Ep. 446 dissects media bias through Jim Acosta’s White House clash with Trump, exposing 90% negative coverage despite economic gains and policy wins like Nikki Haley’s leadership, while mocking CNN’s remote "diagnosis" of Trump’s health. The episode pivots to materialism vs. idealism, arguing consciousness transcends chemistry—echoing Plato’s forms—and critiques corporate censorship, sex trafficking’s ignored scale, and political correctness’ weaponization of terms like "latent racism." A listener’s sister-in-law’s deception sparks advice rooted in emotional realism, while video games are dismissed as limited art compared to storytelling’s depth. Closing with James O’Keefe’s censorship exposé, the episode frames mainstream narratives as tools of control over truth. [Automatically generated summary]
In a shocking affront to our sacred First Amendment, CNN's Jim Acosta was ejected from the Oval Office yesterday at the end of a press conference with President Trump and the President of Kazakhstan.
Acosta was trying to ask the president an important question.
He was saying, quote, look at me, look at me, I'm Jim Acosta.
Will you not look at me?
Why doesn't everyone look at me?
Will you look at me or not?
Am I not Jim Acosta?
Am I Jim Acosta or am I not?
Unquote.
The president stonewalled the intrepid reporter, repeatedly refusing to tell the public whether he would in fact look at him and whether he was or was not Jim Acosta.
Then, with blatant disregard to the public's right to know, Trump told Acosta to get out as if he were not an American journalist at all, but just some obnoxious, self-promoting, grandstanding adolescent more interested in getting his name and face on television than gathering information with which to inform the CNN audience before the CNN audience boards his next plane.
The understandably outraged Acosta had this to say about the incident.
A press wrangler over here at the White House got basically right up in my face and the faces of other pool reporters here at the White House and started shouting so loudly that it was impossible for the president to hear our questions or even see that we were trying to ask questions.
It was that kind of a display.
It reminded me of something that you might see in less democratic countries when people at the White House or officials of a foreign government attempt to get in the way of the press and doing their jobs.
That's right.
Acosta felt that he had been treated as if he were in some crap hole country instead of a nice place like Norway.
Acosta said, quote, in Norway, they know that I am Jim Acosta, and they look at me because I am Jim Acosta.
Look at me, look at me.
So anyway, I'm glad to report that at least someone is fighting for good journalism in America.
Donald Trump.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety boom.
Birds are winging, also singing hunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped hip-sy-topsy, roll into zippity-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hooray, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, that's the, it's mailbag day.
Yeah, I just remembered it's mailbag day.
Whoa, yay!
We had yesterday, we had the conversation.
I answered everybody's questions for an hour.
I have been so politically incorrect this week.
I think I've just been, I've just had it.
I've been fed up with it.
I'll talk a little bit about that toward the end of the show.
But for now, I know that many of you watch the show on YouTube or on Facebook or come on, you subscribers.
You can watch the whole thing right on thedailywire.com.
And you look at me and you think, wow, how can I look like that?
I want to look like Andrew Clavin.
Well, of course, you know, it's important.
You have to lose your hair.
But it's important, it's not just important that you lose your hair.
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Well, I don't know.
What can I say?
We talk a lot.
Blue Apron Debate00:15:56
One of my favorite subjects, because I think it's so important, and one of the reasons I get so politically incorrect, I think, is, you know, we talk a lot about the difference between this cloud of narrative fantasy that the left is constantly trying to produce.
And they have the organs with which to produce it.
They have the networks, they have CNN, they have Hollywood, they have the Academy, and they constantly teach it to you in school.
And you almost cannot help adopting their points of view.
They create this tremendous cloud of unknowing, this cloud of fantasy in which things are going on, especially, and Trump, because Trump doesn't care, because he is rude and politically incorrect enough, he strips them of that power.
That's why he drives them so crazy.
It's not anything he's done.
And so they have just been creating this cloud of scandals and controversies, none of which, I mean, we started this week with Knowles giving us a list of them.
They're just unimportant.
I mean, this presidency so far has been virtually scandal-free.
And that's what they said about Obama.
They said that about Obama after Fast and Furious, after the IRS scandal, after the Justice Department being so corrupt.
And people write to me on Twitter and they say, well, there was nobody indicted in the Obama administration.
Right, because the Justice Department was so corrupt.
The fact that nobody was indicted is part of the corruption, is a sign of the corruption.
Whereas in Trump, he has colored within the lines.
He has played according to the Constitution.
He's not, as far as we know, he's not spying on anybody.
He's not shutting anybody down.
He's not trying to criminalize reporting.
And yet they keep producing this cloud of panic and scandal as if something terrible is happening when nothing terrible is happening.
So yesterday, it was wonderful.
We got to see this live in real time on the air in action.
First of all, I mean, here's our friends at the Media Research Center, they did a study.
And they said they analyzed every moment.
This is MRC.
They analyzed every moment of coverage of President Trump last year on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts, right?
Which is usually seen by more than 25 million people each night, which is about 10 times what Fox News, that's a little under 10 times, but it's a lot more than what people watch Fox News.
And yet Fox News has so much power because on the Brett Baer show, at least, they are telling the truth.
They're giving another point of view.
Here's what they found.
Here's what MRC found.
