Andrew Klavan dissects Trump’s UN speech—mocking media hysteria over "Barki O’Hara" jabs and Iran deal criticism—while praising GOP healthcare moves despite Rand Paul’s obstruction. Late-night comedy’s partisan shift is exposed, contrasting Kimmel’s propaganda with Crowder’s satire. The mailbag tackles celibacy for gay Christians, death fears, and Trump rallies where BLM activists engaged in dialogue, clashing with media narratives of racial division. Klavan argues faith transforms life, even amid fear, and predicts media isolation will backfire as audiences reject bias. [Automatically generated summary]
The media reaction to Trump's UN speech was absolutely hilarious.
Fear and loathing all around, and not just for the UN speech, but for the new Republican health care bill, and not just on the news, but on late-night comedy.
It's like a relentless assault of propaganda passing for news and entertainment.
We will pull it apart slowly and painfully, listening to it scream.
Plus, what's the difference between celibacy, abstinence, and chastity?
We will address that when we answer your mailbag questions about sex.
And on Tickety Boo News, so help me, I have a story about Black Lives Matter that will make you say, hey, I kind of like those guys.
I promise.
But first, reactions to President Trump's first speech before the United Nations General Assembly are still coming in.
Trump's speech condemned socialism, Islamism, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, and also had some tough words for the UN itself and for the Iran deal of the last president.
What's his name?
Barki O'Hara, something like that.
It's hard to remember now that his legacy is just a flaming pile of drifting ash wafting away to nothingness on the bomby breezes of history.
But anyway, it was a speech that shocked the United Nations because it featured the truth and funny nicknames for dictators and happy Israelis, things that haven't been seen at the UN since it became a stinking cesspit of corrupt bureaucrats fronted by scurrilous tyrants, which happened about a week and a half after it was founded in 1945.
So, predictably, reactions were intense.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, for instance, reacted to Trump's threat to totally destroy his country by laughing defiantly until he burst a hole through his stomach, flew up into the air, and flittered around the room, making a high-pitched squealing noise like a deflating balloon, until there was nothing left of him but a wrinkled army uniform and a rock-hard rectangle of black hair.
Venezuelan leaders reacted to Trump's declaration that socialism was an oppressive and discredited ideology by running out of the room and sending texts back to the government reading, uh-oh, big mistake, ixnay on the ocean say.
Apparently, no one had explained to them about the history of the last hundred years.
Bernie Sanders was also upset to hear about the whole socialism is bad thing.
I'm beginning to think my entire political career has been a great big screw-up, Sanders said in an exclusive interview with his Che Guevara t-shirt.
Also, maybe that honeymoon in the Soviet Union wasn't such a good idea after all.
In the news media, journalists reacted with their usual objectivity and calm.
At the New York Times, a former newspaper columnist Charles Blomey wrote, We're all going to die.
Trump is going to war with everyone.
Death, death, death, horror, horror, horror.
I'm writing this in an underground bunker that has become the headquarters of the resistance.
Anyone who can hear me, follow the sound of my voice so that we can begin to build a new community like at the end of I Am Legend, only with me in charge instead of Will Smith.
And instead of blowing myself up at the end, I just pick up a paycheck for writing hysterical garbage like this, and then I go home.
Unquote.
Other reactions in the news media included Wolf Blitzer's wordless sobbing, Don Lemon staring blankly into the camera with his lower lip trembling, and Chris Cuomo running around in widening circles until he got stuck in the corner of the studio and had to be pried out with the jaws of life.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, is already at work on his next UN speech, tentatively titled, Mess with Me Losers, and I'll Nuke You All.
Dollar Shave Club Chronicles00:03:29
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Shipsha, dipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It's what to sing!
Oh, hoorah, hooray!
Oh, hooray!
Hooray!
All right, I think everybody just has to calm down after that speech.
Maybe they should all do a little single nostril breathing.
But you know, you do hold and you breathe through one and you hold it and then you exhale through the other and you keep going.
I feel so much better now.
All right, it's mailbag day.
We have some amazing questions and we will take a look at the news media.
But first, first, I know what you're thinking.
you're looking at me and you're thinking, how does he get his head so perfect?
And the reason is I have belonged for a long time, even before they were sponsors, to the Dollar Shave Club, dollarshaveclub.com.
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So I actually heard about this on Hannity and I thought, I just want to hear if when Hannity recommends something, it really is good.
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Then, when I got them as sponsors, they sent me their premium blade.
And this thing, I know, it's 157 points.
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And it really is, really is so much easier than just getting those disposable razors all the time.
All right.
You got the hate radiating from the TV screen.
