Stuart Smalley’s Homo-Nazis rant ties Al Franken’s resignation to political opportunism, framing LGBTQ+ advocacy as a fascistic threat to religious freedom via cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop, while Andrew McCarthy argues Mueller’s Flynn plea signals obstruction—not collusion—with Trump’s self-pardon immunity making prosecution futile. The segment dismisses media bias claims against Strzok, mocks the Mueller probe as a counterintelligence "fishing expedition," and pivots to unrelated pop culture before ending with show plugs, leaving Trump’s legal exposure in doubt. [Automatically generated summary]
Many years ago, when I first got out of college, I moved in with my then-girlfriend, my now wife, into a tiny little apartment in a beautiful block on the west side of Manhattan.
We lived in a brownstone, narrow street.
You were looking right into the windows of the brownstone across the street.
And after we had lived there a while, a young couple moved into the building right across from us, and they had the kind of strange habit of making love right next to the window with the sash open, with the curtains open.
And they were incredibly attractive pair, and it was riveting because it was right, you could not miss it.
I mean, when people came over to visit, you'd have to close the blinds because you couldn't help but see them having sex right across the window.
And I was watching them one day, and I turned to my girlfriend and I said, This is, I can't believe the things these people do.
It's pornographic.
And she looked out and she said, Well, they're only doing what we do.
Everybody does.
We all do the same things.
We do all those things.
And I realized suddenly that when you look at sex from the outside, it's pornographic.
But when you experience from the inside, it's not pornographic at all.
Usually, it's quite meaningful and full of depth and full of interest and just full of pleasure and all kinds of internal experiences.
And this is why I believe Alfred Hitchcock believed there were two things that you should never film.
You should never film people praying and you should never film people having sex.
And he never quite said this explicitly, but I always thought the reason he said that is because the outer depiction of those things is not what's going on.
Hollywood has used sex to represent love or represent commitment and represent all the kinds of things that it does in a story, but that has accustomed us to the idea that sex itself is just the actions themselves are meaningful when, of course, they're not.
It's what happens internally, which is true of all the important things of life.
It's really what happens inside you that is giving it meaning and purpose.
And that's what makes it so hard to judge other people's sex lives.
It's easy to make fun of people when they do something that's strange, like dress up in funny costumes or do some strange thing that doesn't turn you on.
Life Insurance and Power Abuse00:15:22
It's easy to judge them, but you do not know what's going on.
And that is why it is always a very good argument to tell people not to judge others in their personal lives.
None of us really wants to look through the window into somebody else's personal life.
And that is what has, and that argument has been used to completely strip away any sense of sexual morality.
It's now coming back in the worst way.
And when I say that, I mean in the worst way.
Al Franken has resigned after being turned on by all his fellows, not all, but most, many of his fellow senators.
And the question now is, is what we're watching a political moment or a moral moment or something in between or both.
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-dunky-dee-doo.
Shipshape, tipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
Well, it's possible that something has gone wrong with the cosmos because last weekend I thought was a really good weekend.
We had the tax bill moving forward.
We had the FBI kind of making a fool of itself, the MSM making a fool of itself as they covered the FBI.
And this week here, the Clavin-filled week, the city of Los Angeles is burning to the ground.
And, you know, I'm starting to feel a little bit.
I'm starting to feel a little woozy from all the smoke inhalation.
So the only explanation I can think of is Another Kingdom.
I mean, we have put out, Knowles and I have put out this podcast that you can get on iTunes for free or whatever if you have a, I don't know what it's called, if you have an Android, but there's some Google Play or something.
It's on all the different things.
Please go on and try it.
If you haven't tried it, please go on and try it.
It's a fantasy suspense story.
It told in serial form.
There are going to be about, I don't know, there may be four or five episodes, six episodes left.
Episode number nine comes out, very dramatic episode, comes out tomorrow.
Please go on, leave a rating, please subscribe.
It's all free.
And people are finding it's got over 30, I think it's got 1,300 five-star reviews now.
So people are really digging.
It's got over 200,000 downloads.
We need more.
We've still got some interest in TV.
I haven't heard back.
I told you on Monday that I went in and pitched this.
I heard back from her once, but I haven't heard back from her again.
So we're still waiting for word.
And it really helps if you pump up the numbers and pump up the reviews.
So please do it.
And otherwise, you know, there's a lot of homelessness in LA, and we don't want Knowles to be part of that.
So you have to give him a job.
Andy McCarthy is here.
Andrew C. McCarthy, who writes for NRO.
We're going to interview him about the Mueller investigation.
He is, in my opinion, the absolute best writer on the Mueller investigation.
Every time there's a new development, I go immediately to McCarthy because he is a former federal prosecutor and he really knows what he's talking about.
