Ep. 407’s Andrew Clavin mocks Hillary Clinton’s "terrifying" Halloween costume while dissecting Mueller’s indictments—Paul Manafort’s weak defense and George Papadopoulos’ potential cooperation—then pivots to Hollywood’s alleged "gay mafia," accusing Dan Schneider of exploiting child actors. Sociologist Mark Regnerus argues "cheap sex" (porn, birth control) has delayed marriage, citing plummeting rates since 1970, and defends his controversial study linking same-sex parenting to worse outcomes for kids, despite backlash from both sides. The episode ties cultural shifts—from media bias to gender roles—to broader societal fractures. [Automatically generated summary]
Many of you may be wondering if Ben Shapiro is dressed up as Keith Olbermann and Michael Knowles is dressed up as whatever he's dressed up as.
Why am I not wearing a costume?
Let me explain.
It's because I am a grown-ass man.
And a grown-ass man dresses like a grown-ass man.
Always.
That is why.
That is why I am not wearing.
Now, internally, I identify as a Polynesian Disney princess.
Yesterday, it was explained to me that I accidentally said, what did I say, Jess?
I said she was a Hawaiian.
And Jess explained to me afterwards that it wasn't you, it was Alicia, Alicia, who explained, Alicia explained to me that it was that Moana is in fact, who we're not supposed to dress as for some insane leftist reason, is not Hawaiian.
She's Polynesian.
And I don't want you to think that I said that because all brown people look alike to me.
It's because I haven't seen Moana because I am a grown-ass man.
I don't go and watch these things.
Now, it's wonderful.
I like girls in costume to always look cute and interesting and fun, but please.
I mean, really.
I'm embarrassed to be here for the rest of the day, basically, with all these people.
You know, I'm always embarrassed to be around Knowles.
However, Hillary Clinton wins the scary Halloween contest.
They asked her what she would be dressing as.
And this is true.
I'm not making this up.
She said, I will be dressing as the president.
And I thought, that's terrifying.
And we actually have a clip of Hillary Clinton as the president.
Are you ready, Hillary?
What's going on, Anderson Cooper?
Where am I?
It's the staircase of the White House.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
Down below.
They're waiting for the president.
I'm Murphy.
All right, cameras, rolling.
Action, we're live.
So they were turning after all, those cameras.
Life, which can be strangely merciful, had taken pity on Hillary Clinton.
The dream she had clung to so desperately had unfolded her.
I can't go on to the inauguration.
I'm just so happy.
Mr. Cooper, do you mind if I say a few words?
Thank you.
I just wanted to say to you all how happy I am to be back at the White House and how much I've missed all of you.
I promise never to desert you again.
And after I serve this term, I saw another and another.
Because after all, this is my life.
And it always will be.
There's nothing else.
I love that.
That's funny or die.
I have to give a hat tip to Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit who posted it.
And you may say to yourself, who on earth ever makes fun?
What comedians ever make fun of Hillary Clinton?
And the answer is that was done when they were trying to destroy her so that Barack Obama could be president.
So everything is relative.
Yes, of course, they wouldn't do that today because that would be attacking a Democrat instead of attacking a Republican.
Which brings us to this actual news of the day, which is that after Manafort is indicted and this guy, George Papadopoulos, a guy who worked for Trump, took a plea bargain, the media is screaming for Trump's blood, but the only resignation comes from a Clinton bundler, Tony Podesta.
There's also more sex scandals in Hollywood, and we have Mark Regnerus here to discuss his book, Cheap Sex.
And if you want cheap sex, you've come to the right place.
Trigger warning.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky donkey.
Life is tickety boo.
Send Flowers for a Lousy 100 Bucks00:03:29
Birds are ringing, also singing.
Hunky dunkity.
Shoot your tipsy topsy, go around to zippity zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, if you think this is scary, tomorrow is mailbag day.
And now see all the terrible things that are happening to you today.
They will all be solved if you send your questions in.
You can ask about anything you want, personal, religious, political, anything that comes up.
I will answer your questions.
My answers are guaranteed 100% correct and will change your life on occasion for the better.
Here's how you do it.
You go on this website, you press the podcast button, right?
Tell me when I'm getting this wrong.
You press the podcast button, and then there's a mailbag button, and you press that.
But you got to subscribe for a lousy 10 bucks a month.
Look in the mirror.
Look in the mirror.
Is that the way you want to live the rest of your life?
No, of course not.
For a lousy 10 bucks a month, all your problems can be solved.
For a lousy 100 bucks, you can subscribe to the year and ask mailbag questions all year long while drinking out of your leftist tears tumbler, which you get as a free gift for $100.
