Josiah Clavin dissects media’s baseless attacks on Trump over Hurricane Harvey, praising local reporters like Brandi Smith and Ed Lavendera while mocking CNN’s "sexist" narratives. He warns a caller about marrying a Muslim woman from Istanbul without deeper understanding, then contrasts faith with wishful thinking using aviation science. Defining a "real man" as principled—not physically dominant—he advises self-forgiveness after mistakes. Politically, he ties societal decline to the collapse of "bourgeois culture," citing Amy Wax’s Paying the Price, and argues Trump’s disruption of racial narratives exposes liberal policies’ unintended harm, framing his presidency as a necessary reckoning despite flaws. [Automatically generated summary]
At a time of national trial when the good people of the great state of Texas are suffering under a horrific natural disaster, even some of the worst people in the country are lifting their eyes toward heaven.
I'm speaking, of course, of American mainstream media journalists.
Even in the deepest cesspits of satanic sin, like CNN or the New York Times, a former newspaper, the most desiccated, twisted souls destined for a flaming hell of unbearable suffering, like CNN or the New York Times, a former newspaper, are looking to God and asking him the one question that is first and foremost on every mainstream media journalist's mind.
Dear Lord, how can we find a way to blame this hurricane on Donald Trump?
Even a heart of stone must pity these miserable sinners in their distress.
Maybe not.
But it is kind of pathetic to watch their struggles.
Journalists have tried claiming that Trump shouldn't have gone to the scene of the hurricane because it diverted needed resources.
But people still remember how they blame George W. Bush for not going to the scene of a hurricane.
So this only makes the journalists look like dishonest, biased, corrupt Democrat hacks who wouldn't know the truth if it rose up like an alligator out of the floodwaters and bit them on the backside.
Not that I'm hoping that'll happen.
It would be kind of comical, you must admit.
They've tried blaming Trump for not believing in their hysterical hype about the naturally changing climate.
But meteorologists confirm that this hurricane had nothing to do with the changing climate.
And so the journalists only managed to make themselves look like brain-dead, ill-informed, left-wing propagandists who wouldn't know a fact if it sidled up beside them like a gigantic elephant and crapped on their heads.
Not that I would wish that on them.
Okay, wait, I probably would wish that on them.
Anyway, they've been blaming Trump for tweeting, but it turned out Trump was capable of tweeting with one hand while arranging for the federal government to coordinate disaster relief with the other.
So the journalists only ended up looking like petty, spiteful, hate-filled low-lifes who wouldn't admit Trump was doing a good job if you stuck a pair of pliers down their throats and dragged the words out one by one.
Which I would never do, probably.
Amazingly, the journalists have even attacked Melania Trump for wearing high heels as she got on the transport to go give comfort to the victims of the disaster.
An attack so sexist, rude, and stupid that it only served to make the journalists seem like sexist, rude, and stupid, petty, spiteful, hate-filled, brain-dead, ill-informed, dishonest, biased, corrupt, Democrat hack, low-life left-wing propagandists who look so appalling next to the decent, everyday Americans they despise that I could almost feel for them if I weren't busy feeling for those decent, everyday Americans who make journalists look like ghaffifi.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky, life is ticky-boom.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-kunky-kucky.
Shipsha, tipsy-topsy, no one does it bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
I hope I wasn't being unkind to those lovely journalists.
Stamps.com Subscription Offer00:02:15
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It sells itself.
Exactly.
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It sells itself.
And it's filled with leftists.
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They don't speak New York.
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Flags and Glory Montage00:05:28
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So before I rip into our corrupt, biased left-wing media, which I am about to do, let me just say a couple of actual kind words about them because we all attack them, but there are some of them.
I actually want to say nice words about.
There's a video going around of a victim of the hurricane who has just gotten her kids off the roof, you know, and gotten them out.
And a CNN reporter comes up to her and she goes off on her.
Nobody could blame her, obviously, for going off and for just being hyped up.
And this has been kind of going viral because everybody likes to see CNN picked on, as in fact, CNN as an institution well deserves.
So here is this moment when this poor woman actually has had enough of being interviewed.
But y'all sit here, y'all trying to interview people during their worst times.
Like, that's not the smartest thing to do.
Like, people are really breaking down, and y'all sitting here with cameras and microphones trying to ask us what the is wrong with us.
You're really trying to understand it with the microphone still in my face.
So I have to say that obviously we all love to see reporters get yelled at, but the woman, I actually felt for the woman from CNN.
That's her job.
That is her job.
I've had to do this job.
It is so unpleasant.
I have had to call mourning parents on the day their kids died.
It is just a terrible, terrible thing.
And the thing is, you're putting together a story.
The only way that a news agency can put together a story is one person at a time.
A story like this that is massive and big.
And you have to do this.
And so obviously the woman, no one can blame the victim for going off on the woman.
But this is what they have to do.