He will be here in just a few minutes, and you will be able to time that on your movement watch because it's Christmas time and you got to get some nice gifts and you don't want to break the bank.
Movement is a great way to give somebody a really, really elegant watch without going broke.
MVMT.
I was searching for, I shouldn't say this because I don't want to give it away, but I've been searching for a watch and it is amazing how expensive they are.
But if you go to movement, you will see elegant watches like this one, the one I'm wearing right now.
Very clean design, very modern design, but they just, they start at like 95 bucks.
If you went to a department store, you'd be looking at 400 to 500 bucks for the same watch.
What this is, two guys, they just said to each other, we love watches, but they shouldn't cost as much as they do.
So they developed a business model that helps them peddle them at prices you can afford.
They're MVMT.
I always have to point out that they leave out movement, but they leave out all the vowels, MVMT.
They even leave out a couple of other consonants too.
So like we're gathering all these letters and we're going to start our own company.
But they've already sold over a million watches in over 160 countries because of their classic design, the quality construction, and styled minimalism.
And you, just because you're listening, can get 15% off today with free shipping and free returns by going to movement.com slash Andrew.
That's MV.
It's in Victor MT.com slash Andrew.
Now is the time to step up your watch game by going to movement.com slash Andrew and you can join the movement.
I keep making that joke because it's just, I just wonder where all the vowels went.
We're going to stay on today, but so you can hear Andy McCarthy.
He's just so worth hearing.
We don't want you to miss it.
We will not cut you off on Facebook or YouTube.
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't subscribe, if only so that you can usually can watch every show from beginning to end right there on thedailywire.com.
You can be in the mailbag and you can join, pardon me, the conversation.
It's coming up again on Tuesday, December 12th at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific, and our own Ben Shapiro will be there.
If you subscribe today, you can be part of the conversation, ask Ben live questions about anything you want, and really just try and embarrass him or stump him or just make him uncomfortable.
It's so much fun.
We do it here all the time.
Ben's conversation will stream live on the Ben Shapiro Facebook page and the Daily Wire YouTube channel.
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To ask questions as a subscriber, log into the website, thedailywire.com.
Head over to the conversation page to watch the live stream.
And after that, just start typing into the Daily Wire chat box, and Ben will answer the questions as they come in for an entire hour.
Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by Ben Shapiro on Tuesday, December 12th at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific.
You've already joined the movement.
Now, join the conversation.
This is like a radical political site.
Join the guy.
Go forward for it.
So Al Franken resigned.
This happened as I was getting in my car to go to work, but Rob got me a cut.
I have not heard what he said.
Let's listen.
Just to set it up, I think there are now seven or eight women who say he's grabbed them, groped them, some kind of thing like this.
Yesterday, this dam broke.
About six women came out, six women senators came out and said he should resign, and then everyone from Chuck Schumer on down was just calling for him to step aside.
It made it impossible, really, for him to continue without the trust of his fellow senators, and this is his speech.
This is the first time I'm hearing it.
You know, an important part of the conversation we've been having the last few months has been about how men abuse their power and privilege to hurt women.
I am proud that during my time in the Senate, I have used my power to be a champion of women and that I have earned a reputation as someone who respects the women I work alongside every day.
I know there's been a very different picture of me painted over the last few weeks, but I know who I really am.
Serving in the United States Senate has been the great honor of my life.
I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator, nothing, has brought this honor on this institution.
And I am confident that the ethics committee would agree.
Nevertheless, today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate.
So basically what he said, and I have seen some of the transcript, what he said was we should believe women, even though these are a pack of lying whores.
I mean, he didn't cop to anything except grabbing some butt.
But, you know, on the right, people are a little suspicious of this sudden turn to sexual morality on the left.
And it just looks like a political thing.
They didn't do it to Clinton.
Nobody still, still, they haven't thrown Bill Clinton under the bus.
They're not going to lose a seat because the governor of Minnesota is going to appoint and he's a Democrat.
And so they're not going to lose a seat, but this does give them a place.
John Conyer is also resigning.
This does give them a greater moral standing on which to attack Roy Moore, who's running in Alabama.
So what they're going to do now, I think Britt Hume said they're going to make Roy Moore the hood ornament of the GOP.
And that, you know, it's a clever plan.
So it doesn't, look, it doesn't look like morality.
Also, the guy was accused.
He admitted to doing some of these things.
He did that dithering thing.
I don't know why these guys don't either say, I did it and I'm sorry, or I didn't do it.
You know, one or the other.
He did that dithering thing where I remember it differently.
It's hard not to know when you have grabbed somebody by the backside.
I mean, I think that, or tried to force a kiss on them that they didn't want.