I guess that's not a free gift, but it's kind of, well, you get the subscription for the $100.
Anyway, you know, now that it is deep autumn and it finally rained, we got some cold weather here.
It's been like 100 degrees and finally it rained this autumn.
You know, you might want to surprise somebody you love.
And the best way to do that is wait for them to be asleep and then dress up as a zombie and just hang over their bed and then whisper their name in a really small, creepy voice.
Or you could send them flowers.
I'm guessing the flowers are going to be a bigger hit.
So why don't you go to proflowers.com and they will send you some beautiful fresh bouquet in their favorite fall colors.
I use this all the time for the simple reason that if I didn't use this all the time, I'd constantly be saying, ooh, I forgot.
It's my wife's birthday.
Ooh, I forgot.
It's my wife.
So this way with ProFlowers, you never forget.
You can always send them and they show up fresh.
It's a perfect gift for anyone who's excited about fall or anything else.
They send you a long-lasting bouquet in your favorite fall colors.
Their best-selling cinnamon cider roses are an excellent option for birthday, anniversary, any fall occasion.
Or go with one of the classics like 100 autumn blooms or a dozen autumn roses.
You can't lose because no matter which bouquet you send, my listeners get 20% off of any of ProFlowers' unique bouquets of $29 or more.
20% off any bouquet of $29 or more.
To get that deal, you get, go to ProFlow Flowers.
You go to ProFlowers.com.
It's the drugs.
It's nothing, nothing.
Don't pay no attention.
ProFlowers.com and use my code AK at checkout.
How do you spell that?
AK.
That's AK.
ProFlowers.com and use the code AK.
ProFlowers bouquets are guaranteed to stay fresh for at least seven days or your money back.
You control the delivery date.
It's a great deal.
20% off at proflowers.com with the code AK.
So I know we should be talking about the news, this Halloween, slight holiday atmosphere around it.
I have to play what is, as of this moment, my favorite moment in the Trump administration.
I mean, Trump met with the children of the press, and he was hilarious.
And I don't think they spread it around enough because it was so charming.
Podesta Group Under Scrutiny00:11:56
I mean, it was kind of, it was a little bit like watching like a mobster with kids, but he's so gruff, you know.
But the kids all showed up and you can see them.
They're dressed in their costumes.
They got Batman and Princess Leia and all this stuff.
And Trump is talking to them, but at the same time, he's talking to their parents, the media, whom he hates.
And just, this is just a brief clip of this.
Who likes this?
No, that's me.
Well, you have no weight problems.
That's the good news, right?
So you take out whatever you need, okay?
If you want some for your friends, take them.
We have plenty.
So how does the press treat you?
You get treated better by the press than anybody in the world, right?
I think so.
I see.
Anyway, well, congratulations, folks.
You did a good job.
Well, Brinkley did a good job.
Here, you did a good job.
I wouldn't say you did very well here, but really beautiful children.
How are you?
How are you?
He said to him, how did the media produce such beautiful children?
It was great.
It was great.
So yesterday we had Manafort's indicted and this guy, George Papadopoulos.
I actually forgot to talk about Papadopoulos, and you're hearing a lot.
This could be the more dangerous thing.
Papadopoulos lied to the feds about contacts he had had with someone who said he could get him dirt on Hillary Clinton, who was a Russian.
He met him over in London.
They call him the professor and all this stuff.
And they say he is proactively cooperating with the investigation.
So people are speculating, is he wearing a wire?
Who's he talking to?
And all this stuff.
And we'll get back to that.
But first, this Manafort thing, you know, I was saying from yesterday and actually last week, because Tucker Carlson was reporting, and I was just reporting what Tucker Carlson was reporting, that the investigation, Mueller's investigation, is now centering around the Podesta group.
And they're still investigating if there's any collusion with Trump in Russia, but they're investigating whether Manafort, Paul Manafort, all the indictment covers is the time when Manafort was working for the sham Ukrainian company, which was really just basically a Russian front.
And he was going to Tony Podesta in meetings where his brother John Podesta was as well.
Who are they?
Well, let's turn to the New York Times, because the New York Times is the paper of record, right?
All the news that's fit to print.
Here's how they reported this, because today, suddenly, yesterday, I mean, suddenly, Tony Podesta resigned.
He resigned from this basically this lobbying group.
So here's their report.
Tony Podesta, a prominent lobbyist and Democrat donor who has come under scrutiny from the escalating special counsel investigation, stepped down on Monday from the firm he co-founded, according to people familiar with the firm.
The firm, the Podesta Group, has lost clients as it has been increasingly drawn into the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller III.