The Trump presidency was the biggest story of the year last year, accounting for one out of every three minutes of evening news airtime, nearly 100 hours in total.
And the tone of coverage has been incessantly hostile, especially for a new president in his honeymoon year.
90% of the stories were negative versus just 10% positive, and the percentages don't include neutral statements.
90% of the stories are negative.
And that is insane, considering the fact that the economy is doing so great.
You know, to his credit, what's his name?
Martin Savage at CNN had a focus group.
And he invited people, really interesting.
He invited people of all different walks of life, all different colors, who the one thing that they had in common is they were Democrats who voted for Trump.
And he gathered them together and with seeming shock and wonder, asked them if they were satisfied.
Let's play a little bit of this thing because I want to give you the reality of people's lives as opposed to this cloud of panic and fake scandal, non-scandal scandals, and this fantastic world that the press is living in.
So let's start with a baseline of what is actually happening with the people who actually crossed party lines to vote for Trump.
I'm with a pastor, a stay-at-home mom, a student, a machine shop worker, and a union member.
Democrats who were raised in Democrat families who crossed over to vote Trump.
We're one year, one year in.
How's he doing?
Fantastic.
Better than I ever would have dreamt.
I mean, that's absurdly.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
Derek?
Yes, I agree.
Absolutely.
Yes, he's doing wonderful.
You stand on task.
We start with a hot-button topic of the moment.
How big an issue to all of you is immigration?
Huge.
Huge.
Really?
Absolutely.
In Youngstown, Ohio.
Absolutely.
And as far as I'm concerned, they're stealing jobs of rightful citizens.
It's also about something else Trump voters say is important.
Rules and respect.
I feel like when people come here illegally, that's just very disrespectful.
You don't respect our laws, and you shouldn't be able to come here freewheeling like that.
It's amazing how nuanced this is, too, because here's this woman, and she's addressing what I think the immigration thing is about.
I think it's about rule of law.
I do not understand.
I simply do not understand why the rule of law doesn't apply to immigration.
Why we talk about immigration.
We say, well, immigrants have helped this country.
And you think not illegal immigrants.
That's a different category of people.
When people break the law, they are lawbreakers.
They inherently hurt the country by breaking our laws.
And that's the thing that the people understand that the reporters spend all their time covering up.
They cover up, you know, they want to show you, oh, here's the sad little Mexican person.
Here's the sad little Somali person.
Here's the sad little this or the sad little that.
But they don't tell you that the overall effect is also worse for our country when our laws are not respected.
They go on to talk about the fact that he's politically incorrect.
And a guy said, yeah, at first, one guy says, at first, I didn't like it, but then I realized he was paying attention to me.
He was paying attention to my jobs, and so he's not politically correct.
What difference does it make?
I really, I thought good for Savage for actually letting them speak and putting that on the air.
You know, so here's the thing.
There's this whole thing we were joking about, the women's march, and I suppose there's going to be another women's march, although now they're fighting among themselves.
But Jen Kearns over at The Hill wrote an opinion piece where she says one of the greatest successes of Trump's first year in office has been the empowerment of women.
Certainly there have been plenty of other successes, but he has appointed so many women to powerful positions, far more than Obama, far more than Bush.
His list of female appointees, she writes, is long.
Nikki Haley, Ambassador of the United Nations, my favorite.
Elaine Chow, Secretary of Transportation, Kirsten Nielsen, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
And let's take a look.
You know, the Secretary, Kirsten Nielsen, I believe that's how she pronounces her name.
She was testifying before the Senate yesterday, and she's testifying about Homeland Security and how immigration affects homeland security.
And all they would do, and she kept saying, you know, it's dangerous to have these people coming in.
Terrorists have coming in.
There have been over 1,000, over 2,000 terrorists who have crossed into the country illegally.
And she's talking about this, and all they want to ask her is, did President Trump really curse?
Did he really curse?
And finally, she gets fed up, and she tells him she's not going to talk about it anymore.
This is cut number 12.
Sir, respectfully, I have answered this.
I've been very patient with this line of questioning.
I am here to tell you about the threats our country faces and the needs and authorities that are needed by the Department of Homeland Security.
I have nothing further to say about a meeting that happened over a week ago.
I'd like to move forward and discuss ways in which we can protect our country.
Okay, that's what a strong, powerful woman in the Trump administration looks like.
Let's see how Democrats treat strong, powerful women.
Here is Corey Booker responding to the fact that she said she couldn't remember whether Trump used this dirty word.
She said everybody was talking tough.
Everybody was using tough language.
She couldn't remember this particular thing.
Here's Corey Booker.
This is the way the Democrats treat women.
I hurt.
When Dick Durbin called me, I had tears of rage when I heard about his experience in that meeting.
And for you not to feel that hurt and that pain and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues saying I've already answered that line of questions when tens of millions of Americans are hurting right now because of what they're worried about would happen in the White House.
That's unacceptable to me.
There are threats in this country.
People are plotting.
I receive enough death threats to know the reality.
Kamala receives enough death threats to know the reality.
Maisie receives enough death threats to know the reality.
And I've got a president of the United States whose office I respect who talks about the country's origins of my fellow citizens in the most despicable of manner.
You know, I do not understand how you can fail to subscribe to the Daily Wire for just $100.