And, you know, the media was insanely unfair and incompetent in covering Katrina.
I mean, they reported all kinds of atrocities that didn't happen.
They treated George W. Bush like it was his fault.
The levees broke, which was insane.
It was the fault of a Democrat government.
One of the most corrupt governments in the world was New Orleans up until that moment.
And yet, and yet, even so, by putting pressure on the government, the response to Hurricane Harvey has been much better because they have corrected the mistakes they made for Hurricane Katrina.
So, before I rip these reporters as they deserve, let's take a look.
You know, when a big story like this happens, local reporters get their big chance.
And so they're out there for the first time, you know, you're on some little station in the middle of nowhere or a little station, even in Houston, which is not that little, but still, you're not on a national scale.
And suddenly you're covering a national story.
Here are a couple of reporters.
I'm going to name them.
KHOU11 reporter Brandi Smith.
This is a CBS affiliate.
She was in the middle of doing a story.
She was in the middle of doing a story when she saw a truck sinking in the water and a truck driver stuck inside it.
And remember, this is a woman who's getting the big chance of her career and she wants to stay on camera and do a good job.
Ed Lavendera from CNN saw an elderly couple and helped them into a boat.
KTRK, which is an ABC affiliate, reporter Fody Calergas rescued some disabled people off a roof.
And even though it's not as important, but it still touched me, it was meteorologist Paul Goodlow from the Weather Channel who saw an American flag in the wreckage.
Here's a montage of these reporters.
The incident response team that was over here on the Hardy Toll Road is not here.
Here we go.
We have a boat coming.
We have a boat coming.
I'm going to flag these guys down and see.
Hold on just a second.
Are you guys are you guys headed down to the truck right here?
There's a truck driver stuck here in about 10 feet of water Thank you.
We were about to leave this neighborhood.
There was a woman who had kind of flagged us down that her and her two elderly parents were still stuck inside the home So I'm gonna put the mic down.
We're gonna help them try to get back into into the boats look they're flashing the light I think they probably want us to maybe get one of those people that's up there.
We can take you guys if you need an elderly sick person yeah bring two handicapped two sick and disabled and two in wheelchairs right now.
I don't know how strong the winds have to be to cut a palm tree in half, but that's what happened at the top of this tree.
But next to it, we've got old Glory.
I can't let old Glory just sit here like that.
The school, yeah, it's battered.
So is the flag.
We've got to fold this up.
Make sure this isn't a casualty to Hurricane Harvey.
That's great stuff.
That was great stuff.
You know, these are local reporters, obviously, getting a big break and putting aside their story for a minute to help people out.
And I think they deserve tribute.
Most of the time, I have real serious problems, as anyone who listens to this or watches the show knows, with our media.
Local Heroes Respond00:14:48
I think that they are the source of so much of the political problems in our country by dividing us, by selling this narrative that there is a Democrat.
They're just all Democrats, and they talk to Democrats, and they think they're not being biased.
They actually are under the delusion that they're not being biased because each one of them reinforces the other's opinion.
And they push this narrative that there is their Democrat policies and then there's hatred, Democrat policies and hatred.
That's it.
And this is where the justification of these Antifa guys going out and beating people up.
They think, oh, you know, you disagree with us.
You're hateful.
There's certain things that can't be stood without answering them with violence, like anyone who disagrees with us.
And that is the narrative the media pushes.
But most of the time, it is not street reporters.
Street reporters are, most of them, animals.
They want the facts.
They want to get the incident.
They want to be on the scene.
They want to see what goes down.
They want to find the information and get it back.
It's when it hits the editorial staff and the guys at the desks that the pollution of this bias starts to occur.
So yesterday, we just saw this in spades.
I mean, it was unbelievable.
Donald Trump went down.
To.
He went down to Corpus Christi.
He didn't want to go to Houston because that's where all the stuff is happening.
You didn't want to divert resources, that you know.
It takes a lot of resources obviously, to take care of the president.
So he didn't do that, went down to Corpus Christi and he talked let's just take a look.
First he went out and he talked to a crowd at a place where they, you know they were gathering uh the, the people who were homeless.
This has been a a total cooperative effort.
Again, we will see you soon.
I will tell you this is historic, it's epic what happened, but you know what.
It happened in Texas and Texas can handle anything.
Thank you, all folks, thank you.
So we remember, of course, that George W Bush, he was at uh, his ranch when hurricane Katrina hit.
He did not immediately go down, he flew over it because he didn't want to divert resources.
He didn't want to divert resources for him.
And they just remember, you know, George W Bush doesn't like black people and the black people, you know, the racist coverage was unbelievable.
The black people were eating each other in the stadiums, things like that was just totally untrue, completely untrue.
But they, that coverage was all blamed on George W Bush.
So Donald Trump goes down and he makes an appearance, and so what they said was they made fun of him because he said what a great crowd.