Diplomacy's Dilemma: Nuclear Capabilities and Agreements00:09:43
It's amazing.
It's not just the news.
It's every late night comedy show.
They've thrown comedy away.
It's just all propaganda.
So let's start with the news because the one thing that actually came out yesterday was Brett Baer was interviewing the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and asked him, you know, Trump came down pretty hard on this, on Obama's Iran deal during his UN speech.
And he asked Tillerson, is this thing going to be off the table?
And this is a complicated question because Obama set this deal up so that we gave them all the stuff first, and now we're just waiting for them to comply.
And secondly, they can comply with the letter of the law.
They can comply with the letter of the deal and still prepare to have nuclear weapons in 14 years when the deal sunsets.
Then the deal is over.
And all this time they've been getting all the ancillary stuff they need.
So it's really, I mean, Obama really set this up badly.
And I don't know why.
I don't know what he was thinking and why he thought it was such a great idea to deal with some of the worst actors in the country.
Here is Tillerson reacting on how the Trump administration feels about this deal this cut too.
The Iranian threat to the region is much broader than defined simply by the nuclear talks.
Our relationship with Iran from a security standpoint and a threat standpoint is much broader than that, as is the entire region.
And we've really got to begin to deal with Iran's destabilizing activities in Yemen, in Syria.
And the president highlighted that today, that under the agreement, the spirit of the agreement, if you want to use that word, but even the words of the preamble to the agreement, there was clearly an expectation, I think, on the part of all of the parties to that agreement that by signing this nuclear agreement, Iran would begin to move to a place where it wanted to integrate, reintegrate itself with its neighbors.
And that clearly did not happen.
In fact, Iran has stepped up its destabilizing activities in the region, and we have to deal with that.
And so whether we deal with it through a renegotiation on nuclear or we deal with it in other ways.
So, you know, it's pretty harsh talk.
I mean, they really are dealing with this.
And so before we go back to the reaction to Trump's speech, and it was a hard-nose, real politics speech.
Before we go back, let's just go back once more to Obama's speech.
Here's a little montage of Obama's last time, last speech to the U.N. I'm not going to play the whole thing.
The video is called 11 Times Obama Talked Down the U.S. in his final UN speech.
But listen to this dithering tone that he takes when he's talking about our country to the world.
Yes, in America, there is too much money in politics, too much entrenched partisanship, too little participation by citizens, in part because of a patchwork of laws that makes it harder to vote.
While we've made our share of mistakes over these last 25 years, I've acknowledged some, we have strived, sometimes at great sacrifice, to align better our actions with our ideals.
And we can only realize the promise of this institution's founding, to replace the ravages of war with cooperation if powerful nations, like my own, accept constraints.
Go ahead, dunderhead this guy was.
I'm so glad he's gone.
You know, his problem was that he looked at the world as if we were in a relationship.
You know, like you apologize to your wife and then she forgives you and you move on because you're in this relationship.
These guys are competitors and enemies.
You know, a lot of these guys are competitors and enemies and every inch you give, they come in and move in to take the next inch, kind of like the left in general.
Anyway, so Trump goes out there and he says basically we are a force for good and here are the bad guys.
Venezuela with its socialism, Iran with its tyranny, North Korea with its crazy rocket man as he called them.
And we're sick of this.
We're watching the UN to see if you can deal with this.
And if you don't deal with it, we will.
And that's what Trump says.
Here is a montage of CNN reacting to the speech.
Just, it's amazing.
So this is a guy who goes around thumbing his nose at international entities and international attempts to confront global challenges.
This was a very somber, dark speech, if you will.
Wolf, and I remember thinking back to the first appearance that President Obama made here in 2009 as president.
Of course, a far different reception.
Of course, he had a booming, enthusiastic applause.
It was remarkable to see a leader of any country, but the President of the United States standing in the well of the United Nations General Assembly, threatening to totally destroy, not retaliate, not hurt, not isolate, not prove a point, totally destroy a country.
And I spoke a short time ago to a senior UN diplomat who described it to me this way, saying that he, diplomats around him, were taken aback.
He describes it to me like a wind had gone through the room when the president uttered those words, we will totally destroy North Korea.
Said it was an emotional reaction.
It's those words about North Korea that particularly sparked a reaction in that room.
Audible gasps, I'm told.
Extremely unusual.
An emotional reaction, as this diplomat said.
It's really frightening to hear an American president talk about obliterating any other country.
The Axis of Evil speech that George W. Bush gave was certainly frightening and got controversial to a lot of people, but he didn't go that far.
Oh, booby, they had an emotional reaction.