You get a year subscription and you get the leftist tears tumbler.
And when Corey Booker starts talking about his tears of rage, this leftist tears tumbler magically fills up and his tears taste so good.
I mean, it really, it's addictive.
It's addictive.
But it doesn't work if you don't have the leftist tears tumbler to drink his tears with.
So here, so this is the way they're beating up on this woman.
They're calling her a racist because she refuses to talk about this one stupid word.
And Sarah Sanders, another powerful woman in the Trump administration, she reacts to the whole thing saying we've wasted all this time talking about this word.
We wasted five days talking about this word.
And this is what I want is cut number seven, where she says what Trump wants is merit-based immigration.
See, here is the important thing.
When Trump curses about Haiti and praises Norway, which is clearly Norway, a better run, nicer country, not one of these people would live in Haiti over Norway.
All of us would choose Norway.
All they can think about is the people in Haiti are mostly black and the people in Norway are mostly white.
I don't think Trump's thinking about that at all.
I think he's just thinking about the government.
It's their racism.
They are bringing the racism to the table.
What Trump wants is merit-based immigration.
And here's Sarah Sanders making the obvious point that that is the only non-racist way to do this.
This is cut number seven.
So does a good deal include then preferring white immigrants from Norway than black and brown immigrants from Haiti?
Not at all.
In fact, it's actually the opposite because by definition, a merit-based system is colorblind.
It's not basing it on any of that criteria.
It's not based on race.
It's not based on religion.
It's not based on country of origin.
It's actually based on the merits of whether or not this person's going to be contributing to society.
So actually, it erases all of those things and makes it a much more fair system instead of picking and choosing from trying to meet different quotas of different things.
It's a merit-based system.
And frankly, it's a system that most Democrats supported and voted for just years ago.
But now that this president is championing it, they are, I think, showing just absolute signs and definitions of what hypocrisy looks like.
That's exactly right.
And so this is this narrative of racism.
And by the way, everybody who actually knows Trump, like his ex-wife, you know, people who not necessarily like him, they all say he's not a racist.
He just doesn't care.
All he cares about is money.
And that's the way he thinks.
He thinks, if I get you a job, then go live your life.
I don't care what color you are.
That's the way he looks at these things.
All the racism, the racism.
What's so interesting is the press doesn't even realize that it is bringing the race, they are bringing the race narrative to the table because that's where the left's power comes from.
The left's power comes from defining you as racist.
You know, this is a technique that was stolen by Sigmund Fort.
You know what?
I'm going to talk about that toward the end of the show, about this technique that they use to establish racism where none exists.
But first, let us talk about Blue Apron.
You know, every time I talk about Blue Apron, you remember the show Green Acres?
They used to have that song Green Acres.
Every time I think about Blue Apron, I think Blue Apron is the way to go.
Blue Apron is the leading meal kit delivery service in the country.
And what they do basically is they bring ingredients to your door that you can cook up so you get home-cooked meals.
But they're not just any home-cooked meals, they are like home-cooked restaurant-level meals.
And now, until around the end of February, until February 26th, Blue Apron is teeming with Whole 30 to bring you delicious recipes.
The menus feature two whole 30 approved recipes each week, like Mexican spice barramunde with avocado, taragashi chicken lettuce cups with avocado and kale, and sweet potato salad.
This is stuff that, you know, obviously you would get in a restaurant, but here you can make it at home and they send you the recipe, they send you a big card that makes it very easy, it's convenient, you get all this variety, and you get the fact that you're cooking at home.
And now, in my home, that means that my wife is cooking and I'm drinking wine and sort of making witty comments, but it does mean that we eat exceptionally well and we get to be together and spend some time together while we build this really, really nice meal.
And if you're one of my listeners, Blue Apron is treating the Andrew Clavin Show to their first three meals.
I mean, I don't understand.
Like, this is the thing.
It helps, obviously, the show when you go on and you use our name and you let people know that you're listening to the show and you're trying out our sponsors, but we're giving you free food.
I mean, what do we have to do?
Really?
We have to come to your home.
It's a $30 value with your first order if you visit blueapron.com/slash Andrew.
Check out this week's menu and get your $30 off with free shipping at blueapron.com/slash Andrew.
They keep changing the menu so you can choose steak Diane with mushroom pan sauce.
Really good stuff.
General So's chicken with bok choi and jasmine rice, restaurant-level meals that you cook at home at Blue Apron.
It is a better way to cook.
Now, before we go to the break, I just want to talk about this doctor who gave Trump his annual physical, right?
This is the doctor, what's his name?
Ronnie Jackson.
He is a naval doctor who has served under Obama, served under Bush, I believe.
And he's just the trusted physician who does the president, and his job is to tell us whether the president is about to fall over or has some terrible disease.
So the media, as part of their hysteria, part of this cloud of fantasy that they're creating around this president who will not do and say what they tell him to do and say.
So they're creating this cloud of narrative, this cloud of fantasy.
One of the fantasies that they have been selling and selling and selling is that he's nuts.
He's got Alzheimer's.
He's not functioning properly.
They even had some psychiatrists from Yale who said he should be restrained and carried away.
She said, oh, but people might think that's a coup.
Yes, because it would be a coup.
That was why they would think that.