And they thought well, it's a refugee area.
So of course it's a great crowd.
But he was referring to the fact that people drove up to see him.
They were cheering him there were about a thousand people uh, that the press didn't even turn their cameras on and they were cheering and waving him and he reacted to that as anybody would, and so he was cheering people up.
And then he went and he talked to uh Greg Abbott is the governor's name, right and he talked and he went to the, the UH emergency center and gave thanks to all the people around and, in typical Trumpian terms, he talked about the fact that they're going to do a good job and take care of everybody.
I can tell you that my folks is telling me how, how great your representatives have been in working together.
Uh, it's a real team and uh, we want to do it better than ever before.
We want to be looked at in five years and ten years from now as this is the way to do it.
This was of epic proportion.
Nobody's ever seen anything like this, and I just want to say that working with the governor and his entire team has been an honor for us.
So governor again, thank you very much.
And we won't say congratulations.
We don't want to do that.
We don't want to congratulate.
We'll congratulate each other when it's all finished.
But uh, you have been really terrible and you've been my friend here for a long time.
He gets that just right.
We're not going to congratulate each other because it's still underway.
We know there are mistakes that can be made.
We this This is obviously what has happened to Houston is now happening in Louisiana too, as Hurricane Harvey moves along the Gulf.
You know, this is going to go on for years.
This is what is happening now is going to go on for years.
People are going to be homeless.
Rebuilding is going to be just terribly, terribly difficult, finding housing for people and all this stuff.
The government is going to be involved in this for years.
This is what the government is for.
This is when we can all agree that government has to do what it has to do.
And the word is that so far Trump is doing a great job.
And this is the funny thing about Donald Trump.
This is what he does.
This is what he likes.
He wants to fix stuff.
He does, this is the best thing about him is he wants to fix stuff.
You ask him about, when they asked him about racism, he said it's going to get better because people are going to have jobs and their pay is going to be good.
And because I'm going to fix that, you know, he doesn't have a spiritual sense of the world that he has to go out and sort of lead people in their spirits.
What he does is he fixes stuff.
And this is a big, big, big fix-it job, and he is in his element.
Tevi Troy at the Wall Street Journal writes, so far, his administration is largely getting praise for effective handling of the crisis.
Washington's disaster authorities appear to be in sync with the state on roles and responsibilities, which is very big.
I'm sure you've all seen crime shows on television where the state and the local cops and the feds are at odds.
That really does happen.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, and its leader, Brock Long, deployed resources as Harvey approached, and the government response as a whole appears well coordinated.
I give FEMA a grade of A all the way from the president down.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott told Fox News Sunday: And yes, Mr. Abbott is a fellow Republican, but he is also interested in protecting Texas and would not have said A plus if the state weren't getting what it needed.
That assessment is backed up by Rear Admiral W. Craig von der Wagen, a former career emergency manager who is plugged into the Harvey effort.
Early read, he told Tevi Troy in an email, is that the executive branch is performing well under this president.
Okay?
That's all you need to know.
That's all anybody has to say.
You don't like Donald Trump too bad.
He's doing a good job.
People are in trouble.
The president is there.
This is a montage of the talking point between MSNBC and CNN, the talking point all day yesterday as they covered this.
And it is, I mean, it's a disgrace.
It's a disgrace.
Empathy's never been as strong as he was.
He didn't hug a mom or hold a baby or shake someone's hand or ask a senior how they were doing.
It was really remarkable.
He acted like this was a big field trip and it was the biggest and the best response and we're going to congratulate each other later.
It was typical Donald Trump without an ounce of empathy.
But has he ever been exposed to a situation?
And Jim, those words there show that the president is still very much learning on the job in terms of empathy, learning on the job in terms of how to react and relate to the individuals here who are the human element seemed to be absent outside of the self-congratulatory gestures of the conference.
I mean, of the press conference, it seems to me it's just concerned about optics, just concerned about optics.
And I want to be concerned.
I wish they would be concerned about people.
They were saying that it's going to be key to see the way he has real feelings and real empathy.
How does he respond in this first big situation like this?
What will you be looking for?
The empathy factor.
There's the response there is making people feel like he's engaged and he's going to be a leader.
That's what President Trump is trying to convey today in his visit, and appropriately so.
He is going to have to show some real feeling, some real empathy to the people in Texas that have been hit in this devastating manner.
Way.
It remains to be seen what the empathy factor is going to be here.
So, basically, what they're saying is he doesn't pretend to care the way we pretend.
You know, we really pretend well.
We pretend to care.
All he's doing is helping people, encouraging them, making sure the money gets there, making sure all the services get there.
That's not pretending to care the way we pretend.
We put on these sad, serious faces.
We're really good at this.
He's not so good.
I mean, it is absolutely disgraceful.