The people at the UN, they had an emotional reaction.
These guys need to calm down.
You know what they need?
They need a little single nostril breathing, I think.
But, you know, you do hold and you breathe through one and you hold it and then you exhale through the other and you keep going.
So speaking of Hillary Clinton, Stephen Colbert has her on to react to the speech.
Now, first of all, this is Stephen Colbert, right?
So it's like not only are you getting the propaganda from CNN and not all the other news people was the same way, you're now getting it from your late-night comedy stores, right?
You're getting it from your late night entertainment shows.
He brings on Hillary Clinton.
Now, let's just remember, okay, Hillary Clinton is the Secretary of State who brought the big red reset button to the Soviet Union, which they were like, oh, good, we blow up America.
They were just disappointed when they pressed the button that nothing exploded.
Also, she's the Secretary of State who pushed the administration to kill off Gaddafi.
Now, this is a big deal because Gaddafi, remember, got scared of George W. Bush, and he gave up his nuke program and his weapons of mass destruction program.
And then, at Hillary Clinton's insistence, we killed him.
You know, we basically let him lose power, which first of all plunged Libya into complete disarray and let it become a terrorist playground.
But also, it sent a message to guys like Kim Jong-un in North Korea, give up your weapons and we'll kill you.
You know, I mean, Kim Jong-un is thinking, I'm not doing the Libya thing because that's not going to work out well for me.
So this is a complete incompetent, but we've got to hear how she would have given this speech.
And of course, I'm sure she's been practicing it in front of the mirror ever since she lost the election, the speech she would have given to the UN.
Here it is.
Well, of course, when you face dangerous situations like what is happening in North Korea, to make it clear, your first approach should always be diplomatic.
What I'd hoped the president would have said was something along the lines of, you know, we view this as dangerous to our allies, to the region, and even to our country.
We call on all nations to work with us to try to end the threat posed by Kim Jong-un and not call him rocket man, the old Elton John song, but to say clearly, we will not tolerate any attacks on our friends or ourselves.
But you should lead with diplomacy.
Yeah, no one ever thought of that before.
You know, it's not like we haven't tried, we've tried diplomacy on this guy.
That's all we've been doing and all Trump has been doing.
He's been trying and trying diplomacy.
This guy's not listening, and there comes a point when he has got the capability, Kim Jong-un has got the capability to fire nuclear weapons at LA when you can't attack him anymore.
Then the military options are off the table.
So we already, you know, it's like we haven't been doing this.
You know, Lee Smith had a piece of tablet mag where he said Democrats and Republican elites are using Trump to whitewash 16 years of foreign policy disasters.
And I think that is absolutely true.
He writes, the policies of the Bush White House, beginning with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then the ostensibly corrective policies of the Obama administration, which culminated in the Iran deal and the ongoing slaughter in Syria, have sucked nearly the entire American foreign policy elite into a black hole of denial of their own shared responsibility for a self-evident geopolitical disaster that began in the destruction of the Middle East but is unlikely to end there.
That's why both parties are in agreement on one thing: shift the blame.
It's not on us, Republicans or Democrats.
Trump is the problem we can all agree on.
Let's wipe the slate clean and agree that history started in January 2017.
And any effort to argue otherwise and put Trump, his policies, and even personality in some sort of historical context rather than simply regard him as a freakish anomaly is whataboutism or Trumpism or worse.
And that's exactly exactly what's happening.
Hey, we have the mailbag coming up.
Subscribe to the Daily Wire00:03:33
Some really, really interesting questions, but it comes on after the break.
So if you're watching on Facebook and YouTube, you'll have to come over to thedailywire.com and listen to it.
But, but you could subscribe for a lousy 10 bucks a month.
And you could subscribe for a lousy 10 bucks a month, and you can watch the whole thing right on the site.
Plus, you can send questions into the mailbag.
The thing about the questions, you can ask about anything, sex, religion, politics.
The answers are guaranteed 100% correct and will change your life on occasion for the better.
If you subscribe for a year, it's only 100 lousy bucks, and you get the leftist tears mug, the leftist tears mug, which fills up automatically with leftist tears whenever Donald Trump speaks before the UN.
So we're going to go on.
I'm going to continue a little bit on this on the subject of the late night propaganda, the late night comedy propaganda, because it goes on and on, and it really is worth looking at.
But first, let's talk about steak.
Yeah, I know.
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All right, are we going to break?
Yeah, we'll break here for Facebook and YouTube.
If you want to listen to the rest of the show, come to thedailywire.com, subscribe, and you can watch it right there, just a lousy 10 bucks a month, and for a year, it's only a lousy $100, and you get the leftist tears tumbler.