On Monday, the Podesta Group and another company with which it had worked, Mercury Public Affairs, were referenced, though not by name, in an indictment of two former Trump campaign officials, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
And that was in the indictment.
It said Company A and Company B.
And these are the two companies.
It was the Podesta firm.
Now, you may have noticed there was a name missing from that report, a name you didn't hear, because you're thinking to yourself, why is this on the front page of the New York Times?
So, of course, you go to the second paragraph.
It's not there.
You go to the third paragraph.
It's not there.
Fourth paragraph, fifth paragraph, sixth paragraph, not there.
Seventh paragraph.
And listen to this, seventh paragraph in the New York Times, a former newspaper.
I mean, you'd think they would remember how to write the news.
Mr. Podesta announced his departure at a staff meeting on Monday.
He is the brother of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign chairman, John Podesta, who co-founded the firm.
Tony Podesta has become the target.
By the way, Tony Podesta is also a bundler for Hillary Clinton.
I mean, he's a guy, big, big donor for Hillary Clinton.
Tony Podesta has become the target of attacks from conservatives looking to shift the tension away from Mr. Mueller's scrutiny of President Trump's campaign team.
I mean, that's the news that's fit to print.
Meanwhile, Podesta is blaming Tucker Carlson for his resignation.
And he's saying, how can I go on when Fox News is attacking me?
And all Fox News is doing is reporting the truth, which is what they kind of do over there, and especially Carlson and Brett Baer.
So he's not only doing this, he's calling up Carlson.
He's calling up Fox and trying to intimidate them, shut them up.
So here's Carlson reporting the story.
Podesta isn't just complaining about us, though.
He's threatening us.
This afternoon, we got a letter from Jeff Garenthur.
He's a lawyer with Venable LLP, a big law firm here in D.C.
The letter demands that this show, quote, immediately cease and desist disseminating false and misleading reports about Mr. Podesta and the Podesta group.
It demands we retract and delete all our prior reporting on the Podesta group and warns that if we don't do this, quote, Mr. Podesta may pursue legal action, including for damages, in order to fully protect his rights.
The letter doesn't stop there, though.
It also warns us that we will face legal action under the Copyright Act merely for quoting from this letter publicly, as we just did.
The most amusing line, though, is this one.
Quote, Paul Manafort did not work with the Podesta group in its representation of the European Center for a Modern Ukraine.
That's what the lawyer's letters told us.
Apparently, that lawyer hasn't read the Manafort indictment yet.
In paragraph 22 of that indictment, we read this, quote, at the direction of Manafort and Gates, companies A and B engaged in extensive lobbying on Ukraine.
The indictment also says that the Podesta group and Mercury were selected personally by Paul Manafort to lobby on behalf of Ukrainian interests.
So if John Podesta's legal team has a complaint, it's not with us, it's with the Department of Justice in the Mueller investigation.
But maybe we're being too literal about this.
Probably so.
Podesta's lawyer wasn't trying to inform us of anything, but to threaten us to shut down our reporting on his client.
One lawyer we talked to earlier today said the Podesta people have used this tactic with others before.
It's common.
It's an effort to use fear to control press coverage.
We're not intimidated.
This is amazing.
And by the way, just to bring this up, part of this influence peddling that they were bringing from Russia through Tony Podesta, why was he talking to Tony Podesta?
Why was John Podesta in the room?
It was because they were reaching out to the State Department to try and buy our uranium in Canada from this Canadian company that was controlling about 20% of our uranium supplies and basically influenced the Obama administration for Russia.
So, I mean, this is really, you know, this is not a distraction.
So far, in terms of whether Trump is guilty of anything or Hillary Clinton is guilty of anything, so far, this is the story.
This is the story.
It's Podesta.
And the Times can bury it in the seventh paragraph all they want.
It is going to come out.
You know, one of the things the New York Times doesn't realize is that there's a great big, beautiful world out there full of internet news, you know, and they're just going to hide it all they want, but people can still see it.
And by the way, you know, so this is going to be what the narrative is going to be from now on.
Anything that looks like it might touch Trump is going to get days and days and days of coverage, even if it turns out to be nothing.
Anything that goes to Clinton is just conservatives trying to distract you from the wonderful glittery Trump stuff over here.
And if you don't think, if you do not think that the left is just dying to get their hands, get some dirt on Trump, take a look at Stephen Colbert reporting this indictment.
Now, I know it's almost Halloween, but it really feels more like Christmas.
Paul Manafort, Paul Manafort, you're just the first of many.
Five years in jail.
Shall I sing to the feds Trump upon pong?
And, you know, this is just to compare this to Brian Cranston.
Just a Hollywood aside here.