And just before we break, I have to just point out that that one guy on CNN with the glasses, that's Jeff Selaney, who used to be the White House correspondent of the New York Times and used the opportunity to first question the new president Barack Obama to ask this classic, classic question.
Thank you, Mr. President.
During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office, enchanted you the most about serving in this office, humbled you the most, and troubled you the most?
Now, let me write this down.
What a worm.
I'm sorry.
It's a worm.
It's like it's all just hatred being generated by them.
We have to break from Facebook and YouTube, and the mailbag is coming up.
This means that you are going to be stuck, mired in your problems, unless you come on over to the dailywire.com to listen.
And while you're there, you could subscribe and watch the show and be in the mailbag yourself.
You can even send in questions live while I'm talking, and we will try to answer those as well.
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Leftist tears.
No Steven Crowder.
We have to go on with this just a little bit because the coverage of this, I mean, who do they think they're kidding?
Do they think anybody is anybody this stupid?
I mean, I guess if you already are ravening with Trump hatred, if the drool, the zombie look in your eyes is like you so hate this president that you just want to feed the hatred.
I mean, I notice when you go on the New York Times website, the most popular articles are always the ones attacking Donald Trump.
Let's take a trip for a minute to the op-ed page of the New York Times, or as we like to call it, Knucklehead Row.
So Frank Bruni, who just spews hatred.
I mean, it's just all he does.
He says, the waters swell, so does Trump's ego.
I would like to believe that what fascinated Donald Trump about the floodwaters of Texas and pulled him to the state on Tuesday were the scenes of human suffering.
I would also like to believe that I'm a dead ringer for Brad Pitt.
He could have said, I would also like to believe I'm a journalist.
But what Trump saw in Hurricane Harvey was a mirror of his own majesty, a storm worthy of a stud like him, a meteorological compliment to one of his resorts, rallies, or stakes, something really, really big.
He was just there to feed his own ego.
My question to that is: what is he reporting?
He's reporting his own hatred.
That's all he's reporting.
He has no facts.
There's no, you know, there's nothing to say that this is what Trump was doing.
Trump went down there to help, and he's been trying to fix things.
Here's my favorite.
This is from Slate.com.
Houston doesn't showcase America at its best.
It's just Katie Waldman.
I swear, these people are like, they're just like, you know, they've been, the hatred has turned them into zombies.
It's misleading to characterize Houston as an exhibition of the best of America when what it represents is a contingent America, a paradise specific to the hell around it.
These waterlogged suburbs have become zones of exemption where norms hang suspended and something lovelier and more communal has been allowed to flourish in their place.
What she's saying is she's referencing a theory, making reference to a theory that in emergencies, the best come out of people, but then they go back to being awful, which is, you know, that's ridiculous.
In an emergency, that's when people are called upon to do their best, and they do.
But these people are neighbors and friends, and they're different colors and all this.
They're so invested in telling themselves that we hate one another as much as they hate us.
That's what it really comes down to.
It's we hate one another.
They want to make sure that we hate one another as much as they despise us.
This is the mainstream media on display.
If the best has been brought out in the citizens of Houston, why hasn't it brought out the best in them?
Why is the New York Times, the New York Times, is attacking Melania Trump's shoes and not just the New York Times?
It was all over.
She wore these stiletto heels to get on the transport to go.
And on the transport, she, as women often do, she changed into the shoes she needed.
She changed into sneakers.
Vanessa Friedman, the New York Times, when is a shoe not just a shoe?
When it is a pair of very high, needle-thin heels worn by the first lady of the United States on her way to the site of a natural disaster.
Then it becomes a symbol for what many see as the disconnect between the Trump administration and reality.
Another example of the way in which this president and his family can continue to define appropriate their own way and an excuse for partisan name-calling.
That's the New York Times.
In the Washington Post, there was no pretense about Melania Trump's heels, but sometimes a little pretense helps.
This is Robin Given.
Melania Trump is the kind of woman who travels to a flood-ravaged state in a pair of black snakeskin stilettos.
You know, is it me?
This is the most sexist thing.
What business is it of hers what they wear?
You know, I mean, what business is of their what she wears?
Even Trevor Noah, unfunny comedian, but a total reliable leftist, even he went off on this.
Listen to him.
She went to Houston wearing high heels.
Oh, and she's getting a lot of flack for it.
Online, predominantly, but it counts.
And here's my thing: I don't know why anyone should care what anyone wears when they're on their way to help people.
And people are like, why is she wearing those heels when she's going to help people?
Like, who cares?
Look at the Pope.
You see how he dresses?
Look at that.
All white with giant blue.
He looks like he's going to a P. Diddy party.
Like, but we don't say, hey, you can't go out helping people dress like that.
That's actually fairly funny.
Not bad.
You know, what is funny about all this is that the news is trying to create the image of itself.
They are trying to create this image.
They are so partisan, so one-sided, so filled with hate for this president.