All right, so we do the U.N. speech, and you watch the news all day, and then at the end of the day, you want to relax with a little comedy.
Forget about it, okay?
Rand Paul's Obamacare Push00:08:00
Now, the Republicans have also got, are now pushing forward, they're pushing forward on this new attempt to improve Obamacare.
And the idea is mostly that they are going to push some of the funding to this for the states.
And I think it is an excellent first step.
It's not what we want.
We want this thing gone, but it is an excellent first step to push it to the states and let the states work it out because then you have the state laboratory and ultimately states can start to get out of Obamacare if they want to.
This is Lindsey Graham.
He was on Fox pushing the program and he says he thinks he can get the 50 votes.
I think we'll get 50 votes for a block grant.
What we do is we repeal the individual mandate, the employer mandate.
We take all the money we'd have spent on Obamacare and block grant it back to the states by 2026.
Here's the question for the Republican Party.
Do we have the same determination to repeal Obamacare as Democrats had to pass it?
I'll say this to the Republican Party.
If you walk away and you give up, we'll never get over this.
See, they know this now.
They know this is true because they have already failed to do this once.
And they've only got like 12 days, I think it is, before the reconciliation process, which allows them to pass it with 51 votes, is over, right?
So they're up against a deadline.
They know if they go home empty-handed, they are really going to get it in the midterm election.
So far, it's hard to say.
John McCain was the guy who got in the way last time, remember?
The governor of Arizona has endorsed this.
He has endorsed this, so maybe that'll affect McCain.
Rand Paul, I know a lot of you love Rand Paul.
I just, I am very suspicious of him.
I think he's a fake.
I think Rand Paul is a fake.
I think he poses.
In everything, the good is never good enough for him.
You know, it's never good enough.
If this is an improvement, he's always got to think, you know, at first he said, well, I don't think we should just repeal.
I think we need to repeal and replace.
Then when they were going to repeal and replace, well, this doesn't repeal.
It doesn't replace.
Now he's saying this.
You know, as a doctor, I don't think there's anybody in America who probably hates Obamacare and thinks it's a disaster for us more than I do.
But this isn't repeal.
You heard it in the clip from Senator Graham.
This keeps the Obamacare spending, keeps well over 90% of the spending and the taxes.
And then what it does is it reshuffles the money and it takes it from Democrat states and gives it to Republican states.
I think it's going to end up looking, once people look at this bill, like a petty partisan bill that doesn't really fix the problem.
Because really what we're doing is, or what they want to do, is reshuffle the money, redistribute it from Republican to Democrat states, but basically keep all of the Obamacare money and taxes in place.
That's not repealed in my book.
I seriously do not think Rand, I think Rand Paul is posing.
I think this purism plays to his audience.
It plays to his voters, and I just don't think it's real.
I think, you know, this is a win that the Republicans need.
It's a win that Trump wants.
And we would prefer if Trump wasn't dancing with Chuck and Nancy all the time and was sometimes doing things with Republicans.
And it is a step.
It is a step toward getting rid of Obamacare, maybe, all right?
A step toward maybe getting rid of Obamacare.
But doing nothing just puts this thing, it immortalizes the thing.
To use Rand Paul's own word, it immortalizes Obamacare if you do nothing because they'll never get rid of it.
They won't let it die.
They won't let it collapse.
They will fund it ultimately.
Rand Paul should get out of the way.
He's wrong.
He's just wrong.
And I just don't buy his routine.
But here's the thing I wanted to get to, right?
So you're watching the news, and on the news, it's cruel.
Remember, DACA is cruel.
Trump is cruel.
Blah, Jimmy Kimmel, you remember his kid, like Shapiro's kid, had open heart surgery.
And Jimmy Kimmel went on and he cried, and oh, we need Obamacare because everybody has to be able to.
Now he goes on.
Now, remember, this is his monologue.
Remember what a late-night monologue used to be?
You'd come on, it used to be funny.
They'd tell some jokes.
They'd tell some jokes about the Democrats.
They'd tell some jokes about the Republicans.
You know, whichever side you were on, you'd kind of grumble through the jokes against your side and you'd laugh at the jokes against the other side.
But you got them both.
You got them both.
Here is a monologue from Jimmy Kimmel today about the health care bill.
Not only did Bill Cassidy fail the Jimmy Kimmel test, he failed the Bill Cassidy test.
He failed his own test.
And you don't see that happen very much.
This bill we came up with is actually worse than the one that, thank God, Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and John McCain torpedoed over the summer.