Brian Cranston, obviously the star of Breaking Bad, total left-wing loon, completely on the left wing.
But he was giving an interview to the Hollywood Reporter, and they said to him, he's got a new picture coming out, Last Flag Flying.
And the Hollywood Reporter says, you've previously been particularly vocal about your opposition to Trump.
Has your opinion changed throughout his first year in office?
And Cranston says this.
It's just astonishing to me.
President Trump is not the person I wanted to be in that office, and I've been very open about that.
That being said, he is the president.
If he fails, the country is in jeopardy.
It would be egotistical for anyone to say, I hope he fails.
To that person, I would say, screw you.
Why would you want that?
So you can be right.
I don't want him to fail.
I want him to succeed.
I do.
I honestly do.
And he's got a good idea that helps the country.
Oh, man, I'm going to support you.
I don't care if you're a Republican and I'm a Democrat or whatever.
I don't care.
That to me, listen, I disagree with everything Brian Cranston believes, but that to me is the voice of patriotism.
I can talk to that guy.
We can reason together and find a way forward and explore ideas.
You can explore your ideas with a guy, a clown like Stephen Colbert, who thinks that an indictment that might touch the President of the United States is Christmas all day long.
And by the way, the basic idea of this indictment, because it's such a complex indictment and so difficult, it seems to me, to prove, the idea is that basically they're putting the screws to Manafort, hoping he will spill the beans and take them all the way up to Trump.
But his lawyer, Manafort's lawyer, Kevin Downey, says they're fighting it and they're not going to do it and this has nothing to do with Trump.
There's no evidence that Mr. Manafort or the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government.
Mr. Manafort represented pro-European Union campaigns for the Ukrainian.
And in that, he was seeking to further democracy and to help the Ukraine come closer to the United States and the EU.
Those activities ended in 2014, over two years before Mr. Manafort served in the Trump campaign.
Today, you see an indictment brought by an office of special counsel that is using a very novel theory to prosecute Mr. Manafort regarding a FARA filing.
The United States government has only used that offense six times since 1966.
It only resulted in one conviction.
The second thing about this indictment that I myself find most ridiculous is a claim that maintaining offshore accounts to bring all your funds into the United States as a scheme to conceal from the United States government is ridiculous.
So, I mean, they really sound like they're fighting this.
Andy McCarthy over at the National Review wrote a good piece saying this indictment is basically a boon for Trump because it points away from Trump, and it's going to be difficult to prove because what they're charging Manafort with is money laundering.
But in order to launder money, you have to know that the money is illegal.
I can do anything I want with my money, but if it's illegal money and I'm trying to hide it, that's what's illegal.
So what a prosecutor will do in situations like this, and it's not just Mueller, it's everybody, all legal guys, they will come to you and they'll say, if you're convicted of these charges, you will get 80 years in prison.
And you'll see that headline.
You know, Manafort faces 80 years in prison.
And if you don't have a good lawyer, you think, oh my lord, 80 years in prison, what's my other option?
And they say, well, your other option is you tell us that Donald Trump is a Russian spy and we'll give you six months probation.
You think like, ah, 80 years in prison, six months probation, I'll fold, you know.
Why We Left Google00:02:32
But they don't sound like they're folding.
Manafort is a very, is not a, what can I say, not necessarily a clean guy, but he is a loyal guy, and I don't think that's going to work.
And even if it did work, who would believe him at this point because he's been pressured so badly.
Which brings me to the subject of underwear.
It's like, hey, I'm a professional broadcaster.
That was a segue.
You know, I'm not wearing a costume, but I could be wearing glow-in-the-dark underwear.
You wouldn't know it if I were, but that you can actually get underwear that glows in the dark if you go to Me Undies.
Me Undies, I do, I do not have, I'm joking, I don't have the underwear, the glows in the dark.
They are selling this.
They are selling glow-in-the-dark underwear.
But in Me Undies, but I do have several pairs of Me Undies, and I wear them especially when I hike because they are so incredibly comfortable.
They're made out of this magic cloth.
I don't know what it is, but it is three times softer than cotton.
They've got tons of styles and patterns to choose from for both men and women, and they have a perfect fit for you personally.
You just can go on and check out what you need online.
They also change their designs all the time.
So if you are one of those people who does fun underwear, you can have fun underwear.
I don't do that.
Why?
Because I'm a grown-ass man.
That's what I wear.
But I do wear the meundies, and they really are comfortable, incredibly comfortable.
And you can get 20% off the best and softest underwear and socks you'll ever own with free shipping and 100% satisfaction guarantee.
You go to meundies.com, Clavin, K-L-A-V-A-N.
It's meundies.com.