But these are people who know nothing.
They have no expertise.
Nobody, nobody, nobody can look at a person from a distance and diagnose his psychological state.
Nobody can.
So the guy comes out, and first, let's just talk about the fact that he talks about that he's healthy.
And the press couldn't even stand that because the president eats junk food or has eaten junk food.
He's obviously overweight, but he's apparently doing great.
So Dr. Jackson comes out, this is cut number three, and they're saying, are you short?
He's not healthy.
It's cut number three.
Can you explain to me how a guy who eats McDonald's and fried chicks and all his diet cokes and who never exercises is in as good a shape as you say he's in?
It's called genetics.
I don't know.
It's some people have just great genes.
I told the president that if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old.
I don't know.
I mean, he has incredible genes, I just assume.
I mean, if I didn't watch what I ate, I wouldn't have the cardiac and overall health that he has.
So he's very healthy despite those things.
And I don't think that he does that anymore.
I mean, you know, I mean, he's getting to the White House now.
He's eaten what the chefs are cooking for him now, and they're cooking a much healthier diet for him now.
And we're going to continue to work on that and make that even healthier.
But I would say the answer to your question is he has incredibly good genes.
So here's the guy, the doctor who is trusted by the nation to take care of the president, right?
The most important political guy in the country.
Here's the guy.
And he examined Trump, right?
He's got his head up Trump's backside, basically.
He's looking at every aspect, and he's telling you this guy is in good shape.
But never fear, CNN has their house doctor, Sanjay Gupta, to come on and give a diagnosis from afar.
Here's cut 14.
Cognitive Assessment and Heart Disease Risk00:06:26
This coronary calcium score is a score that a lot of cardiologists use to try and be predictive and be proactive.
And if the number gets up over 100, that is concerning to a lot of doctors.
It's concerning because you can start to say, well, if you do nothing different, if things don't change, you can start to predict the likelihood of having some sort of heart event, cardiac event, a heart attack or something like that within a certain number of years.
And you see the trajectory of President Trump's numbers.
No doubt, and I think Dr. Jackson alluded to this, because of his diet and because of his lack of exercise, that would be part of the reason those numbers have likely gone up.
And they have continued to go up despite the fact that he's been on medications.
So the president has heart disease.
He diagnoses the president as having heart disease.
I mean, never examined him on CNN.
You know, this is the old expression, if it ducks like a quack, it's a quack.
I mean, the guy is a quack.
Maybe I got that wrong, but that guy, what a quack thing to do.
And by the way, by the way, if you are a white man over 50, as I am, you are more likely to die of heart disease than all cancers combined.
So every white male at Trump's age has essentially has heart disease.
I mean, we all die, and we're probably going to die of that.
That's why he takes aspirin.
He takes the same stuff I do.
He takes a baby aspirin.
He takes cholesterol medicine.
Amazing, amazing.
CNN could not even accept the diagnosis.
They were going to replace the facts with their narrative, which is what they do for a living.
But that didn't make them anywhere half as crazy, half as crazy as the fact that Trump's not crazy.
Because at the president's request, Dr. Jackson gave him a cognitive study, too, to make sure he doesn't have Alzheimer's.
And listen to why he did it.
Many of you may have picked up on the fact that we did do a cognitive assessment as part of the exam.
And initially, I had no intention of including a cognitive assessment in this exam because to be honest with you, per all the guidelines that are out there, it's not indicated at this time.
A lot of the guidelines would suggest that you do cognitive screening questions and that if you have a positive or concerning answer in the screening questions, that then you engage with a cognitive screening tool.
So I had no intentions whatsoever of doing that, like I said, because I didn't feel it was clinically indicated.
And part of the reason I didn't think it was clinically indicated is because I've spent almost every day in the president's presence since January 20, 2000, or last year when he got into office.
And I've seen him every day.
I see him one, two, sometimes three times a day because of the location of my office.
We have conversations about many things.
Most don't revolve around medical issues at all, but I've got to know him pretty well.
And I had absolutely no concerns about his cognitive ability or his Neurological functions.
So I was not going to do a cognitive exam.
I had no intention of doing one.
The reason that we did the cognitive assessment is plain and simple because the president asked me to do it.
Okay, so Trump, who sleeps like five, like me, he sleeps like five hours a night.
He watches a lot of cable TV.
He knows they're talking about him.
So he asked him to do it.
He scored a 30 out of 30.
His brain is fine.
The press, the press, I mean, this was like a cognitive test of the press, who scored, I think, a 3 out of 30 because they are out of their ever-loving minds.
Here is a montage of them peppering him with questions, begging him to say that Trump is crazy or stupid or dying or something to confirm their narrative.
Like, please stop giving us the facts and make our narrative come true.
How much weight have you suggested the president lose?
Can you assess the president's mental fitness for office?
Cholesterol, over 220.
Do you hope to get it under 200?
Are you ruling out things like early onset Alzheimer's?
Are you looking at dementia-like symptoms?
Did he need to be sedated at all?
Or he doesn't have heart disease?
Is that what you said?
The 25th Amendment.
A lot of people in the country have been talking about it.
Do you believe he is fit for duty?
Sometimes it sounds like he has to sniff this when he's talking.
And do you have a life expectancy range for him based on his results?
