Cheryl Atkins reveals the CIA’s 1967 memo dismissing "conspiracy theory" as propaganda, while Andrew McCabe’s FBI exit and partisan FISA memos expose media bias favoring Clinton-era narratives over Trump scrutiny. Andrew Hyatt’s Paul, Apostle of Christ (March 28) rejects Hollywood’s saccharine faith films, opting for a gritty, scripture-grounded portrayal of Paul’s persecution, defying industry skepticism with early success. Meanwhile, Andrew Klavan argues leftist media weaponizes conservative scandals—like Trump’s alleged affairs—while ignoring Clinton’s hypocrisy, framing governance competence over personal morality as the true measure of leadership. [Automatically generated summary]
So here's a tidbit of information you may not know about the origin of the phrase conspiracy theory.
According to investigative journalist Cheryl Atkins, you remember her, she's the journalist who had to leave CBS because they wouldn't let her run stories that reflected badly on President Barack Obama, even though she'd run plenty of stories that reflected badly on George W. Bush.
But anyway, in Atkinson's book, Smear, she talks about the fact that the phrase conspiracy theory was invented by the CIA in 1967 as a way to discredit people who suspected the CIA of conspiracies.
The spy agency was apparently responsible for promoting the phrase conspiracy theory for use as a powerful device in the lexicon of the smear artist, Atkinson writes.
Before the covert CIA effort, which we can pinpoint to a secret memo in 1967, there was nothing controversial about discussing or exposing conspiracies.
After all, a conspiracy is simply an agreement by two or more people to commit a bad act.
Atkinson goes on, yet after the CIA secret memo, the public and media were brainwashed into dismissing out of hand those labeled as conspiracy theorists, as if only the mentally unbalanced would believe in the existence of conspiracies.
Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, reads the internal CIA memo.
The aim of this memo is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists.
The CIA memo goes on to advise station chiefs to employ propaganda assets, friendly journalists and others, to use certain Turk talking points.
For instance, see if these talking points sound familiar.
Argue that this conspiracy is nothing new.
Insist that a large-scale conspiracy would be impossible to conceal in the United States.
Smear critics as politically or financially motivated, hasty and inaccurate, or infatuated with their own theories.
Now, yesterday, Andrew McCabe had to leave this FBI more suddenly than he planned.
McCabe now joins James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, James Baker, and Jim Rybicki as FBI employees who were involved in the investigation of Hillary Clinton's secret email server and have since left or been reassigned under a cloud of suspicion.
This doesn't necessarily prove that the Clinton investigation was mishandled or that the FBI is involved in a more tangled web of anti-Republican activity.
But we do know this.
The lack of journalistic curiosity about the behavior of our government during the Barack Obama administration was an invitation to exactly that kind of government corruption.
Just as a reminder, here's a montage of our journalistic watchdogs asking President Obama the tough questions during his time in office.
A lot of parallels have been offered between yourself and John F. Kennedy, who also made history, came in with a young, attractive family, had a lot of big Harvard brains around him.
When was the first moment that it began to sink in that you were president of the United States?
I'd ask you about it anytime in this campaign that you have a chuckle that you just couldn't get rid of.
Something weird that happened.
It was so crazy that you just went to bed laughing about it.
How confident are you that your plan is going to work and how do you avoid the dangers of being too cocky?
You racked up a lot of wins in the last few weeks that a lot of people thought would be difficult to come by.
Are you ready to call yourself the comeback kid?
You know, you are the equivalent of a rock star in politics.
Do you feel sometimes like your administration is not given the credit it deserves?
Where do you get all this confidence?
How does this feel of all the honors that have come your way?
During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office?
Enchanted you the most about serving in this office?
That was then, but now, yesterday, soon after McCabe's resignation, the House Intelligence Committee voted on party lines to release a Republican-authored memo on possible FISA abuses at the Justice Department.
We'll talk about that throughout the show.
Here's one reaction from the press.
It's a representative reaction.
And remember, this is a press who has not yet read the memo.
Watch this.
Donald Trump never just allows himself to have a straight shot at anything.
Here we have the State of the Union coming up tonight.