I mean, really, they are filled with hate for this president.
And we're going to get back to that at the end of the show in our tickety boo news segment.
We're going to talk about the president some more, talk about a balanced way of looking at him.
But they're so filled with hate that they want to find the division they feel within themselves.
They want to find it everywhere.
They cannot simply report when the president does a good job.
Believe In Logical Fact00:12:40
They can't do it.
They want to make sure that hate keeps boiling.
They want to make sure we stay divided.
They want to make sure Antifos still has some justification for the violence they do because that violence is inspired and condoned by the way the press treats Trump.
And they just want to make sure that the narrative of this is a racist, divided, hate-filled country never goes away because that's what's in their hearts.
As Jesus said, it's what comes out of a man's heart that corrupts a man.
And these people, we are watching their corruption.
It is absolutely disgusting.
Especially when you put it next to the everyday Americans of every color and every description and every politics, I'm sure.
You put them next to that, these everyday guys who the press despises who are rising to these levels of nobility and grandeur and decency that just make the press, they just look disgusting.
They look disgusting.
I hope I wasn't beating around the bush there.
I hope I was clear on how I feel about our mainstream media.
It's the mailbag.
All right.
From Richard, writer of books with words, Claven.
A reference to our friend Michael Knowles, who can't seem to understand what all those pages between the covers are for.
You are clear.
I'm going to be on Knowles' show later on.
So yeah, that'll be interesting.
Yeah.
You are clearly working many hours, spending long days perfecting shows and carving out time for writing.
Yes, I am.
Have you struggled to find a balance between life and work in this phase of intense creativity?
Because a large segment of your audience are conservative capitalists.
We also grapple with this issue.
And yes, of course, you know, I solve almost all problems the same way by waking up earlier.
And I've always said there's very few problems in life that can't be solved by waking up earlier.
And everybody thinks that they need a lot of sleep and they do everything they can to tell you that you need a lot of sleep.
You know, I don't need that much sleep myself.
I don't even sleep when I'm in bed, you know, sleep when I go to bed.
You know, but I find, look, I wake up at 5.30 and I basically greet my wife and at 5.30, I start reading the news and I start preparing for this show.
I'm working pretty much straight through.
Every now and again, I'll doze off for a couple of minutes, but I don't sleep for more than 10 minutes at a time.
I'll sit and eat, but that takes, what, you know, 15 minutes to half an hour.
I'm working straight through.
If you start working at 5.30, you should be done by 7, 7.30.
I mean, that's like a late, you know, that's when you should be done.
There are days when I go longer, but it's usually because something distracted me.
Then, you know, you have some hours to spend with your family and, you know, with the people you love and on life.
So, I mean, it's just making your days fit.
It's making your days fit your schedule, not making your schedule fit your days, basically.
That's it.
So it takes a little bit more time.
I really only take one day of a weekend off.
I love my work, which helps a lot.
It's not slaving away.
It's something I really enjoy.
But I do make sure.
I do make sure that I have time for the people in my life because they're actually more important.
From Sam, Supreme, Grand, Overlord, Clavin, in your always humble opinion, when was my opinion ever humble?
How would you suggest mending ties with old friends or people you haven't spoken to in ages?
Your dutiful underling Sam.
You know, first of all, I really do recommend this.
I recently had a pal die who I had had a break with long ago.
And he was a very far leftist.
He was a novelist.
I'll tell you, his name was Neil Gordon.
He wrote recently, Robert Redford made a film of one of his books called The Promises, Something You Keep.
I can't remember what it is.
Can you look that up, Austin?
It was Redford's one of Redford's most recent films.
The Company You Keep.
I got it, The Company You Keep.
And that was Neil's book.
And Neil and I were pals.
Back in the day, I rented my first office in Neil's apartment.
That was where I worked when I wrote Don't Say a Word.
And we were good buddies.
And suddenly we just had a break.
And I guess the break was powered by politics, but it wasn't over politics.
And we just never got back together again.
And one day he was gone.
And I was really sorry that I just never reached out to him and never mended that.
Because, you know, you know what?
Like, it didn't matter whose fault it was.
It didn't really matter what it was about.
It was just you want to get it done.
The thing is, since you ask how to do it, I would reach out through email because if they don't want to do it, you can't do it.
I would reach out through, you know, at a distance and say, here's where I am.
I'd like to get together.
You know, you don't have to solve the problem.
You don't have to apologize.
You don't have to do anything.
Just move on and let it go.
You know, you can discuss it or not discuss it, but move on and let it go.
I really recommend it because, you know, death has a way of being kind of final.
When it happens, a lot of things that seem very big suddenly seem very small.
From Josiah Clavin.
Come on.
I need some of that wisdom you often give.
I've fallen in love with a girl from Istanbul, Turkey.
She calls herself a Muslim, but has no understanding of Islam, nor has she ever read a verse of the Quran.