And I hope they have the courage and good sense to do that again with this one, because these other guys who claim they want Americans to have better health care, even though eight years ago they didn't want anyone to have health care at all, they're trying to sneak this scam of a bill they cooked up in without an analysis from the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Boy, that's some funny stuff.
That's some funny.
The timing with which he said the Congressional Budget Office, I mean, it just cracks me up.
Your side hurts from laughing.
I know, I know.
It's just an amazing, amazing, you know, his writers.
He must have, what?
You know, I have no writers to write my opening.
I write my opening myself.
Even I art.
I just make it up off the top of my head.
A guy's got like, what, 20, 25 writers on that show?
And that's their comedy styling.
He couldn't even go on and attack it wittily.
You know, I mean, he couldn't even go on and make jokes about it.
He's just going to sit there, Jimmy Kimmel, expert on healthcare, and lecture the audience about it.
You know, he needs to calm down.
You know what he needs to do?
He needs to do a little single nostril breathing, I think.
But, you know, you do hold and you breathe through one and you hold it and then you exhale through the other and you keep going.
I feel so much better already.
You know, one of these days, one of these days, Steve Crowder did a hilarious routine the other day on Jimmy Fallon interviewing Stalin with Crowder playing Stalin.
And one day, this is, it's like my satire is being overtaken by reality.
One day, talk shows are going to actually look like this.
So tell me about this thing, communism.
Sounds like.
In the Russian winter, a man is only what he can endure.
Every man can have pet dog.
But which of you men can eat that dog?
That's great.
He's like, dogs, food.
I mean, you must love hot dogs, right?
Dean Russia, do you have hot dogs?
The freedom in America that you have has turned your brain to mush.
It has turned your men into women like your fing fallon.
Your neighbors will look away when we take you.
They always look away.
That's so great.
I mean, the best.
Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for Joseph Stall.
And nobody stopped laughing because he kills that guy.
When you get home, you'll find your wife and children are dead.
I mean, that's inspired satire, but one day that's what talk shows are actually going to look like.
Whoa, it's Joseph Stalin.
I love that guy.
He's great, great.
That's Owen Benjamin doing an excellent Jimmy Fallon friend of Crowder's.
That's the future of TV.
Anyway, pure hate and pure propaganda, but don't worry about it because it's good for us.
You know, this is good for us.
They isolate themselves.
The Emmys, when they just rail on us and hate on us, it isolates them from us.
And when and if Trump gets some of the stuff he wants and when and if the economy takes off and things smooth out as I hope they will and the country really starts grinding, the economy really starts working.
as it's already starting to, just because the businesses are reacting to what he's doing behind the scenes with the regulations and things like this, these guys are going to look like idiots.
Believing in Abstinence00:16:10
And suddenly people are going to say, you know what?
I'd like to turn on a comedy show and see comedy.
Just, I don't know, call me crazy, but that's just something I'd like to do.
I'd like to see a comedian tell jokes and maybe not, maybe I'd like to go to a movie where the actress doesn't give herself an award and then spit in my face for the person I vote for.
Maybe I'd like that.
So they're just isolating themselves.
And I think the worse they get, the more power ultimately we have, and the more power we in the right-wing media have because people come and find out that, you know, we ain't so bad, maybe.
Mailbag.
All right, from David.
Ah, Miss Lindsay.
All right, from David.
Mr. Clavin, as a Christian, do you believe that there is an afterlife?
Yes, that is an easy question.
No, I do believe it.
I try not to think about it too much because I believe this life is very important and this life is the, I believe that we should take the step in front of us, walk the road right in front of us.
That's what God wants us to do.
And this is the road in front of us, this life.
But the thing about the afterlife, the thing about the resurrection of Christ, which is in a way a proof of this afterlife and a forerunner of the afterlife, what did St. Paul call it the first fruits of the afterlife, is that it changes, it proves, it proves your sense of morality because we all feel, we all feel that there are things that are more important than life.
When a man sacrifices himself for freedom, our hearts lift up to that.
If there's no afterlife, he's kind of a fool.
What is he sacrificing himself for?
A man doesn't go after immediate pleasure, but instead goes after the things that deepen and enrich him.
Why?
Why if there's no afterlife?
The afterlife actually, what it does is it says to you that the game you're playing is a longer game than it appears.
And that changes the entire balance of morality, right?
I mean, because a guy who said, hey, you know, let's eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die, would be absolutely right if he wasn't trying to develop something that lasted longer than life.
A lot of people, anti-Christians, say, well, that's just doing good for a reward.
But no, that's not right.
It is taking a long view.
It is saying, just like I go to the gym and it might be hard to do, but it's conducive to living a good life now.