He's also married, so if he's been doing this a lot, you know, there's a lot of moral things.
But the question, there really are questions about whether he's broken the law, whether he has broken the rules of the Senate.
He's being railroaded and he's being railroaded in order to put the Democrats, that doesn't mean he's not guilty.
I'm just saying he's being railroaded without due process to put the Democrats in a better position to attack Roy Moore.
And I have to say that there are two really interesting articles today about the Roy Moore situation.
One of them is from in the Wall Street Journal where they say, you know, it's not hard to see what's going on here.
They're attacking the Democrats.
The Democrats are creating a Franken Moore nightmare for Donald Trump.
Monday brought Mr. Trump's Moore endorsement, followed by commitment of support from the Republican National Committee.
The next day, Representative John Conyers stepped down from his House seat.
So in other words, the fact that Trump and the RNC did finally back Roy Moore put them in this vulnerable position.
But Ann Coulter has written a brilliant, brilliant column.
And I just want to read part of this.
She points out, and I think this is fair to say about Roy Moore.
She says, one of the accusers, the one who accused Moore of being violent with her, has been called the liar by her own stepson, who says he's voting for Moore, and another neglected to mention that Moore sent her brother to prison.
In defense of one of Moore's accusers, Gloria Allred produced a yearbook allegedly signed by Moore, apparently in two different inks, and giving his title as DA.
He was not the district attorney and didn't sign his name that way.
Allred refuses to produce the yearbook for handwriting analysis.
Contrary to what you have heard, and this is the point that sticks with me, contrary to what you have heard one million times a day on TV, there aren't multiple accusers.
There are two, and that's including the one with the fishy yearbook inscription whose stepson says she's lying.
The other accusers claim he dated them when they were 16 to 19 years old and Moore was in his early 30s or as we pointed out, you know, one of the things is I always point out things too early because I'm always the first person to point them out and then other people get the credit.
Here is Ann picking up the point that I made the first day.
Moore was younger than Jerry Seinfeld was at 39 when he dated 17-year-old Shoshana Leinstein and got on the cover, I think it was People magazine or us.
Okay, she says that would also make Moore 15 years younger than Bill Clinton when he had a 22-year-old intern performing oral sex on him in the Oval Office.
Moore's date accusers say he did nothing more than kiss them.
So in other words, legal dating, 16 is the age of consent in Alabama, and it didn't get very far.
It may be creepy, but it's not illegal, and maybe it's not for us to judge.
This is Ann Coulter.
The media throw the dating claims in with the molestation claims.
I have made this point too, and she's absolutely right.
The media throw the dating claims in with the molestation claims so they can keep howling about multiple accusers.
In fact, only two women are alleging anything that, if true, would merit national attention.
In other words, a guy runs for the Senate.
You can say he shouldn't have dated young women, but it was legal.
I mean, and he didn't attack them.
He kissed them during a date.
In September 2006, just before the midterm elections, the media released—oh, so now she goes back in time.
Just to remind you of how the media behave.
And this is the important point, because this is something I think we all forget from time to time, how very, very bad the media is.
In September 2006, just before the midterm elections, the media released GOP Congressman Mark Foley's creepy emails to House pages.
No physical contact was alleged.
The corpus delecti was that Foley told pages, male pages, I believe it was, that they looked hot in their soccer shorts.
The entire GOP was crucified by the media for not having discovered this pedophile in its mist.
Republican congressmen who had never met Foley lost their seats because of the media's timing of the email release.
More than 20 years earlier, a Democrat congressman, Jerry Studs, who had actually had sex with a 17-year-old page, indignantly defied his House censure and proudly stood for re-election.
His outraged Massachusetts constituents elected him six more times.
Washington Post columnist Coleman McCarthy denounced the witch hunt against him, saying his critics wanted to torch the congressman for his private life.
When Studs died in 2006, the Washington Post headline on his obituary was Jerry Studs Gay Pioneer in Congress.
The New York Times headline was Jerry Studs dies at 69, first openly gay congressman.
In other words, she's saying there's a tremendous double standard.
The media say that Republicans support more just because they want another GOP vote in the Senate.
And she says, Ann Coulter says, I support Moore just because I hate the media.
And so there are all these questions coming up.
And how do we know?
How do we judge when it's so difficult to judge other people's sex lives?
Because who wants to enter into their world and pass judgment on another person's sex life?
I don't want to spend a single minute worrying about this.
Let me stop for just a moment and talk about life insurance.
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Freedom For All00:08:11
That's what I just said.
So, good idea.
But here's the thing, okay?
One of the things I don't like about Roy Moore is that he's always blaming gay people for things.
And because I'm an artist, I've worked with lots and lots of gay people.