She came to visit me here in the States, and I got to share with her my relationship with Christ, but I'm not sure it resonated.
She seemed excited about it.
I'm 30.
She's awesome.
I want to marry her.
What the hell do I do, Josiah?
The first thing I notice about this is that I don't have enough information to give you a good answer.
And the fact that I don't have enough information makes me a little wary.
Like, I don't know how you met her.
I don't know how long you spent with her.
I don't know how much time you spent together or how you communicate.
And when you then say, I want to marry her, it just makes me a little bit nervous.
I mean, there are, look, can your love survive the cultural difference?
Yeah.
Can your love overcome the cultural difference?
Yes.
But do you know this girl?
I mean, if you don't know whether your discussion about your religion resonated with her, how long did you spend with her?
How much time have you had together?
So what I would say is, look, you have to get to know her and you have to get to know her close up.
I do not believe in love, sweet song.
You know, it's love, sweet song maybe gets you started.
It's like an erotic explosion that goes off, but you have to wait, you know, at least, you have to know somebody for at least six months, I think, before that chemical imbalance goes away and you start to say, like, oh, now I know who this is, and I'm ready to decide whether to spend a life with her.
So I would just make sure that you know her, that you get to know her close up.
If you can bring her to America and have her, you know, put her up somewhere and just get to know her.
I would just go forward very slowly.
That is what I would say to you.
Like, I can't give you a perfect answer because I just don't feel like I have enough information.
But the fact that I don't have enough information worries me in and of itself.
From McKenzie, how do we know that God is not just a wish fulfillment?
Good question.
And let me see.
You know, here's what I would have to say.
I think the question implies a mistaken idea of what faith is.
I think, especially in America today, when we talk about faith, we're talking about this stupid belief in something that you just want to believe in.
So that would be wish fulfillment.
That's not what faith is at all.
That is not what faith is supposed to be.
A metaphor for faith that I would use, I used to fly planes, and in planes, there's a thing called Bernoulli's formula.
I can't remember the name, Bernoulli's formula.
But it's a formula that tells you how to create lift on a wing, how to make a wing go up, because they used to think that they would fly by imitating birds, then they realized that wasn't going to work.
Bernoulli's formula helped them take off to create enough lift to fly.
If you had that formula and no one had ever flown before, but you did the formula and you tested it and you tested it again and you did the science and you realized that you could get this thing to fly, it would be an act of faith to get into the first plane and send it off a cliff or send it down the runway.
That would be an act of faith because you had proved to yourself that it was reasonable and right and proper and almost unavoidable that this thing would fly, but you did the act of faith by risking your life in a plane.
That's an act of faith.
To just jump off a cliff and say, I bet if I flap my arms like the eagles, I'll fly, that's wish fulfillment, and you're going to get crushed, okay?
People have actually done that, and it doesn't work.
It doesn't turn out that well.
So if you look at faith that way, that you study the ideas about God, the real proofs of God, the things that Aquinas said, just the idea that you're absolutely certain.
One of the things that convinced me was I became absolutely certain that there was such a thing as right and wrong, that it was a bad thing to torture a child, even if everybody on earth was a child torturer, it would still be bad.
It would still be a bad thing.
It was an absolute objective bad thing that couldn't exist without God.
The reason was there first before I said, okay, now I'm going to take the step of faith and believe that the reason is true.
Believe that Bernoulli's formula works.
Believe that the reasons for God, the logical fact that God must really exist, once you think about it, once you study it, once you examine it, I'm going to trust my life to that.
And unlike Bernoulli's formula, you can always go back.
You know, one of the things that I swore to myself was I was going to plunk for faith, but if I became unrealistic, if my view of life suddenly betrayed me, if I suddenly thought life was a song and everything was great and I was walking around with a happy face all the time like an idiot, I would say, you know what, this has been a mistake.
That's not what happened.
It actually made me more realistic for the simple reason that there actually is a God.
And the one other thing I'll offer is C.S. Lewis's point, which is not a proof of God, but C.S. Lewis makes the point is there's nothing on earth that we desire that doesn't exist.
We desire food, there's food.
We desire sex, there's sex.
We desire money, fame.
All these things actually exist.
We are not built to desire or even to imagine things that don't exist.
So if you have a wish for God, it's a good reason to suspect that God may be able to fulfill that.
Let's see.
You have a live question.
All right, I have a live question.
Before I get to the live question, I just have one more that I'll do that came in from Andrew.
How would you define a real man?
Thanks.
And you should know that you have been and always will be far more insightful than Michael Knowles.
I think that's an important point we have to get to on this.
That if you, if you would, you know, I keep forgetting to ask because I, you know, it's just not the kind of thing I do.
But if you go on iTunes and leave a good review and leave a like for our show, it actually moves our show up in the ratings so that we can humiliate Michael Knowles because he's really good at that because all his audience is 12 years old, so they know to do that.