It makes me healthy now.
I exercise to be in good shape now, and so my life is good now.
And that is what happens as a Christian when you live into the future life, when you live into eternity, your life becomes better now.
And that's kind of a proof in a way.
I won't call it a proof, but it's an indication that your belief in an afterlife is a real belief.
But as I say, I try not to think about it too much because I think this life is kind of important.
And I think we're doing important stuff here.
Dear Andrew, I'm a gay Christian conservative.
Is the best option for me to live a godly life to be celibate?
Okay, so I get this question a lot or questions like it a lot and I always take a lot of a huge hammering after I answer it, but I'm not gonna stop.
I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna take the hammer, I'm gonna answer it.
And I have to thank my son Spencer, who is a brilliant, brilliant guy and who kind of helped me work this out in my mind and explain some of the things that he knows about the church.
And some of this is just direct church teaching.
You're using the wrong word when you use celibate.
You're not called.
Celibate is a positive thing that you are called on to be.
I do not have that calling.
A lot of people, Jesus says this.
He says some people are called to it, some people are not.
You are called to celibacy as a positive thing.
It is a thing that you feel is going to make you closer to God.
And it is not because you don't like your sexuality.
It is not because you think sex is ucky.
It is because there's something in you that says, this is my way to God.
I mean, in the same way, I feel called to do certain things with my life, like make beautiful stuff.
That is something that I feel called to do.
You are called to celibacy.
Then there is chastity, and all of us should live, I think, all Christians certainly should live with chastity.
Chastity is the fact that we don't live into our physical desires.
We live into our spiritual good, right?
So, you know, I've been married faithfully for a very long time.
There were days when some beautiful girl walked by or flirted with me or said, you know, she was available when that was a difficult thing to do.
I had to say, no, you know, I'm not going to go with my body here.
I'm going to go with my commitment and my love and my family and the things that really, really matter to me instead of 30 minutes of like, you know, friction with some dame I'm never going to see again, you know.
And so that's chastity, okay?
What you are talking about as a gay Christian conservative is you are talking about abstinence.
Abstinence is when you feel is a negative thing.
I don't mean negative morally, I mean it's a negative action.
When you feel that you are going to refrain from doing something because that thing would be bad.
So for instance, if you were attracted to children, you would practice abstinence because that would be rape.
You're not going to commit the rape even though you are saddled with that desire.
You're not going to do it.
That would be abstinence.
So what you're asking me is, as a gay Christian conservative, should you be abstinent?
And I will tell you my answer, which is I think that is a question that you should bring to God.
The question is this.
The question is this.
Does, would a loving relationship with a person of the same sex, would it take you away from God, toward the flesh, or would it take you toward God and the Spirit?
And that, as a person who is not gay, that is a question that I can't answer.
And I won't answer because I think when we're told to judge not lest you be judged, I think that's exactly the sort of thing we're being told not to judge, which is a person's, what brings a person closer to God.
We can judge crimes against other people.
We can judge things that might degrade you, like drinking too much or taking drugs.
But I don't know what that experience is like.
And you have to figure that out with God, what that experience is like, if to be abstinent is the right answer for you.
And now you can write me and tell me, no, no, it's a sin.
It's a sin.
You know, I think that there are sins that degrade others and sins that degrade yourself.
Only you can tell.
And only God can tell you and work with you to discover whether you need to live an abstinent life or not.
And it's truly not for anybody else to dictate that to you at all.
And now you can write your angry letters.
But that is what I truly believe.
All right.
From Veronica.
Dear Andrew, I have been a Christian since I was very young, but I really struggle with fear of death.
I've always been hyper-aware of my mortality, even at age six, and concerned with issues of spirituality and morality.
But it doesn't seem to make a difference.
When I read my Bible frequently, I struggle.
And when I'm distant from God, I struggle.
I'm frustrated, tired, and I'm afraid.
I also feel guilty.
How can I share Christ with others when I'm struggling so myself?
Thank you for your time.
Veronica.
Okay, I'm really sorry to tell you to hear that, Veronica.
Here's what I can tell you.
That's not the life God wants you to live.
Okay, this is me speaking for God, which I try never to do, but I can guarantee you this.
This is not the life God wants you to live.
He wants you to live a life of joy.
And when I say that, I don't mean that he wants you to be happy all the time, like Joel Osteen with a big smiley face.
Tragic, terrible things happen in life.
They're going to break your heart.
Things are, you know, bad things will happen to you.
You're going to struggle with them.