Clavin, you will get 20% off incredibly soft, incredibly comfortable underwear and socks.
Free shipping and 100% satisfaction guarantee.
Meundies.com and put in Clavin.
And you know, I hope you will go to these advertisers because they keep us going.
If we don't have the advertisers, we can't be here and say all the wonderful things that we're telling you.
So please do visit our advertisers.
We need them and they need you.
So please do that.
All right, we got to cut away from Facebook and YouTube, but you can come over to thedailywire.com where you will find that you can press the podcast button.
And if you're a subscriber, you can then go to the mailbag place and ask questions in the mailbag, all of which will be answered tomorrow with answers that are 100% guaranteed correct and will change your life sometimes for the better.
Come on over to TheDailyWire.com and subscribe.
Dan and Jim Discuss Manafort Indictment00:10:33
Okay, so what about this guy, Papathopoulos?
Papadopa Dapa, Dapada, Papadopoulos.
Papadopoulos basically is a young guy, came to work unpaid, apparently, for the Trump administration.
He was going to help them out with foreign relations.
And remember, the thing about the Trump administration is no Republican wanted to go near them.
This is the thing you have to think back on.
And so they're getting anybody they can get to help them because the actual foreign relations establishment didn't want to go anywhere near Donald Trump.
No one wanted to go near Donald Trump.
He was going to lose.
He was going to take the Senate majority with him.
And everybody was abandoning him.
So here was a young guy who did come in.
He met in London a Russian academic who is referred to in this charge against him in his plea bargain as the professor.
The professor claimed to have ties to Putin regime officials who in turn had dirt on Hillary Clinton, among them her stolen emails.
And so he started writing emails.
This guy Papadopoulos started writing emails, passing this on to his superiors.
Now, none of these superiors are named in his plea bargain.
And the reason he took a plea bargain is because he lied to the FBI about this.
He said he only talked to them before the campaign, but he talked to them all through the campaign, these Russian guys, all through the campaign.
Don't lie, kids, pro tip, don't lie to the FBI.
Okay, that's because the funny thing is, you know, a lot of the stuff that Hillary Clinton did was so much dirtier, but she didn't, you know, she's not, hasn't been caught lying to the FBI.
All right, so anyway, Sam Clovis, you know, they don't, they always say they give these covered up names in the plea bargain.
They'll say the campaign supervisor.
This was Trump campaign national co-chairman, Sam Clovis.
Has admitted to this.
There was a woman, the professor said to this guy, Papadopoulos, that he could get him in touch with Putin's niece.
The woman turned out not to be Putin's niece.
This whole thing sounds kind of like a cheap scam, you know.
And so he was writing, Papadopoulos was writing to his superiors.
Clovis said, you know, he kept saying, Should I go over to Moscow?
And people were saying, no, we're not going to go to Moscow.
And then somebody, who was it who said this to him?
I think it was Manafort, Paul Manafort said, whatever happens, Donald Trump's not going.
There's not going to be Donald Trump who goes and does this.
But some of the people did say, maybe you should go and do it and meet with him.
Nothing ever came of it.
It shows a willingness to meet with the Russians, but nothing ever came of it.
So Sarah Sanders, and Sarah Sanders, the White House spokesman, is playing down who Papadopoulos was.
This is the first Sarah Sanders got three.
Can you just explain what George Papadopoulos' role with the campaign was?
It was extremely limited.
It was a volunteer position.
And again, no activity was ever done in an official capacity on behalf of the campaign in that regard.
And what about the outreach that he was making to campaign officials to try to put together this?
You mean the outreach that was repeatedly denied?
And we're not going to take any action on that.
Can you explain what happened with his outreach?
He reached out and nothing happened beyond that, which I think shows, one, his level of importance in the campaign, and two, shows what little role he had within coordinating anything officially for the campaign.
So we don't know.
The guy was cooperating with the investigations.
Actually, I sort of think he may have been cooperating.
Maybe the reason they released this at the same time they released the Manafort indictment is he may have been cooperating by talking to Manafort.
I don't know.
Nobody knows yet, but we'll find out.
But Jim Acosta of CNN, he had to step up, and Jim Acosta always says the same thing: Look at me, look at me.
I'm Jim Acosta.
I can stand on my head and rub my tummy at the same time.
And that's what he does to Sarah Sanders, who fights back pretty admirably.
How is it not collusion when George Papadopoulos is in contact with various people who are promising dirt on Hillary Clinton?
A series of events that closely mirrors what occurred with the president's own son.
This individual was on a pursuit of information that was damaging about the Clintons.
How is all of that not collusion?
Look, this individual was the member of a volunteer advisory council that met one time over the course of a year.