I've always gotten along with them.
Not all of them.
There were as many bad gay people in my life as there were bad straight people, I guess would be a better way of saying it.
And it was never any of my business.
I've always supported them to have rights.
I thought they shouldn't be picked on, obviously not bullied.
And I'm glad that that has come about.
When gays wanted marriage, I did question whether changing the definition of marriage, which it is doing, was a good thing.
I thought, to be honest with you, I thought marriage hasn't meant what it meant ever since no fault divorce came in.
I don't think straight marriage is straight marriage once you have no fault divorce.
I think when you're married, you should be married unless things are really, really desperate, especially once you have kids.
So I have a lot of, I think that marriage as an institution has been really damaged over the years.
And the fact that gay people at least wanted to be committed to each other instead of like sleeping with 17 strangers in a bathhouse, I thought was actually a positive thing.
This case before the Supreme Court, where these guys are trying to run a baker out of business because he wouldn't, he's a Christian baker and he wouldn't bake a cake for a gay wedding.
These guys, first of all, I think gay people should be rising up against these.
I know they don't.
They actually go on Facebook and encourage these kinds of lawsuits.
I think it makes them look terrible.
I think it's fascist.
I think it's small.
I think it's mean.
I think it stinks.
And I think it gives validity to guys like Roy Moore when they hit out at the gay community.
I think it gives them validity because it's a terrible, terrible thing to run a small businessman out of business because he won't violate his religious life.
And I'm going to connect these two things in just a minute.
But first, I want you to look.
One of the gay couples, they went in to get a cake for their wedding.
The guy said, look, I'm an artist.
I cannot put my art into baking a cake for a wedding because I feel that that is against my religion.
And it's violating my God.
What on earth stopped them from turning around, walking out, going to another shop and getting another cake and leaving that man alone?
You know, it's just, it is just fascistic thinking.
And I want you to listen.
David Mullins, I believe, is, yeah, David Mullins is one of the couple, and here he is making a speech outside the Supreme Court as they were arguing the case.
This isn't about a cake.
This has never been about a cake.
And this isn't about weddings.
It has never been about weddings.
No.
This is about freedom.
Freedom for LGBT people to live full lives in public and not in constant fear that they will be denied basic service in businesses, fired from their jobs, or lose their homes just for who they are.
When people live in a world where they can legally be turned away, they feel rejected.
They feel unsafe.
They feel like they don't belong in our society simply for being born different.
And unless society chooses to embrace their rights, some of them will simply choose to remain hidden, cut off from the world and who they really are.
To this day, Charlie and I's experience at Masterpiece Cake Shop is a persistent memory.
This is so sinister and so dishonest because of this misuse of the word freedom.
You don't have a freedom to be loved.
You don't have a freedom to be liked.
You don't even have a freedom to be tolerated in the sense that people have to be around you and approve of what you do.
That is not freedom.
You have the freedom to live as you wish.
You have the freedom to be left alone.
You have the freedom to go to another cake store if you can't get a cake from this guy.
But you do not.
And listen to the cake baker himself, Jack Phillips.
Listen to what's happened to him because of this state panel that came up against him because of what he did.
We've had to surrender our wedding cake business, which was 40% of our income.
I've lost over half of my employees.
And we've faced death threats and harassment of all kinds.
So now we just hope that the court will rule in favor of creative professionals so that I can go back to making the cakes that I can according to my conscience and that nobody else will have to endure what we have for the last five years.
Here's the thing that's really bothering me about this sexual moment.
They call it a reckoning.
It's really a reckoning of what happened with Bill Clinton, so it's only a reckoning on the left in that sense.
But here's the thing that is really bothering me.
First of all, I haven't seen any of these gay guys go into a Muslim baker.
The only guy who did that was Steve Crowder, which was hilarious.
He went into a Muslim bakery, and they all turned him down.
He could have sued any of them if he had wanted to, except they wouldn't have gotten very far because he's actually not gay.
But they'd never go into a Muslim baker, which means that this is an attack on Christianity.
It is an attack on the institution that stands between us and the government representing our consciences, has done this throughout Western history.
I'm not going to go back through that another show.
I will talk about the long, long, long history, the struggle between the church and the state, which goes back all through European history from the 12th century on.
But they are attacking this, and this is the right way to establish sexual morality.
It's through what conservatives call mediating institutions.
It's not people acting in their own self-interest, their own political self-interest, to railroad Al Franken out of the Senate.
There's no moral aspect to that.
This is simply a political move that is being used to get at the other side, just in the same way, the same way that people supporting Roy Moore, in spite of the allegations against him, is a political move to keep a vote.
There's no moral high ground here.
Moral high ground comes in the same way that sex is experienced.