That should be the focus.
But instead, you look at what happened last night in the House and you had Nunes' memo, which twists the truth and it plays these crude political games with highly secret intelligence that make up most of the Republicans who voted to release this controversial memo that the Justice Department said would be extraordinarily reckless had never even read the memo.
And many who did read Nunes' memo say that it falsely summarized the reality and it's filled with all these falsehoods and these misleading conclusions, all in an attempt to slur law enforcement officers that Donald Trump, I don't know how to say this.
He's targeted them for a political purge.
Now, I don't know for sure yet if there was a conspiracy against Republicans at the FBI, but the continued attempts of a one-sided press to ignore and even hide the steady and unceasing abuse of power by Obama and other Democrats does amount to a conspiracy, a conspiracy of silence.
And that's no theory.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety boo.
Birds are winging also singing hunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped 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.
All right, we got a busy day today.
The mailbag is tomorrow.
And so you want to get your questions in if you are a subscriber.
If you're not a subscriber, hang your head in shame.
Because if you are a subscriber, all you got to do is go to the website, dailywire.com, hit the podcast button, hit the Andrew Clavin podcast button, and then there's a little button for the mailbag and put that.
You can ask any question you want about religion, about politics, about your own personal problems and issues in the world.
My answers are guaranteed 100% correct and will change your life on occasion for the better.
Then later today, we have the President's State of the Union address, and we will be covering that here live starting at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific.
We're just going to hang out and talk about it.
Me, Ben.
Well, we let Knowles in?
Yeah, I guess.
Well, somebody's got to serve the drinks.
And then, of course, we'll have the God King of the Daily Wire, Jeremy Boring, who will be lowered on a wire because that makes us laugh.
And Alicia Kraus will also be then there.
You can send us questions live there, and we will answer you on air, and we may even fight among ourselves.
Catch live streams at dailywire.com, Daily Wire, Facebook, at Daily Wire, YouTube, to spend the evening with the three of us, the four of us, including Jeremy.
We don't even like to speak his name because lightning flashes and everything.
We can't even speak Jeremy's name.
But again, that's tonight, January 30th at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific.
Follow us on Facebook and YouTube, and we will notify you when we go live so we can spend every unforgettable moment together.
And since this is the State of the Union, there probably be a lot of forgettable moments, and we'll share those with you too.
Later on, we have Andrew Hyatt here, a friend of mine, good friend of mine, who has just directed the major Easter release from Sony's faith-based pictures department, which is very exciting for me, I'm sure for him, but for me.
You know, we have, this is kind of the Andrew Culture Week.
We have Andrew Hyatt today.
Then on Thursday, we have Andy Weir, the guy who wrote The Martian.
And I'll be here the whole week.
So it's just Andrew's everywhere.
Yeah, that's right.
So we want to talk also.
Oh, here's something new about stamps.com.
I'm always peddling stamps.com and I love stamps.com because one of the reasons I love stamps.com is because I love the post office.
I have made my living through the post office for most of my life.
They're so helpful to a writer.
But now I want the stuff that's in the post office to be in my computer.
And so I use stamps.com.
That's why.
But, you know, stamps.com also can be helpful with postage rates.
They keep going up at the post office, but stamps.com keeps your rates down with postage discounts up to 40%.
These are discounts you can't even get at the post office.
Stamps.com saves you three cents on every letter you send.
Pay 2016 prices for 2018 stamps.
Just use stamps.com and you can automatically calculate and print the correct amount of postage for every letter or package you send.
Stamps.com brings you all the services of the U.S. Postal Service right at your fingertips.
And right now, you too can enjoy the stamps.com service with a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus postage and a digital scale.
So you don't put too much postage on your letters.
Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in Clavin.
And I know what you say to yourself.
Why We Left Google00:17:05
They say, wow, that sounds great, but I can't do it because I don't know how to spell Clavin.
But it's K-L-A-V-A-N.
So go to stamps.com, enter Clavin, and you get a four-week trial plus postage and a digital scale, stamps.com.
So here's what the Democrats did yesterday, okay?