Did you limit it to one skip of ice cream now?
So is there anything you're keeping from us for privacy reasons?
Are you confident of his prostate health?
I think a waist measurement for the president.
His weight, I think, is a 239, right?
It seems just shy of obesity.
It's recommended that most baby boomers get screened for hepatitis C. Did you do a H C test, or has he had one previously?
Some of the president's friends have told reporters in the past that they think he's a germaphobe, that he washes his hands obsessively.
Do you see any indication of that type of behavior?
You just said there were stroke concerns as well.
No, no.
So what I love about this is he stayed out there for an hour and answered every question because Trump asked him to.
Trump said, you know, just go ahead and answer.
I mean, this is the most open presidency.
It is the most open, transparent presidency I think we've ever had, certainly in my lifetime.
Just said, go out there and tell them everything, everything.
And so they just won't let them go because the facts won't confirm their narrative.
I mean, here's the thing.
These reporters, I know they think they're good people, and I'm sure they're not bad people in the sense of criminals, but really they are corrupted by their ideology.
They're corrupted by the fact that they work for big corporations which love big government, which hate the fact that ordinary people have a say in government.
Corporations are not the friend of the little man, even though they are the employers of the little man, even though they provide us with many of our goods and services.
The guys who run them seek to shut the little man down.
That's what Google is doing now on YouTube.
That's what Twitter is doing when it shadow bans conservatives.
They want this voice quieted, this voice that says that you are America, not them, that you, not the government, is America.
They want it quiet.
Ask yourself, when you hear this panic, this scandal, this one controversy after another, who benefits?
Not you.
It ain't you who benefits.
You benefit when jobs come back because of tax breaks.
You benefit when the government is rolled back and they don't show up.
Inspectors don't show up at your business and start fining you for every little thing that they find wrong, that that's something that Trump is doing.
You benefit when the judges pay attention to the Constitution, which limits the powers of government.
That's when you benefit.
These guys, these power elites who do not want to hear your opinion, who do not care who you want to be president, who do not care what your opinion and life is like at all, they benefit.
They benefit when there is this cloud of panic and scandal, and that is why they are generating it all the time.
Chemical Reactions and Illusions00:10:49
We've got the mailbag coming up.
We have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Come to the daily.
How on earth you cannot spend the lousy 10 bucks a month or a lousy $100 for the entire year to get this show where you just sit there on the dailywire.com, you watch it, you can be in the mailbag, get your questions answered.
The answers to your questions are guaranteed 100% correct and will change your life every now and again for the better.
So, I mean, it's such a good deal.
Plus, you get the leftist here.
So, every time Corey Booker breaks down or Anderson Cooper or Don Lemon, every time their lips tremble and their eyes, they get misty eyed because somebody said something mean about Haiti.
You got the tumbler to drink it.
Come on over to TheDailyWire.com.
All right, the mailbag.
There it is.
Yeah!
What the hell is going on here?
All right, that is our official Lindsay boring scream on the mailbag.
From William, oh, holy and infallible one.
That is in fact my middle name, oh holy, and it's Andrew, oh holy and infallible one, Claven.
I need your best argument against my friends who say everything we experience is just a chemical reaction and life is an illusion.
That view seems logical but limited.
It's not logical at all.
First of all, an illusion to whom?
Somebody has to have the illusion, right, for the illusion to be there.
An illusion can't just float in space.
Somebody has to have the illusion.
But, but, let's, just to be serious here, we know that there are things that are not material.
They're called ideas.
We know that they're ideas.
Ideas are not material.
Think about it for a minute.
Two plus two equals four.
That's an idea, right?
It doesn't mean anything.
There's no two, it only becomes real when you say two pennies and two other pennies make four pennies.
But the idea, two plus two equals four, is just an idea, just floats in space.
It's not, it is not the chemical reaction in your brain that thinks the idea.
It's not the vocal cords that speak the idea because you can pass the idea on, and even if everybody disappears, you know that if people came back, two plus two would still equal four.
There is nothing material about the idea.
And yet, and yet, you can't experience the idea without material.
Someone has to speak it, somebody has to think it.
So there has to be a chemical reaction to speak the idea.
Now, the way that the materialists handle this is they say that ideas, feelings, experience, life experiences are epiphenomena, which means they don't exist until the material body exists.
And that's when the question of creation comes in.
Stephen Hawking said, we don't need God because all we need are a few simple rules of science for matter to come into being on its own.
And of course, the immediate question is, well, wait, rules of science are ideas.
Who thought the ideas?
If you're a materialist, you believe something has to be there to think the ideas.
Well, that's right.
There has to be a mind.
Mind has to precede matter.
The ideas, I mean, this is basic Plato, really.
The ideas have to precede, the forms of things have to precede the things themselves.
So what you really are seeing when you see the material world is not the essence of stuff.
You're not seeing the idea.
You're not seeing Andrew.
Andrew is inside here.
Andrew is here.
If you take off my hand, God forbid, I'm still Andrew.
You know, I mean, if I, if I, and in my belief, if I die, I am still Andrew.
I will still be there in some form or another.
So the thing, what you're seeing is you're seeing a language, okay?
This is just a met, now we're just dealing with a metaphor, but it's still true.