It comes internally.
It comes from you understanding who you are, what you're made for, and what your body does and how your body works for and how it works against the person that God made you to be.
You cannot know what's good until you know what you're for.
You cannot know whether a leftist tears mug that you would get for subscribing, you can't know how wonderful it is unless you know it's for drinking leftist tears.
You cannot know what your body is for unless you know you are a child of God, a soul meant to express love through your flesh, the only way you have to express anything.
So these guys, these homo Nazis, and I don't want to tar all gay people because I know all gay people are not like this, but these guys are fascists and they are trying to destroy this institution which makes them feel bad.
If you listen to what that guy said, he wanted the right to feel good about himself.
He wanted the right to feel good about himself.
There is no such right.
In order to feel good about yourself, you have to know who you are.
You have to know what you're for.
You have to know that you're behaving in a way that serves what you are and what you're for.
I have never come out against homosexuality either religiously or morally or any other way.
It's none of my business.
It's not something I do.
And I know so many lovely people who are gay.
I'm happy for them to live their lives any way they see fit, but I'm not happy for them to force me to give them a good sense of themselves.
That is not freedom, that is fascism.
And I think that what is being done to this guy, by the way, in the court, even we don't know how they're going to decide.
Anthony Kennedy, who's invented this make-believe right to dignity, is just this kind of wildcard.
But even he was saying dignity goes both ways.
He said, while they were arguing the case, dignity goes both ways, and you are not respecting this cake baker's dignity the way you're expecting him to.
Let's bring on Andy McCarthy because I just really want to talk to him and I watch, hey, Andy, it's good to see you.
Drew, how are you?
I'm good.
I'm really good.
I'm sorry, I only get to see you on Skype now.
I only get to see you like I'm interviewing you.
It's ridiculous.
Yeah, there should be like a bartender here or something.
Impeachment Charges and Obstruction00:15:09
Don't ask, don't tell.
Let me, I've, I haven't introduced you yet.
Let me just say, you're former U.S. assistant attorney who led and helped convict the 1995 terrorism case against Sheikh Omar Abdel, the first World Trade Center bomber.
You are also, in my opinion, the best writer on the Mueller investigation and all the legal machinations going every time there's a new development.
I have to wait for you to turn out your copy so I know what the hell is going on.
And so this has been well, it really is.
It's really great.
It's great material.
It's an NRO, right?
That's where we can find it at National Review Online.
So let's go over what's been happening.
Let's start with the Flynn plea.
I really feel that there are now two media outlets telling us two different stories.
Sean Hannity is going on with charts to show how everybody is corrupt and it's all a big conspiracy.
And on the other hand, they're basically waiting for the police to perp walk Donald Trump out of the White House.
And somewhere, what does the Flynn guilty plea actually mean as far as you're concerned?
Well, I think, Drew, the bottom line is that what we're really in now is an obstruction of justice investigation and that the collusion angle that was the auspices under which this thing got kicked off in the first place has probably gone by the boards because we can't look at Flynn in a vacuum.
It's the third set of charges that Mueller has brought.
And that's why, by the way, your dichotomy of these two different approaches is quite right.
And we can tell from this fact.
You know, whatever the people on both ends of the spectrum say, Mueller has now issued three sets of charges.
None of them have anything to do with Donald Trump.
None of them have anything to do with the 2016 election.
Now, it's appropriate, I suppose, or it's perfectly reasonable for some people to say that that shows that this is a whole complete waste of time and they may be vindicated in the end.
But it also kind of cuts against the idea that Mueller is going to do whatever he can do to get Donald Trump, because I think the way these charges have been constructed and the pleas have been constructed, he may be building toward an obstruction case, but he's not doing it the way that you would build a case if you really wanted to get the big fish in the end.
Because if you think about explain that, because on the left, what they're saying is every time there's one of these deals or charges, they basically say he's building this pyramid case up to the top.
That's why, you know, Morning Joe is talking about this all the time.
Well, let me explain why that doesn't make sense, which requires talking a little bit about how federal prosecution works with cooperators.
So if you're running a big case and you're trying to prove a big scheme, and the big scheme that they had here was this Russian espionage operation against the 2016 election, and you have an accomplice to the scheme, what you would want, your dream as a prosecutor, is to have the accomplice plead guilty to the scheme, because then he comes into open court and he says, this happened.
It was real.
I'm guilty.
I did it.
Here's what I did.
Here's what these guys did.
And then you've not only crossed a threshold as far as the public is concerned regarding the credibility of your investigation, you've also put enormous pressure on other accomplices to come forward and cooperate.
And the way federal law works, what happens is a good prosecutor makes the accomplice plead guilty to the scheme, gets the benefit of that guilty plea that we just talked about, and then you make him earn sentencing leniency.