When I talk about joy, what I talk about is what I mean is what Jesus called life in abundance, living in abundance, which means the only thing I know how to compare it to is if you're watching a movie, you're watching a movie and something terribly sad happens, it breaks your heart.
You're thinking, oh my, oh, this is terrible.
You're sobbing, you're weeping.
Then you come out and think, gee, that was a great movie.
That was a great movie.
Your attitude toward life with God should be joyful in that sense, that even during the hard times, you know you're steering toward your North Star, which is Christ, and that you are on your way to something that is overall good, that God will turn the overall picture to something good, even if it is in the afterlife.
So here's what I want to say.
You're not getting that feeling.
I mean, that feeling of joy, that feeling of vitality, that feeling of life in abundance is one of the ways God lets you know that you're pointing your boat toward him.
I want you to consider the idea that maybe the God that you're worshiping, you haven't quite gotten a clear picture of who he is and how he feels about you.
This happens to all of us.
This is a lifetime journey to try and separate God from what we've been told about God, from what people are saying we should believe about God, from images that we get from our father and our mother that may be harmful and difficult.
Okay, you have to clear.
There's a lot of debris between you and God, a lot of debris between you and God.
And I deal with this every day.
We all deal with it every day.
The thing is to push that away and get to the God who wants you to have joy, who forgives you, who loves you so much.
I mean, he's crazy about you, Veronica.
He just thinks this was one of his great days when he made you.
This is what he thinks is wonderful.
He even died for you, for you to have that joy in life.
So if you are having this problem, you might want to go and seek help from a counselor.
You might want to go to a counselor and find out what it is that is, because what's bothering you is psychological.
There's a psychological screen between you and the real God who loves you so much and wants you to be joyful.
So that's what I would ask you to think about.
Yes, you should turn to the Bible.
Yes, you should pray to God and talk to him.
But to get to the real God, to get to the real God who loves you, you might need to go to a counselor and just clear up some of the debris in your head that comes from your past, you know, that come, who knows where it comes from.
It may just be some kind of skewed thinking that you have, but you want to get to the real God who loves you and wants to give you that joy and will give it to you if you see him clearly.
All right, from Shahar, High, the Lord of all words, the man with the best words.
I am the man with the best words.
I am a 19-year-old guy and I am about to start university and I can get money from the state for housing because I'm disabled, but I don't think I should because I can work and I don't think that people like me should be dependent on the state.
But my money can really help and my parents think that I need to take the money.
What should I do?
P.S. I'm not in the U.S., I'm in Israel.
Okay, my answer would be this.
I can tell you what I would do.
If the money is to help your parents, okay, and they want you to take it, take it, because the money is for them.
It's not for you.
If the money is just for you and you can make it up by working, follow your lights.
Do what you think is right.
You think it's right not to take the money and I hear what you're saying and I pretty much agree with you, then don't take it.
Don't take it.
But if the money is helping your parents, or if you're not sure you can replace that money to help your parents, then I think you should follow their lights and do what they want you to do because it's their money.
But if it's you, if you're going to be paying for it, do what you think is right.
Okay.
From NOAA, dear Dr. Drew, Osari, wrong show.
I've never heard that before.
No.
As we become more and more culturally disparate in the States, do you feel that lacking an official language, or increasingly even a common language, is an issue for our longer-term national unity?
Do you feel that we should make, it would make sense to anoint English as our official American language?
Moreover, do you think it's even a remote political possibility for it to happen, best Noah?
Yes and yes.
I think that all countries need a common language.
It's one of the most basic things, your borders and your language.
We don't have a race.
There is no American race, and that's great.
It's a new thing.
It's a new idea.
We're a creedle country.
But to hold us together, we do need a language.
And yes, I do think ultimately it will happen.
I actually do think it will happen, that we'll make English the official language.
I don't think we should do it unless we need to, but I think English should is and should be the official language of America.
I think, should I stop there?
Do one more?
All right.
From Benjamin in Louisville, I've gleaned that your attitude on sex tends to be a little bit more liberal than some of my fellow Catholics, no doubt.
Given that context, I'd like to ask your opinion on abstinence, okay?
Another abstinence question.
And you're using it correctly.
My fiancé and I have been abstinent throughout our relationship of five years.
The thing the Catholic Church doesn't tell you about abstinence is how difficult it is, especially over long periods of time.
Any thoughts on coping with it?
I can only take so many cold showers.
Five years, marry her.
Unless you started going out when you were eight, you know, like five years, marry the girl.
What's wrong with you?
I mean, like, what are you trying to wait till you're sure?
I mean, I think if you marry her, you'll solve the problem right there.
And I think that, you know, there's nothing that makes abstinence easy.