But we are more mature and intelligent, so we don't do that.
So how do I define a real man?
I define a real man.
Courage and integrity.
That is what I think.
A real man.
And these are things that can be attractive in women, but they don't define women.
I define a man as somebody who is what he says he is, who does what he says he will do, and who appears to be what in fact is the truth about him and who has the courage to do that even when it becomes uncomfortable.
I think that is what a man is.
I think that it's not about fighting.
It's not about being stronger and bigger than other people.
I know plenty of real men who would lose a fight, a fist fight, if they got in them, but they are absolutely stalwart and fearless in presenting themselves honestly and doing what they say they will do and not being moved off their spot when they know they're in the right.
And that is what I think is the essence of man.
What's the live question?
All right, let me find it.
It is.
Hey, Clayton, what would be your suggestion to an individual who has made a huge mistake in their life that keeps coming back?
How should one stay positive and move forward?
Wow, that is a really tough question.
You know, here's the thing: you know, God's forgiveness is bigger than your sin.
That's the first thing.
So you're going to have to learn that you've made this mistake.
You can't go back into the past and fix it.
You've got to own up to it.
You've got to go for the responsibility.
A lot of times when people ask this question, they haven't done that.
What they want is they want the thing to go away.
It's not going to go away.
You've got to take care of it.
You've got to own up for it.
You've got to live for it.
You can't kill a man and then say, how can I feel better about this?
Nope, you got to go in.
You got to turn yourself in.
That's the way it is.
So if you have done something that's continually haunting you, do the best you can to be responsible for the consequences of your mistake.
Then, then you can start to forgive yourself and not rake yourself over the coals and move forward.
I mean, that's the only thing that you can do is take responsibility for the results of your action.
That's really the only thing you can do.
Breaking Through PC Narratives00:09:13
All right, time for tickety-boo news.
You know, this is like being in a madhouse, you know?
So, you know, I want to get back to the idea of Donald Trump because I said something yesterday that I actually stopped for a minute.
I talked about Trump just dismissing the racial narrative, the narrative that has been the absolute web in which the mainstream media and the Democrat Party, which is, but I repeat myself, they're both the same things, has wrapped up the Republicans so that they are afraid to talk, afraid to move, afraid to gesture.
And the narrative is basically, if you are not accepting left-wing premises and left-wing possibilities and left-wing language, if you are not accepting those things in the way that the left-wing says you should address problems, you are a racist.
And being a racist in America with its history of racism, its true history of racism, is one of the worst things you can call a person.
It's a terrible, terrible thing to call a person.
I would never call a person racist unless they were actually being racist and accepting racist premises.
Whereas, for instance, you get this stuff from John Blake at CNN where he basically says, we're all racist by default.
If you supported Donald Trump, you're a racist.
It's not so much the people who are the white supremacist, you know, angry, violent guys.
It's easy to focus, he says, on the angry white men in paramilitary gear who looked like they were mobilizing for a race war in the Virginia college town.
But it's the ordinary people, the voters who elected a reality TV star with a record of making racially insensitive comments.
And that's the key thing.
He defines what is racially insensitive.
So everybody, for instance, when Trump went after Obama on that ridiculous birther thing, and it was ridiculous, they all said that was racist.
I didn't think it was racist at all.
I mean, Obama was not like one of us.
He was not like your typical American who loves his country, who thinks this is a great country, who's grateful to be here, thankful to be here.
He had all these weird anti-colonial leftist ideas.
And so people felt he was not like us.
You know, that was what spurred that.
It had nothing to do with the color of his skin.
If it had, we wouldn't have elected him twice.
And many of the people who voted for him voted for Donald Trump the next time out.
So Trump has shattered this.
And you know, it's funny.
It only occurred to me this morning that I wrote a whole book about this.
I wrote a book called True Crime, which is a thriller novel, which was made into a film with Clint Eastwood.
And when they wrote the film, and Eastwood talked to me about this, and the writer who wrote the film talked to me about it, they changed the defendant in the case.
It's about a guy on death row, and is he innocent or is he guilty?
And in the book, he's a white guy.
He's a white guy.
And they changed him to a black guy, which made the entire moral essence of the film disappear.
You know, the entire moral essence.
Because the idea of the story is the star of the story is a reporter named Steve Everett, who Clint plays, who's a jerk.
He cheats on his wife.
He doesn't pay attention to that stuff we were talking about before about balancing work and home.
He doesn't do any of those.
He's nasty.
He says ugly things.
But he's the only guy who can get at the truth because he won't be stopped by the PC narrative.
In order to bust through to the truth, you have to be nasty enough to bust the PC narrative.
Steve Everett is Donald Trump.
I suddenly realized when I woke up that I was telling that story because Donald Trump has a lot of things about him that I don't like.
Sometimes he's nasty, sometimes he's bullying, sometimes he uses language I don't like.