So you don't have to sell the case short at the beginning by giving him a plea to a minor count.
You make him eat the big count, and then he's got to tell you everything he knows.
He has to cooperate and testify in court if you need him to do that.
And then at the end of all that, at the end of the rainbow, if he's done everything that you've asked, if he's given what the sentencing guidelines call substantial assistance to a government investigation, then the prosecutor files a motion under the sentencing guidelines, which allows the judge to sentence the guy to as little as zero or time served.
So you make him earn the sentencing leniency.
You don't give the sentencing leniency at the beginning by short selling the case before he's even done anything for you.
So when you say he's building an obstruction of justice case against whom?
Well, yeah, I think he's the ultimate thing, if you're a prosecutor, you would never think about indicting the president.
Because as a practical matter, prosecution is an executive function.
The president's the head of the executive branch, and he holds all the, I don't mean to be cute here, but he holds all the Trump cards against that.
Yeah.
Because he can pardon everyone.
He can fire the prosecutor.
He can pull the plug on the investigation.
President, if a president doesn't want to be indicted or doesn't want to allow himself to be indicted, it can't happen.
So, if you're Mueller, I think if you're thinking about taking action against Trump, the only action that it makes sense to take would be to draft a report of some kind that you dump in Congress's lap for impeachment purposes, because it's not going to ever happen in a judicial court.
And there is precedent in the Clinton situation and in the Nixon situation for obstruction of justice being or obstruction of governmental procedures being part of the articles of impeachment seeking to remove those presidents.
So, he would be on firm ground in terms of precedent.
So, you think he's setting up an impeachment charge?
Well, I think I don't know that Mueller wants to impeach Trump because, you know, Mueller, look, Mueller's a creature of government.
You know, I mean, he's been in the government for years and years.
And when he's been out of the government, he's been out of the government temporarily to get back into government.
So he knows how disruptive to the country an impeachment would be.
And I hope he realizes, I think he realizes that you shouldn't do it unless there's a real good reason to do it, not just because of the rupture it is for the country, but also because in the House,
it only requires a simple majority to file articles of impeachment, but you have to get a supermajority of two-thirds in the Senate to remove the president, which means the only way, the reason we haven't had a president impeached in our history is it has to be something that's so egregious that it cuts across ideological and partisan lines, and there's a consensus in the country that the president needs to be removed.
That happened with Nixon.
If he hadn't resigned, he would have been impeached.
But that's the only episode that we've had in 200 plus years.
So Mueller's got to know that this is very difficult to do, and it won't happen unless there's a real good reason.
I don't think he wants to, I doubt he would want to bring an impeachment case just to bring one to get it torpedoed in Congress.
So, you know, watching this guy, Strzzok, who now seems like the zealig of FBI investigation, he seems to turn up everywhere.
And I was watching the FBI director in front of Congress this morning.
It just seems impossible not to feel that Hillary Clinton was treated differently than this investigation is treating Trump and his people.
Now, you were a federal prosecutor.
You know these people.
I've always, all my experiences with prosecutors have been, I've always found them to be incredibly honest, straightforward people just doing a job, but obviously you're going to get some bad creatures in there.
You need to get out more.
I was going to say, present company accepted, of course.
But I mean, I can't help looking at this and thinking that maybe Sean has a point that this is, they're playing with loaded dice here.
Well, two things there.
Number one, there's no question that Hillary Clinton got the kid gloves treatment and Mueller is using some scorched earth tactics.
The approach to the two different investigations is not the same.
That said, I think with Strzok in particular, I want to hold up and wait to see more information.
I know he seems like Zelling, but in every big FBI investigation, there's a case agent assigned.
So there are agents who do like, you know, tasks that need to be done in the investigation.
And then there's at least one guy who oversees the whole thing.
And what invariably happens in every one of these big investigations is the case agent's name is on everything.
He's the guy who testifies in the grand jury.
His name is on all the reports.
He's at all of the interviews.
So I don't put too much stock in the fact that with respect to the Hillary investigation, his name is all over the place.
I get it.
Because it should be.
He's the case agent.
Right.
And I think with respect to the Mueller investigation, if you want to paint Strzok, as some have, as a guy who's a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump zealot, here's what doesn't make sense to me.
Comey testified when he was still FBI director in March before the House Intelligence Committee.
This was reported in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week.
He testified that the agents who interviewed General Flynn on January 24th believed he was telling the truth.
Strzok is one of those agents.
He's the guy who evidently ran the interview.
So it seems to me that conclusion that Flynn lied couldn't have been Strzz because according to the FBI director, Strzzok reported that he thought Flynn had been honest in the interview.
