolutely terrified and do not feel ready to have a kid.
I just don't know how people do it with money, especially.
We're working on saving for a house, but it just doesn't feel like we are prepared at all.
Is there any advice you have that could calm me down?
Thanks, Mike.
Yeah.
First of all, children come, as my own father used to say, every child comes with a loaf of bread in its mouth.
You'll find the money.
Don't worry about it.
You will find the money.
Your child will not starve.
You guys sound like you have it together.
You have a loving marriage.
You have a loving family.
You'll find a way.
Secondly, and people who don't have, is there anybody here who doesn't have children?
Well, you, you don't count.
You're not even.
But people who don't have children hate when I say this.
Until you have children, you really are not seeing life.
You are not seeing the third dimension of life.
You know, in theater, they have a thing called a scrim, which is just a mock background that looks like it's three-dimensional, but it's just painting on a background.
Until you have children, you are living in a scrim world.
And when you have a child, you break through and you will be alive.
You know, they take these polls all the time.
Are parents happier or less happy than people who don't have children?
They always come out and say they're less happy.
Well, the fact is, they're less happy and they're more happy.
They're more alive.
They're more everything.
You will never be as afraid as you are when you have a child.
You will never be as joyful as you are when you have a child.
Your wife is about to not only give this child life, but it's about to give you life.
It's about to give the two of you life.
Life like you have never seen it before.
It really is like right now you're watching a movie of life and now you're about to step through into life.
Should you be terrified?
Absolutely be terrified.
Of course you should be terrified.
You're being put in charge of another soul.
Of course you should be terrified.
But being terrified is nothing.
It's like, you remember the great movie Roadhouse where he says pain don't hurt?
Fear don't hurt either.
You know, you're going to be afraid.
A friend of mine when his wife got pregnant said to me, when do you stop worrying?
And I said, stop?
Who told you you stop worrying?
You don't stop worrying.
Children are, they really are.
And I'm not, you know, I know they can be terribly difficult.
I know they can lead into some of the worst difficulties.
You're only ever as happy as your least happy child.
You know, you will live and die with your children and you'll be up and down with your children.
But it's life.
It is not just the way life moves along.
It is life itself.
Dear Supreme Leader Clavin, I hope you don't mind when they use my proper titles.
What are your thoughts on speaking in tongues and other miraculous gifts from God?
My girlfriend thinks there are two different types of spiritual tongues, one of them for missionaries in an earthly language and the other for a private prayer language to God.
Should I accept that all of God's ways are not known to me or should I be concerned?
We certainly shouldn't be concerned.
I actually know nothing about this.
That's going to be my answer to this.
I know nothing.
I've never seen anybody speak in tongues before.
I assume, you know, in the Bible, it seems to me when they speak in tongues, they're actually speaking other languages.
Like on Epiphany, right, everybody's gathered around and says all the people recognize their own language.
So they're not speaking double talk.
They're speaking Greek and they're speaking, you know, whatever they were speaking all the different languages.
So I always thought that that's what speaking in tongues meant.
But I have seen guys on television, like preachers on television who I didn't really trust very much, you know, coming out with double talk and saying, oh, I'm inspired and send me a check and touch the television and you'll be healed.
And I think that that's a little different.
So that's all I know.
All I know about God can do whatever he wants.
If there's something going on, as long as it's not hurting your wife, I don't see why you should be worried about it at all.
Let's see.
I guess I have time.
I started this timer a little late, so I'm just trying to calculate how much time I have.
I can do one more.
All right, thanks.
My longtime girlfriend and I, from Richard, my long-time girlfriend and I are planning on getting married next year after deciding it is time to have children.
However, she is undecided on whether or not she wants to take my last name.
What are your thoughts on this topic?
Perhaps you could help me to convince her.
P.S.
The world needs more Weiss and Bishops, a trilogy of detective stories I wrote, starring detectives named Weiss and Bishop, and the world does need more Weiss and Bishop, and they're not going to get it because I don't have time to write another one.