When I say the word tree, the word tree is not a tree, but it conveys the word tree.
When you see a person, you are not seeing the person.
You are seeing the expression of a person in material.
The material is like a word.
It is expressing the Andrew of me through this body, through this brain, through these chemical reactions.
But the people who say this stuff, who say that it's all a chemical reaction, don't believe it.
They don't believe it because they make choices.
They look back on their lives with regret or with saying that was a good choice.
When you ask them the story of their lives, they don't say, well, I was this big, then I was this big, then I was this big.
No, they tell you, well, first I felt this and then I went there and I really learned this and I came to, as I became mature, I started to understand the world this way.
They tell you their experiences of the world.
The human experience of the world is the reality of human life, not the chemical reactions through which that's expressed like language.
The only thing I will tell you is, I mean, all arguments, all arguments, logical arguments point to a creator.
All logical arguments point to the spirit coming before matter, not the other way around.
But don't expect people to surrender to logical arguments.
If people have faith, if you have faith, it is obvious there's a God.
If you don't have faith, you cannot see it.
You simply cannot see it.
So they're really blind.
It's really a question of blindness.
It's not a question of logical arguments.
But that is the logical argument.
They already believe in something that is not material.
They believe in ideas.
They believe that 2 plus 2 equals 4 and that it would equal 4 whether people existed or not.
I mean, people might have to exist to perceive the 2 plus 2 equals 4, but that would be true no matter what.
And so they already believe in immaterial things.
And then the question is, where do they think they come from?
All right, from Deborah, dear, most knowledgeable Mr. Clavin, my husband and I are going through another kingdom withdrawal.
We are desperate to know what single malt scotch to drink during the final episode.
Final episode is Friday, number 13, the final episode of what we hope will be the first season of Another Kingdom.
You can get it anywhere that you get your podcast.
So what single malt scotch should we drink?
These are serious questions and require planning.
And of course, the answer will change our lives, at least for this Friday.
My favorite single malt scotch is McAllen 12.
Some people like the older Macallan.
Some people like the 10-year-old.
10-year-old is too light for me.
Older, it starts to get smoky.
I'm not a really fan of smoky scotch.
I like sweeter, smoother scotch.
And McAllen 12 hits the absolute perfect mark for me.
I like it with one ice cube.
And I drink it with my man crate glasses that I got.
So that's my recommendation.
From Beverly.
Hi, Andrew.
I'm a relatively new listener, but I'm particularly interested in your conversion story.
I will read your book, The Great Good Thing, A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ.
That's my memoir of conversion.
But would like to know your thoughts on saying a prayer out loud, as the idea of doing this kind of sticks in my throat, and I can't decide if I'm being too prideful or just still have both feet on the atheist side of the fence I've been sitting on for far too long.
What can I do to develop some enthusiasm for the Christian experience?
I've grown so weary of feeling jaded by my life experiences to date and envy the sense of joy you seem to emanate.
That is not just a sense of joy, that is joy, in fact, itself.
Christ promises life in abundance.
He delivers.
That is one promise he delivers while you're still alive, and it is really worthwhile.
Yeah, you know, the thing that's smart about this letter that really is smart is that it understands that your resistance to God is emotional.
It's not logical.
You talk about being too prideful, and I think that I have, believe me, the same problem.
This is not an accusation.
One of the, I think, the emotional problems I have in getting close to Christ sometimes is that I want to be the guy.
I want to be the main guy.
I don't want to surrender that main guyness to Jesus and let's say, oh, you're the main guy.
I'm just, you know, I'm your creation.
That's a hard To do.
That takes a suppression of ego, and I'm a writer, and writers have big egos, so it's hard to do.
I believe in praying out loud very, very strongly.
I believe, you know, find a private place, pray out loud, talk to God, because it means you finish your sentences, it means you can hear what you're thinking, and you can hear the response.
And the thing is, you know, I use what I do that, and I also use the New Testament to tell me what God says when he has skin on, what God says when he looks like man, because that way I don't confuse God with authority figures in my life or from my childhood who may have betrayed me or failed me or done all the things that human beings do that God doesn't do because God is stalwart and keeps his promises and he's there for you.
And so if you pray out loud, if you get off alone and pray out loud maybe 10, 15 minutes every day, you'll start to find, oh, you know, I'm getting answered.
I'm actually getting answered.
Magically.
I mean, it really is incredible.
I know things I didn't know before.
I see my life from a perspective I didn't have before.
I feel a joy, even in grief, even in moments of grief, you feel a vitality and aliveness that you just didn't have before.
It will happen.
You know, read your New Testament and pray your prayer, and you will find that you have this connection with the spirit that created the world.
It's a good deal.
It's a good person to know.
From Michael to His Excellency the wizened bare of foot teller of tales, what is your opinion of video games as an art form?
Could an interactive thing of beauty still function as both a cultural snapshot and as a means of cultural exploration in the same way stories or visual art have previously?
I think about this a lot.
I love video games.
I do believe at their best they're an art form.
I believe that they are mostly a visual art form.
I've been a little disappointed in the storytelling capability of video games.
I thought that they were going to be more interesting as a storytelling vehicle.
And don't write to me and tell me, oh, this one has a great story, this one.
I've played games with great stories.