There may have been some failures of recollection that were honest, but he thought overall he hadn't lied.
And that seems to have been countermanded down the road by Mueller's very aggressive prosecutors.
I get it.
So I'm not sure that we have a completely accurate read on who Strzzok is.
And I'm, look, I'm willing to believe that he may be a partisan zealot, but other people I talk to tell me he's an exceptional intelligence agent.
Okay.
And that includes people who like General Flynn and President Trump a lot.
So I want to wait to see what these texts say, and let's wait to see the rest of the information.
Okay, you wrote a piece, if I recall it correctly, that we're saying that this is no longer a legal investigation, Mueller, it's a political investigation.
I think it was Laura Ingram who was on last night saying that Mueller is essentially trying to nullify the election.
You go to sleep at night.
Do you think this guy, this Mueller, is basically a political agent against Trump?
I mean, is that what you're getting out of this or you're not sure?
Well, I try to separate Mueller, the person, from what this enterprise is about, this investigation, because I think in a lot of ways, Mueller is our best hope for the investigation.
I think the investigation is a result of the fact that the Democrats wanted to get a prosecutor assigned to this president.
And the guys that they did it under was this theory that not only had Russia done an espionage operation against the 2016 election, but that Trump or the Trump campaign or Trump associates, it's always loosely stated, somehow colluded with it.
And I always thought, Drew, that that was a bunch of nonsense because prosecutors don't care about collusion.
You and I are colluding by having this conversation.
Collusion is just concerted activity.
It's not necessarily guilty.
What prosecutors care about is conspiracy, which is an agreement to violate a particular law.
And you could never nail Democrats down or anybody else who was making this case on what exact law it was that they thought that the Trump people had violated or had agreed to violate.
And that's why they kept calling it collusion because they didn't have conspiracy.
And then when the Justice Department appointed Mueller, they did it outside the regulations.
The Justice Department regulations require you to articulate the criminal offenses that need to be investigated and that the Justice Department, for some reason or other, is conflicted from carrying out the investigation itself in an ethical manner.
So therefore, you have to get a quasi-independent lawyer in to do it.
What they did instead, what Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general did, was appoint Mueller to conduct a counterintelligence investigation targeting Russia.
And the sideline was, and did Trump have anything to do with what Russia did to the 2016 election.
And the danger in that is that counterintelligence, unlike criminal investigation, counterintelligence is just an information gathering exercise.
Right, right.
You know, a criminal case has a set transaction.
It's got a crime.
It's got essential elements that a prosecutor has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
So it's got like a beginning and an end, and it's finite.
There's nothing finite about a counterintelligence investigation.
And it's not even lawyer work.
In the Justice Department, counterintelligence cases don't get a prosecutor assigned.
There's nothing about having a law degree that makes you expert in intelligence analysis.
So in our government, intelligence analysis is done by intelligence officers and analysts who are trained in how to do this.
And the only time a lawyer gets involved is if they have to go to the FISA court to get a warrant.
Otherwise, it's not like a criminal case where the prosecutor really runs the show once the FBI has done the investigation and figures out how to present the case.
So this is a long-winded way of saying a counterintelligence investigation by giving that remit to Mueller, what that means is that there's no sensible limitations on what he can look at.
Yes, that's it's all over the place.
Unboxing The Man Crate00:05:52
Right.
It's really a fishing expedition.
All right.
Well, I'm out of time.
I have a million more questions to ask.
I hope you'll come back and talk again.
And I actually hope we'll get to see you in three dimensions at some point.
I'd like that too.
Andrew C. McCarthy, thank you very much, Anthony.
I'll talk to you soon.
Thanks, Drew.
Great to talk to you.
Bye.
Really interesting.
And just, you know, he understands this, the ins and outs of it so much.
And if you're not reading his stuff at National Review online, you should be because this thing where you have one side of the media just literally waiting for Trump to be carried out in handcuffs and the other side building these conspiracy charges.
What he said about Struck, I mean, I just haven't heard that anywhere else.
Hey, before we get onto stuff I like, let us talk about something I really like, which is Mancraze.
I don't know about you, but when my wife says to me, as she often does, what do you want for Christmas?
I always say, what's for dinner?
Because I don't know what I want for Christmas, but Mancraz has so many great things.
They sent me one.
We will play this video once again.
It seems a shame to only play it once.
This is me, and what do they call this, an unboxing video?
This is me unboxing the Man Crate they sent me.
It was just terrific.
This comes from Mancraits.
And Mancrates, one of the coolest gift ideas ever, I think.
It's just stuff men like that comes in a crate with a crowbar to open it up.
I will get through this box.
Mancrates.com/slash Claven for 5% off.