But I strongly believe in taking your husband's name for a number of reasons.
The most politically incorrect one of which, which has never stopped me from saying anything before, is I do believe in a leadership role for husbands and fathers.
I do believe that you are taking over the leadership from a father.
This is the thing that always has gotten me that feminists say, why take your husband's name?
And I think, well, you're keeping your father's.
So what's the difference?
And then what does your child do?
When he's got, you know, when he's Smith and Wesson, you know, then when he marries the colt, he has become Smith, Wesson, Colt.
I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me.
Become a family.
Become a new family.
That's what you're doing.
You're becoming a new family.
A new family has a name.
I think it should be the name of the husband.
If you've got to make one up, make one up, but become a family.
You know, do not become, they're not, don't dwell in the past.
You know, become one flesh and have a new family.
And why do your children have to not know who they are?
You are this family, this new thing that you have built together.
And I guess I have to stop.
They're telling me on the mic.
So here's stuff I like.
And this is just in keeping with what we're talking about.
For a very brief time, back in the 80s, Hollywood started to understand how abusive the media was because they were getting nailed.
Movie stars were getting nailed by paparazzi and stuff like this.
So it actually became an issue that the press could lie.
And Paul Newman and Sally Field made a movie in 1981 directed by Sidney Pollack, one of the really great directors, called Absence of Malice.
And the reason it's called Absence of Malice is if you are covering a public figure, so it's your decision, you know, it's a judge's decision whether he's a public figure.
You basically, if you're a public figure, you can't sue for libel unless you can prove malice in the newspaper.
How can you do that?
Like, how could Donald Trump prove that the press has malice against him?
He's a public figure.
They're criticizing the president.
It's kind of their right to do it.
He can't do it.
So this is about an ordinary guy.
He's the son of a gangster, Paul Newman.
And Sally Field is a reporter comes after him on a story.
And here's a scene where she goes to the newspaper lawyer and says, can we be sued?
Because basically all she has is hearsay.
And this is what the lawyer tells her.
I'm not a whit interested in the facts.
I'm concerned with the law.
And the question is not whether your story is true.
The question is, what protection do we have if it proves to be false?
Now then, Mr. Gallagher is not a public official, nor is he likely to become one.
Petty?
Is he a public figure?
He's not going to sue, for God's sake.
So what does it take to make him a public figure?
If I knew that, I should be a judge.
They never tell us till it's too late.
I must admit, I'd be more comfortable if he were a movie star or a football coach.
Football coaches are very safe indeed.
Have we spoken with Mr. Gallagher?
We don't exactly call the mafia for comment.
Please make the attempt.
If he talks to us, we'll include his denials, which will create the appearance of fairness.
If he declines to speak, we can hardly be responsible for errors which he refuses to correct.
And if we fail to reach him, at least we've tried.
What are you telling me, counselor?
I'm telling you, madam, that as a matter of law, the truth of your story is irrelevant.
We have no knowledge of the story as false, therefore we're absent malice.
We've been both reasonable and prudent, therefore we're not negligent.
We may say whatever we like about Mr. Gallagher, and he is powerless to do us harm.
So that was the press as Hollywood depicted them as villains for a change because the presses are usually, the press in unions and teachers, public school teachers, are always heroes in movies.
And this was one of the rare exceptions where they actually depicted the press as being irresponsible, intrusive, and ultimately truly damaging.
I don't want to give anything away.
The performance by Paul Newman is absolutely spectacular.
He has a couple of scenes with Sally Field because there starts to be some sexual tension between them.
He has a couple of scenes with her where it is excellent, excellent American movie acting, absence of malice.
Really good film, worth getting.
That's it.
The show is over.
I hope it was worth coming.
I hope you're not the entire audience.
I hope there is a listing somewhere else.
We'll be back tomorrow.
We will be at the Blaze Studios at Glenn Beck's Blaze Studios in Dallas.
So we're moving from Cisco to Dallas as we wend our way back to beautiful downtown Los Angeles.
If they can bring us back, they may have to come and hunt us down and bring us back.