And he was part of a list that was read out in the Washington Post.
I'd hardly call that some sort of regular advisor or, as you want to, you know, push, that he's like a senior member of the staff.
He was not paid by the campaign.
He was a volunteer on, again, a council that met once.
He was pursuing information from the Russians.
Again, he was a volunteer.
I think that's something you'd need to ask him.
I'm not here to speak on behalf of the thousands of people that may have volunteered on the campaign.
It's just ridiculous.
I mean, Acostas just makes a fool of himself.
He's playing Dan Rather in Dan Rather's imagination.
He's pretending to be.
I want to take a pause.
We're going to have Mark Regneris come on to talk about his book, Cheap Sex, which has become like a kind of a really, it's really being passed around among sociological circles.
Big article about it in the Wall Street Journal that's being passed around a lot.
And it's a really interesting theory.
I don't want to talk to him about it.
But before we get to that, I just want to cover some other news, okay?
Here is the other news that is not.
First, we'll go to a website called The Daily Wire where Brad Schaefer writes this.
Lost in the Never Ending Russia Gate saga, the past few days, was one of the most grossly underreported stories by the mainstream media.
The Department of Justice has settled with several conservative groups who claim they've been specifically targeted by the IRS for harassment and frivolous yet expensive and time-consuming actions, as well as denial or delay of tax-exempt status due to their political leanings in opposition to the Obama administration.
Court records show that IRS admitted wrongdoing and offered this astounding apology for what in less political times would be considered by both the left and the right to be one of the most sinister and egregious exercises of punitive state power to suppress free speech and deny First Amendment rights to U.S. citizens in living memory, said the IRS.
The IRS admits that its treatment of plaintiffs, these conservatives groups, during the tax-exempt determination process, including screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny, scrutiny, and inordinate delays, and demanding some plaintiffs' information was wrong.
For such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology.
This is, remember, the scandal-free Obama administration.
Remember, all those people, all that people saying is scandal-free.
The other story I just want to hit on for a minute is this is something that's dear to my heart.
It's really wonky.
I've been talking about it for two years now.
Consumer confidence has hit the highest level since December 2000.
Okay, so that's 17 years, the highest level of consumer comms.
The U.S. economy is outpacing expectations for the first time since April.
Okay, and that's going in the stock rally, obviously, you've been watching.
Gerald Seib in the Wall Street Journal says, why, you might ask, are the financial markets and the business community so happy with the Trump administration?
The explanation for the love affair lies in something many in Washington either find boring or overlook entirely, deregulation.
And this is something I've been harping on because regulation, what they do is they pass a law, and the law says, oh, you know, you should be transparent in your business dealings.
And then an agency starts to make regulations to enforce the law.
And by the time they're finished, the agency has so much power over your life.
And you have, because you're not dealing with the law, you're just dealing with the agency, you have very little power to fight back.
And that's how you find things like out in Montana or Wyoming, they come and take your water away.
You know, you were watering your cattle, and they say, no, you can't do that because we have a new regulation, and this water is a major waterway and all this stuff.
And that's how they control your life.
They don't do it through laws.
They do it through regulations.
Obama just passed regulations like crazy.
Trump has been rolling them back.
And it's one of those things that's not being noticed every time they cover a new tweet and a new, you know, a new kind of shiny little story.
Finally, before we get to regular, are we getting him on the phone?
Yeah, great.
Before we get to him, I want to also just talk about this Kevin Spacey, because yesterday I didn't defend Kevin Spacey, but I just was cautious about a guy who does something and a guy who did something, right?
And he would have been accused of one thing.
Now people are saying, oh, we always knew this about Kevin Spacey.
If that continues to be true, I withdraw everything to hell with him.
But, you know, there's this other thing that I keep talking about that we keep hearing is two things.
One is this gay mafia that apparently passes boys around, especially young boy actors around, and that keeps coming up to the surface and bubbling up to the surface and then vanishing.
And I just think, you know, there's a very, very powerful group of people in Hollywood who have not been caught at this.
And now rumblings are growing louder and louder that one of Hollywood's biggest producers of children's entertainment is about to be outed as a major incubator for pedophile executives and their twisted manipulations.
There's a guy at Nickelodeon named Dan Schneider, a former actor and producer.
He's responsible for nearly every one of their biggest successes in the last 20 years.
Schneider has produced and written the shows that have given us breakout stars like Ariana Grande, Amanda Bynes, and Victoria Justice.
Snyder has also been the subject of some very disturbing and consistent rumors for years.
One need only search his name on the internet to find pretty damning rumors about him going back years.
There are stories of his foot fetishes and how he acts them out on young extras alone in his office.