Now we will open this thing up.
You guys thought I couldn't do this, right?
First.
Uh-oh, this is, oh, this is my kind of thing.
This is great.
This is a sphere ice mold.
So let's see what else we got.
We have, oh my gosh, Valladosta pecans, glaze.
This may be the best gift anyone can get.
Artisan peppercorn blistered Virginia peanuts.
Now, these are very important because if you're drinking, you definitely want to eat as well.
Pistachios.
And what is this?
Oh, this is a stopper.
A beautiful, beautiful glass stopper.
Really nice.
And here is coasters so your wife doesn't get angry at you for putting rings on the table.
33 glasses of whiskey, a pocket whiskey tasting journal.
Excellent.
I love this.
Oh, wow.
Geez, this is really beautiful.
This is a whiskey decanter.
And here is the most important thing about drinking whiskey.
You have to have a great whiskey glass.
If this showed up under my tree for Christmas, I would really, I would just be absolutely, these are beautiful, beautiful glasses.
Good job, Mancrates.
I have to say, this is the only unboxing video I would watch.
It's mancrates.com/slash Clavin, K-L-A-B-A-N.
You should know.
It's mancrates.com slash Claven.
You get 5% off.
Really, really excellent gift, I have to say.
This was good stuff.
I can report that I used virtually everything you just saw in that box last night and had a lovely glass of whiskey before going to bed with that.
I just love a great glass.
I mean, it really, it just increases the pleasure of it.
I didn't use these, I like those big orbs of ice.
They're really fun to use, but that was the one part I didn't use because I was drinking it neat.
But it was great.
It was a great experience, really civilized experience just before going to bed to have a glass of whiskey with my Man Crates whiskey appreciation league.
All right, stuff I like.
Last week, you know, I don't watch very much comedy, but last week I told you about this kind of comedy thriller called The Search Party, which I love.
And right this minute, I just happen to be watching two different comedies, and I want to bring the other one, which is The Good Place, which is by Michael Shur.
It's created by Michael Shur, who did Parks and Wreck, right?
Which actually had a sympathetic, conservative character in it.
They made him less sympathetic as it goes on, because that's what happens as the writer room, as the original writers file out and new writers come in, they start to make them.
What happens is they try to make the conservative the bad guy, but everybody identifies with him.
So then they have to really make him the bad guy because otherwise people are going to love him.
But I don't know what Michael Schur's politics are.
This is about a woman who goes to the good place, which is essentially heaven, and except she gets in by mistake.
She's a totally selfish, you know, trivial individual.
She has the same name as a really nice person.
And Ted Danson plays the architect of this particular good place.
There are many different good places.
When it started, I was worried it's going to be anti-Christian.
It's not.
It's just funny.
It is just hilariously funny.
And Ted Danson should be bronzed.
He, I mean, you know, he started out on Cheers, and I just assumed that that's who he was.
He was the bartender, remember, an ex-baseball player.
And I just assumed that that was his character.
He was so good.
He just melted into that character.
And then I saw him on Damages as an evil industrialist.
And I thought, wow, he is a terrific actor.
On this, he is absolutely hilarious.
Here he is greeting the new arrivals in heaven, and he explains to them the system by which people are sent to either the good or bad place.
And what's so brilliant about it is in order for the premise to exist, they must have made a mistake.
So it actually points out that every moral system has inherently a flaw if you look at it from a human point of view, and that it requires forgiveness and compassion in order to really have a moral framework.
It's also very well informed.
There's a lot of talk about Aristotle, a lot of talk about ethics.
They actually seem to have read the books.
The actors are all just absolutely hilarious.
What's her name, Kristen Bell?
She is, I never knew that she had any talent.
She just thought she was a cutie pie, but she really is talented and funny.
The whole show is really good.
River's Wish00:02:08
All right, that's our week, except Another Kingdom.
It releases tomorrow on iTunes.
Please subscribe and please leave good ratings.
We really need the support, and I think you will really enjoy it.
It's an exciting story, and it's getting more exciting now as we get into the kind of final third of the story.
That's Another Kingdom on iTunes.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin show.
My son sent me this last night.
This is Sam Smith doing a cover of River.
It is one of the best covers I have heard.
Terrific Christmas music.
I'll see you on Monday if you survive.
It's coming on Christmas, they're cutting down trees, they're putting up a reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace.
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on.
Snow here stays pretty green.
I'm gonna make a lot of money and then I'm gonna quit this crazy scene.
Oh, I wish I had a river.
I could skate away on.
I wish I had a river.
So I would teach my feet to fly.
Oh, I wish I had a river.
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
Technical producer Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
And our animations are by Cynthia Angulo and Jacob Jackson.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.