But he is the only guy, and this is why people like John Nolte and everyone love him so much.
He's the only guy who has burst through this narrative that if we say it this way, it's not right.
If I say if I talk about Charlottesville in this way, then I'm a racist.
And anybody who says he's not a racist is a racist himself.
And anybody who doesn't run for the hills and grovel before the press and say, please, please forgive us for even thinking, looking at Donald Trump, while he was talking about Charlottesville, is in fact a racist.
And all of this stuff, he is breaking through this narrative that has put a stranglehold on our conversation, on the relationships between us as Americans, and on our politics, so that they are controlling even the things people think or are willing to say.
And you know, it's interesting.
The other day in the Philadelphia Inquirer, there was an article by Amy Wax, who is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Larry Alexander, who is a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law.
And it was called Paying the Price for Breakdown of the Country's Bourgeois Culture.
And this is what it says very briefly: it says, too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available.
Male working-age labor force participation is at depression-iral lows.
Opioid abuse is widespread.
Homicidal violence plagues inner cities.
Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers.
Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.
The causes of these phenomena are multiple and complex, but implicated in these and other maladies is the breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture.
That culture laid out the script we all were supposed to follow: get married before you have children, strive to stay married for the children's sake, get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness.
Go to the extra mile for your employer or client.
Be a patriot ready to serve the country.
Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable.
Avoid coarse language in public.
Be respectful of authority.
Eschew substance abuse and crime.
These basic cultural precepts reigned from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s.
They could be followed by people of all backgrounds and abilities, especially when backed up by almost universal endorsement.
Adherence was a major contributor to the productivity, educational gains, and social coherence of that period.
So, of course, what happened?
Suddenly, these guys are under attack.
This is toxic.
The students' union at Penn says this is toxic, racist, sexist, homophobic, phomic.
Superiority of one race over others is not an academic debate we have in the 21st century.
The kind of hate wax espouses is an everyday part of many students' lives at Penn.
The ideal council representing, they say, marginalized graduate students of the University of Pennsylvania called for them to be silenced.
We demand, of course, they always have a demand, a statement from the university specifically designating racist, homophobic, sexist, transphomic speech as hate speech and censoring it and censoring it.
Okay, so in other words, they have now created this narrative where to call for people to act responsibly like bourgeois people is racist because somehow this is not black culture.
This is not black culture.
You know, that you get married, you know, before you have a baby, that you get an education, that you respect authority.
So they've shut that whole thing down.
Jason Riley is in the Wall Street Journal, and he's at the Manhattan Institute.
So he's a colleague, because I write for City Journal at the Manhattan Institute.
And I should mention he's a black guy and he writes a lot about race.
He writes this.
He says that he's talking about the fact that the left is pushing this narrative that dysfunction in black communities traces back to slavery.
And so it always has to be solved by somehow recompensing black people for slavery and for bigotry and Jim Crow.
But he says this, between 1890, when slavery is eliminated, right, and 1940, black marriage rates in the U.S. were higher than white marriage rates.
In the 1940s and 50s, black labor participation rates exceeded those of whites.
Black incomes grew much faster than white incomes, and the black poverty rate fell by 40 percentage points.
Between 1940 and 1970, that is during Jim Crow and prior to the era of affirmative action, the number of blacks in middle-class professions quadrupled.
In other words, racial gaps were narrowing.
Steady progress was being made.
Blacks today hear plenty about what they can achieve due to the legacy of slavery, and not enough about what they did in fact achieve, notwithstanding hundreds of years in bondage, followed by decades of legal separation.
In the post-60s era, these positive trends would slow, stall, or in some cases, even reverse course.
The homicide rate for black men fell by 18% in the 1940s and another 22% in the 1950s.
But in the 1960s, all of those gains would vanish as the homicide rate for black males rose by nearly 90%.
Are today's black violent crime rates a legacy of slavery in Jim Crow or of something else?
Well, obviously, they are a legacy of the 60s, of the great society, of the liberal policies that have been imposed on these people.
You can see it in every Democrat city where our citizens, our neighbors who are black are suffering under these policies.
Legacy Of The 60s00:00:49
This narrative, this racial narrative that this scurrilous press has imposed on our conversation and the scurrilous left, which the press is the mouthpiece of, is destroying our people.
It's destroying our people.
Donald Trump is not always a good person.
He's not always a good man.
He doesn't always do the right thing.
But if he destroys this narrative like a bull in a china shop, he will be doing God's work and he will be doing more for this country than the left has ever done.
To further that argument, we're going to have the late John Nolte on tomorrow.
John Nolte, who has left the family.
Never leave the family, John.
He has left the Daily Wire and gone back to Breitbart because he feels they are more of a warrior sight and he's a great writer and a good friend.
And I'm really sorry he left and I'm going to run him ragged tomorrow.