But because they are on a track, in order for the gameplay to be good, the story has to be on a track and has to go in a certain way.
And the fact that some of them have different endings is not very satisfying.
I think we want to be told a story.
I don't think we want to choose a story.
That's not what a story is.
However, the visuals and the immersiveness of the visuals, I think, have replaced painting, basically, in our lives.
I don't think I look at painting today and I see stuff that really doesn't move me at all.
It's not about humanity.
It's about shape.
It's about color.
It's about theory.
But the living kingdoms that are created in video games that you can immerse yourself in through the gameplay is a new art form and is a way of expressing what I think the arts do is I think that they communicate the inner experience of being a human being in the world.
And I think that some of the, you know, some games, the game that always comes to mind is ICO, which I have probably my favorite of all games.
But games like Braid, games like recently, I think it was called The Inside.
These things are visually so spectacular.
And these ones that have elaborate kingdoms that play out, even Castlevania and things like this, that have these elaborate imaginary kingdoms that you go into.
Yes, I think it's an art form, but I do think it's a visual art primarily.
I don't think it's actually a storytelling art, though some of them have told stories in new, interesting ways.
Do I have time?
Why Marry a Bad Guy?00:02:59
Yes.
From Sam, Heidrew, my 23-year-old baby sister just got engaged to a guy that all of her friends and family dislike.
He's essentially her first boyfriend, and I think she's just in love with being in love.
She's up for a law review editor and among the top in her class.
He's a gardener, which is relevant because their relationship is grounded in nothing but lies.
He lied about owning his company, about how much money he makes, about who his family is, and much more.
But she seems immune to it all.
She has her head screwed on with respect to everything else except this guy.
I'm willing to accept that it's not any of my business, but what, if anything, could, should we do to make her see the light?
Thanks so much.
Yeah, this is a disaster that's going to happen.
And it's really sad.
Your sister's obviously a talented, intelligent lady who is doing what ladies sometimes do.
I guess all of us sometimes do is making a really, really bad choice.
I mean, assuming that everything you say about this guy is true, I have no reason to doubt it.
She's making a bad choice that's going to affect her life.
So here's all, here's, you've got to play a long game.
You have to play a long game in these situations because if she marries the guy, you don't want to be cut out of her life and you don't want your voice not to be there when things go south as they inevitably will because the guy's a bad guy, right?
So the best thing you can do is gather the people in your family that she trusts the most and in a gentle, loving, non-assaultive, non-nagging, non-finger-pointing way, say, look, we love you.
We're going to love you no matter what you do, but we have serious concerns about this guy, and this is what they are.
These are our concerns, that he lies, that he doesn't tell the truth, that he's in debt, that he's not the guy he says he is.
And we think that if you are, you know, people do silly things when they're in love, people get carried away.
We think you're making a bad choice.
Maybe you should wait a year before you marry this guy and just see how it plays out.
We will love you no matter what you do, but we just want you to know that we have qualms, we have questions about this guy.
Hold off before you marry him and see how it plays out.
That way, if she makes the mistake and marries him, she can still come to you when things go bad.
That's the important thing.
See, what you don't want is you don't want to lose connection with her when she's in trouble, which she will be in if she marries this guy.
So you want to be able to be there for her and love her and catch her and build her back up and reconstruct her life when the disaster hits, as it will.
There's a chance that she'll listen to you.
If she listens, if she delays, you don't have to stop her.
You just have to delay her for a year because it takes about six months for the chemicals that make us crazy in love to kind of wear off and your senses, you start to come back to your senses.
Delay her for a year and she may actually get the message herself.
But if she doesn't, you want to make sure that you can still be there.
So don't go to her and say, you're making a terrible mistake.
This guy's an IRA.
You're being a fool.
You're an idiot.
That's not the way to do it.
Do it gently, do it with love, and that way you'll be there for her when you'll be there for her when things go south, as they unfortunately will, because this guy sounds like a real loser.
Attracted to Slavery00:06:49
Last one from Adam.
Dear Supreme Baldman, Claven, why isn't sex trafficking ever discussed in politics?
Oh boy, that's such a good question.
I see that abolitionist organizations have public demonstrations, but I would think this would be one of these global issues everyone cared about.
But I feel like people are more aware of polar bears than sex slaves.
You know, I don't know the answer to this question, why this doesn't capture traction.
It does get covered because it's about sex and they're always willing to do stories about sex.
But this is slavery.
This is actual slavery.
And some of these girls are tempted, told one thing, told they're going to get jobs, told they're going to be free, told they're going to be citizens of America, leave their hellhole countries and come to a good place, you know, like Norway.
But instead, they are linked into sexual slavery, which is brutalizing in the extreme.
Why it's not a bigger issue, you know, I don't know.
It's like homelessness.
It's like homelessness.
I do not know why homelessness and slavery are not big issues that we're talking about instead of whether Donald Trump drinks Diet Coke.
It's a problem with our press.
Our press is broken.
Our media is corrupt, intellectually corrupt, intellectually stupid.
Our leftist professors are intellectually corrupt and intellectually stupid.
And so instead of real suffering that's going on in the world, they're discussing stupid.
Like when they talk about sex slaves, they talk about, well, we have to be good to sex workers, sex workers.
These aren't sex workers.
They're slaves.