There are stories about his relationships with his underage teenage stars and how they led to spin-off shows for the girls or blacklisting for those who didn't participate.
And they say on one of those websites, Reddit, I think it was, that Robert Downey Jr. allegedly wrote the following statement about Dan Schneider on Crazy Days and Nights under the screen name him, H-I-M-M-M-M-M.
He said, he's a monster, the worst predator alive.
And if you wonder why nobody will confront or charge him, he's in charge of multiple hit shows for Nick, which rakes in oceans of money, tens of million dollars multiplied by many years and many shows.
Hollywood is unraveling.
I mean, this is really bad.
Sexual Access and Relationships00:11:19
And it's really, I mean, this is taken, this is not transactional sex where you go out with a producer and think, like, yeah, I'll go to bed with them and get the part, which is your choice, your call.
This is really bad stuff.
And if it continues, the city's going to be on fire, and I'm coming to live at your house.
I hope you don't mind because I'm getting out of here.
All right, sexual follies.
All right.
Mark Regneris is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, and he has written a very powerful book called Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy.
Mark, it's good to see you.
Thanks for coming on.
Thanks, Drew.
Happy to be here.
Let's start with what makes sex cheap.
What does that mean?
What does that phrase mean?
Well, cheap sex means that it's easier for men to access sex of some sort than ever before in human history.
So we think about not just coupled sex, but sexual experiences.
As we were just talking about, pornography and things that they can access by themselves of a higher quality, of course, than your grandfather's Playboy calendar in the garage.
So it's about ease of sexual access or access to desirable sexual experiences.
That's what cheap sex is.
Okay, and that's been increasing since certainly since I was a kid when the sexual revolution began and it's gotten to very extensive at this point.
Right.
It really launches in some ways with the advent of the pill, right?
Because that's the thing that sinks the cost of sex.
So I always call it a grand bargain.
She gets control of fertility in exchange.
He got control of the pace at which the relationship became sexual, such that today, as I said in the Wall Street Journal, like the modal time at which a relationship becomes sexual is now before it even starts, right?
So it's not after a few dates, after a couple months of courting.
It's like before we even begin.
Well, because now, obviously, the girl doesn't have the excuse of, oh, I might get pregnant.
She doesn't have the religious excuse because a lot of religion is gone.
So there's no barrier.
So what's the result?
What is the societal result?
And how did you study this and what did you find?
Sure.
Well, I'll get to the how did I study it in a second, but one of the results is like the road to stable, committed relationships, including, but not only marriage, is a lot longer, right?
And a lot more sort of boulder strewn, especially for women who would prefer a higher price for sex, right?
I mean, they actually enjoy sex more when it's in a committed relationship than when it's not.
Of course, which isn't that shocking.
But I mean, as these things evolve, right?
I think We shouldn't expect marriage rates to curve back around and increase.
They're decreasing.
They've been decreasing since 1970.
And I don't see it coming back.
You know, well, one of the things that in this Wall Street Journal piece, you quote a 24-year-old recent college graduate, and he says, Girls are easier to mislead than guys just by lying or just not really caring.
If you know what girls want, then you know you should not give that to them until the proper time.
If you do that strategically, then you can really have anything you want, whether it's relationship sex or whatever.
You have the control.
I mean, I think there have been guys who have felt that all through history, but that kid sounds like he's just on Easy Street, basically.
Right.
I mean, there have been people who have felt that all through history, but they've been really at the elite level.
Now, one of the things I'm saying is this is kind of democratized, right?
The average man can experience this.
It's not just Harvey Weinstein or the other producers we're talking about.
I mean, it's the average guy, and he doesn't even have to be a college graduate anymore.
I mean, the frequency of sex is higher, actually, among people who haven't graduated college than those who have.
Maybe it's because we're working too much.
I don't know.
But, you know, the issue of sexual access is widespread.
That's another question I wanted to ask you.
You know, Charles Murray has said that basically as you go up the class ladder, people get married more.
They go to church more.
They work harder.
So when you say marriage is falling apart, do you mean across the spectrum?
Or is it only in the lower sex?
Yeah, it's receding more slowly among the college educated.
I mean, people want to marry.
Men want to marry too, eventually, so to speak.
But it's receding more at the working class level.
Now, why?
Because, well, marriageability is about productivity and proving yourself, being able to generate an income.
And that doesn't change, even though women no longer really need the men's income quite the same way they used to.
But what you're seeing is working class men being slow to marry, women considering them not so marriageable, but they still have sexual access.
So at some level, it's like, well, hey, this isn't so bad.
So why do I have a few decades ago?
That would not have been the case.
I mean, if they were flirting with sex, she would get pregnant.