It's not easy.
You're doing it because you believe in it.
That's the way forward.
But after five years, what is holding you up, right?
All right.
Tickety-boo news.
I love this.
I love this.
All right, here's a story I found on Glenn Beck's The Blaze, which I love.
Sarah Taylor at The Blaze.
And it comes, the video is from a site called Now This News, okay?
So they're holding a Trump rally.
I think this is in Alabama, okay?
They're holding a Trump rally, and a Black Lives Matter group goes marching past.
And they're shouting at the group.
And Trump rally shouting at the group, Black Lives Matter shouting at the Trump people.
And the guy on stage says, you know what?
I'm going to invite you up to speak for two minutes.
We don't always do this.
So listen, give me the first cut of this as the Black Lives Matter guy gets up and starts to talk to this Trump rally while they jeer him.
So what we are going to do is something you're not used to, and we're going to give you two minutes of our platform to put your message out.
Now, whether they disagree or agree with your message is irrelevant.
It's the fact that you have the right to have the message.
I am an American.
And the beauty of America is that when you see something broke in your country, you can mobilize to fix it.
So you ask why there's a Black Lives Matter?
Because you can watch a black man die and be choked to death on television and nothing happens.
to fix anti- I love this So they're jeering him.
They're saying, what about black on black crime?
They boom him when they don't like him, but they cheer him when he says good things about America, and they have a little common ground there.
And they start to come around as this guy starts to feel his way and say better things about America.
And afterwards, this guy's named, the BLM guy's named Hank Newsome.
He's BLM New York.
And so listen to the crowd come around and afterwards they talk to Newsom a little bit.
America great do it together It kind of restored my faith in some of those people because when I spoke truths, they agreed.
Great People Coming Around00:03:34
I feel like we made progress.
I feel like two sides that never listened to each other actually made progress today.
Amazing, okay?
When you see, and here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
I'm not a fan of Black Lives Matter, especially the way I felt that Obama kind of ginned up these stories and the way the media distorts all these stories.
But when you see that guy, Newsom, shaking hands with the Trump guy who invited him on stage because he believed in free speech, you are watching two American men shaking hands, two all American men shaking hands, two men who disagree shaking hands.
This, I swear to you, is what the media does not want.
They do not want this to happen.
They do not want us to hear each other.
They keep saying, oh, you know, Trump is a white supremacist.
You know, Tanahese Coates is writing, Trump is a white supremacist.
That girl on ESPN, what was her name?
Jamali something or other.
Trump is a white supremacist.
You know, Jason Riley writes about this in the Wall Street Journal today.
He writes, according to Gallup, Mr. Obama's approval rating was 57% on Election Day last year.
This was 59% 10 weeks later when he turned the White House keys over to his successor.
A Wall Street Journal NBC News poll released last week found that 51% of the country still had a positive view of the nation's twice-elected first black president, a finding that doesn't square with Tanahisi Coates' view that anti-black bias is ascendant.
It's true that white turnout increased for Mr. Trump, but it's also true that the president won a smaller percentage of the white vote than Mitt Romney and a larger percentage of the black and Hispanic vote than Mitt Romney.
So the plausible explanation is that working class people who voted for Obama also voted for Trump.
That it's not that they're white supremacists.
They, you know, they liked Obama, but now they felt the best way forward was Trump.
The media, let me put it to you this way, just so you know, I'm not being conspiratorial about it.
Donald Trump had made this remark that was a little clumsy after Charlottesville, where he said there are great people on both sides.
And the media immediately assumed and pumped and is still pumping and will continue to pump the idea that he meant that there were great people in the Nazi and white supremacist movement.
It was very clear to me that what Trump was saying, that there were great people on both sides of the question of whether to pull down statues, great people who wanted statues pulled down because they represented things they didn't like, great people who thought the statues should remain because they represented our history.
If the media wanted to clear this up, they would say, Mr. President, when you said there are great people on both sides, which two sides did you mean?
Has anyone ever asked him that question?
If they have, I haven't seen it.
They don't want to clear it up.
They don't want to clear it up because they know the minute we start talking to each other, they are out of gas and out of town.
They know it.
These two guys, these two guys shaking hands.
And why is this tape on the blaze, a conservative site, Glenn Beck's excellent conservative site?
Why is it there and not being shown on every network show, you know, news show there is?
ABC, CBS, NBC, you think they're going to show it?
I don't think so.
I don't think they are because they do not want this story out.
The story is this.
We are not a racist country anymore.
We are not hate enemies.
We are friends.
We can find a way forward.
There's going to be compromise on both sides, but we can find a way forward.