They are slaves.
And they are people who are being abused.
Nobody, nobody wants to be a prostitute.
Nobody.
Some people are.
You know, I don't think necessarily, it's the oldest profession in the world.
I don't think necessarily people should be arrested for doing it.
But I think that if you can get people out, you are doing God's work.
Why it's not a bigger story than it is, I don't know.
I mean, maybe it's just that it's so overwhelming that they don't feel that there's anything they can do about it.
I know that the left frequently is blind to it.
I think the right maybe doesn't care enough.
I think the same thing is true with homelessness, that the left has these stupid theories about mad people having the right to choose to live on the streets, and the right doesn't care enough to show up.
It's worth, if you want to adopt a cause, it's a good one.
People should not, slavery should be over, and it's just not.
And this is the key form of slavery in the world today.
All right, good mailbag.
Excellent questions.
A lot of them we couldn't get to.
I'll try and hold some of them over for next week.
Now, tickety-boo news.
You know, I did want to talk about this political incorrectness that I've been saying, all this stuff against feminism and against people accusing people of racism.
You know, I don't want to tell anybody how to live.
I think each person should live his best life, really consult his heart, consult the Bible, consult God about what his life, what he's made to be, what he or she is made to be, and follow that and not listen to all these people who are trying to promote all these ideas.
But, you know, Sigmund Freud had this whole, he really was a genius.
He really did contribute to our knowledge of the way the mind works.
But he also said a lot of stupid stuff.
And one of the stupid things that he had was this idea of latency, especially in the arena of sexuality.
So for years, I mean, decades, decades, there was this idea that you could be a latent homosexual.
You were homosexual, but you just didn't know it.
You know, you were going along, sleeping with your wife, but somehow you were secretly gay.
And it was insane how, you know, you can go back to old movies from the 50s and 60s and you'll see it.
I mean, it's insane to think that if you are attracted to men or attracted to women, you don't know what you're attracted to.
Men know, men especially know what they are attracted to.
They know what gets them excited.
They know what gets them around.
So it was a stupid idea.
When Freud was thrown out by the left, mostly because of the things he said about women and homosexuals, when his ideas were hurled out by the left, they kept this idea of latency and they use it.
It's a stupid idea.
And they use it to call you racist when you're not racist.
I believe you are a racist if you believe that race is morally determined.
If you believe that someone is worse because he's black or brown or yellow or red or white, whatever you believe, I think you are a racist.
And that's a philosophy.
It's a way of looking at the world.
If you don't believe that, you have all kinds of things, silly things that flash through your head.
I mean, if a guy plays for the Boston Red Sox, you hate him.
If he changes teams and plays for the Yankees, then you love him.
I mean, those are crazy things that happen in the human mind.
So maybe sometimes you like white people better than black people.
Maybe sometimes you're prejudiced against white people or whatever.
But that doesn't make you a racist.
That just makes you a human being.
So I get so ticked off, especially with young people who accept this category of latent racism, latent sexism.
It's absurd, and it's just there to control the way you talk.
So I've been talking, and I think it especially hurts women because I think women are especially sensitive to social pressures.
So I've been talking a lot about women, you know, never hear, they never hear from moms, they never hear from at-home moms.
And I was looking, Amanda Presto, one of my favorite writers here at the Daily Wire.
I don't know how to pronounce her last name, so I just call her Amanda Presto.
I think that's her Twitter handle.
She writes this piece, despite the onslaught of propaganda telling young girls otherwise, a recent research paper distilling data from over 30 European countries concluded that mothers find homemaking preferable to working full-time.
And this is in keeping to a British study in 2013 that found that stay-at-home mothers are more likely to think that their lives are worthwhile than women who go to work.
You know, they did a study of national happiness.
Stay-at-home mothers tended not to suffer from boredom, frustration, feelings of worthlessness, according to this research on Britain's well-being.
So, where are you going to hear that?
Nowhere.
You know, I mean, nowhere.
And when people say it, they get called names and they get shut down.
And so, your life, you know, a pathway of life of happiness.
I'm not saying this is for everybody.
I'm not saying it's for anybody.
I'm just saying a pathway to happiness that has been a pathway to female happiness for thousands of years-maybe 70,000 years as long as we have history, maybe 2.5 million years, as long as there have been Homo sapiens.
That pathway is shut down by this press that is corrupt and dishonest and not a good bunch of people.
And so, that's the reason I'm being a little politically incorrect because I think somebody should say it.
And I've been getting accused of racism all week, people saying, Well, you're a racist, but you don't, you know, somebody said, tweeted me, they said, It's the very nature of racism that you don't know you're a racist.
Baloney, Malarkey.
It's the nature of racism that you proclaim yourself racist.
That is the nature of racism.
Do not listen to this.
The facts matter, the data matter, your own heart and your own desires matter, your life matters.
And that's why studies like this are important.
It's important that people like Amanda are writing about them and getting out the news.
The Facts Matter00:00:50
All right, tomorrow we have James O'Keefe, don't we?
Excellent.
I'm looking at his book, American Pravda, I believe it's called American Pravda, and he will be here to talk about that and about the good work he is doing exposing the censorship on Twitter and elsewhere.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
We will see you then.
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring, senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
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Edited by Alex Zingaro.
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