You have the shotgun wedding.
And, you know, they may not be the happiest, but that's your grandparents, right?
Right, right.
And so what you're saying is a man has no sexual reason to build himself into anything better than he is.
He doesn't have to improve himself.
That's the correct.
So here's another angle from this.
Is it possible that marriage itself has become less appealing to men because they get less out of it?
I mean, setting sex aside with feminism, if your wife is working out of the home, there's nobody there to raise your children.
There's nobody there to build a home for you, which I think is a real advantage to have someone to make a home for you.
It's a beautiful thing.
And your children only cost you money.
They don't come back and work on the farm.
They go off into the world.
So you don't see any return on your investment.
That part ended with the Industrial Revolution.
Right.
So there's this movement, people talk about men going their own way.
And people will respond to the Wall Street Journal article and say, Mark, you're out to lunch.
It's because marriage is a bad deal for men.
I don't see evidence of men, especially in their 20s and early 30s, saying, Marriage is a bad deal.
I'm not going to do it ever.
I mean, they might, if they're wealthy enough, they might add in some clause into the marriage.
But I don't see them fleeing marriage at the front end.
What I do see is evidence at the back end having been burned, looking back and saying, oh, I should have seen this, right?
The deck is stacked against me.
She can take my children.
I can't see them when I want to.
So I think that the men going their own way thing is more of a reflection, you know, looking back than a characteristic of men in the 20s and 30s.
Because Kevin says, I still want to get married.
I just want, you know, I just don't want to have sex with a million girls first and make a lot of mistakes.
Right, right.
Now, given the fact that every day I read in the paper that they're making better and more realistic sex robots and porn is going to become 3D, I'm sure as soon as they have that Oculus really working, the first thing they're going to put on it is porn.
Do you see this trend reversing?
Is they see any way to make this trend reverse?
No, I don't see it reversing.
I don't quite know how much the robot thing will replace sex.
The deal is like women have begun to make deals with men over pornography and probably soon over the robot thing, in part because they feel like they have to.
I mean, women really feel like they're in a bind, darned if they do, darned if they don't.
If they leave this man who has this problem, will they, you know, is the grass truly greener on the other side of the fence?
And I think they're finding themselves puzzled about whether they can truly get away from sort of the pornified society.
But as you say, you're right.
I mean, as soon as we create new technology, that's the first thing men seem to do with it, right?
Of course.
So will it replace marriage?
I mean, at some level, no.
Marriage is robust.
It's not going to die.
I think it's going to recede, though.
And it's going to be characteristic of more religious communities, more conservative men.
I mean, and men who, together with their wives, sort of work through the temptations that are ever present.
You know, I have to ask you this before I let you go, because I'm really always interested about the way these studies are done.
And you've come under heavy fire from the left.
I mean, you've come under some of the worst fire I've ever seen, actually, from the left for a study you did saying that the children raised by gay couples are more likely to commit suicide or something.
I believe that was the study.
It's a little bit more subtle than that, but that was the study you're thinking.
Worst outcomes, let's say.
Do you feel confident that you are getting a broad enough spectrum of people?
I mean, that's what they always accuse you of, right?
You haven't gotten a broad spectrum.
You haven't got that.
Do you feel confident that you're getting a broad enough spectrum to really have a picture of society?
I do.
Far more confident in this because this is a large study, 15,000 plus people in the survey, 100 interviews.
Whereas the study that you had mentioned before, I mean, it was the first randomly collected data set of its kind.
And we had 248 cases on a survey of young adults who had a mother or a father who had been in a same-sex relationship at some point, right?
Not necessarily raised by a gay couple, but you had a father or mother who had been in a relationship.
So this one is, those were like searching for needles in a haystack, right?
This is a general population survey.
This is average men and women we're talking about.
I'm very confident in it.
And so do people, you expect to be attacked again?
I mean, that's what I'm kind of getting at.
Do you just doing this kind of research, does that open you up to attack?
It happened already.
The funny thing is, it comes from both sides.
Men think I'm accusing them of being blokes and just sort of all they're interested in in sex.
Women think I'm misogynistic to suggest that somehow they have to sort of trade sex for resources with men.
I mean, I just think this is, you know, this is how men and women relate to each other.
And so it's coming from both angles.
It's coming from scholars, although smart scholars will recognize and have already done so that there's some truth into this.
Yeah, yeah.
Mark Regneris, the book is called Cheap Sex, the Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy.
Thanks very much for coming on.
I appreciate it.
It's an interesting conversation.
Appreciate it.
All right.
We are out of time, I think, you know, but the mailbag is tomorrow.
And all your, I mean, come on, look in the mirror, look at your life.