They ensured that 20-week-old babies can continue to be aborted.
I mean, that's legal, I think, in 50 states.
I believe that's legal, with some restrictions on it.
Now, I got to stop here for a minute.
And just to be fair, the Democrats Bob Casey and Joe Manchin and Joe Donnelly actually supported.
They were trying to get the 60 votes they need to end the make-believe filibuster, which really they should be getting rid of, but they couldn't get the 60 votes.
And so three Democrats did vote for this measure to end 20-week-old, abortions of 20-week-old babies.
And two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, the Liberal Republicans, voted against it.
You know, I have to pause here before we get to the FBI.
20 weeks, you know, I wrote this movie, this script about abortion, and we kept talking about 20 weeks, 20 weeks.
And somewhere along the line, I stopped and went, 20 weeks?
That's five months.
At five months, an expectant mother can tell you the personality of the baby she's carrying.
Five months, are you kidding me?
And of course, they're now finding out, big surprise, that 20-week-year-old infant, unborn baby can feel pain.
So you're not just killing this poor creature, you're torturing it.
Unbelievable.
This is unbelievable.
And you know, I put this online sometimes.
I'll put it up on Twitter, and I'll get these texts from pro-abortion people saying these tweets from pro-abortion people saying, oh, well, no woman would abort that late unless she had a good reason.
When did that happen?
When did women become sparkly, supernatural creatures who never do anything wrong?
I know women who shoot you in the head for 20 bucks worth of crack.
What are you talking about?
If women do this, women abort children for all kinds of reasons, including they want them to have a different star sign.
I mean, you don't know what level of woman you're dealing with, what level of human being you're dealing with.
And the other one I keep hearing is, you can't force a woman to carry a baby to term, which is like saying, you know, you can't force me not to kill my wife.
You know, once you make a decision and that decision has consequences, you incur those consequences.
When I decide to get married, I can't just walk out the door.
I have to then go to law and say, I want a divorce.
And I certainly can't blow my wife away because, you know, I have the right to just freedom to choose.
And that's what they're saying.
You made a decision.
You made the decision to have sex.
You made the decision.
And you're the one who got pregnant.
It didn't happen.
You weren't hit by the pregnancy bolt.
This is obscene.
The fact that this is the Democrats' calling card, that, they did that, and then they keep attacking this tax cut as if it's a bad thing that ordinary middle-class people are going to get some extra money in their paycheck.
They keep saying, oh, it's just crumbs, crumbs, $1,000 is just crumbs.
It's just crumbs if you're a Democrat on the take, maybe.
But, you know, $1,000 is a lot of money for most of us.
For most people, that is a good amount of money.
And that's kind of the bonuses they're handing out.
And the bonuses are going to lead to higher pay.
That's also happening.
Finally, they went out of their way to shut down any talk of corruption at the FBI, to keep information from you, okay?
So first we had McCabe, Andrew McCabe, in this week of Andrews.
We had Andrew McCabe step down from—so that's Democrats, high taxes, dead babies, and censorship.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot, guys.
So the head of the FBI, apparently, this is source material, but they say that he pressured Andrew McKay to leave.
Now, this is a very soft landing.
He's going to retire in March anyway.
He's still going to get his paycheck.
He's still going to get his full pension.
But it's just get out of the way.
And we don't know why this happens.
We don't know whether there's something bad coming down the pike and Christopher Wray heard about it from the Inspector General's report.
The Justice Department has an inspector general studying the FBI's treatment of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
And so maybe there was something in that.
But also Christopher Way went on and he saw this FISA memo.
But according to the press, this is, I'm not sure I have time to play this, but according to the press, there's only one reason.
There's only one reason that McCabe stepped down, and that is Donald Trump forced him out as a way of wrong-footing the investigation into Russia.
I won't play the montage, but all the networks, that's all they were saying.
It's one after another.
He's killing them off.
It's like a holocaust of FBI agents.
And they keep peddling this thing of like, he's lessening our trust in the FBI.
I mean, the last time we had complete trust in the FBI, we got J. Edgar Hoover.
You know, I mean, that was the kind of thing we had.
You wouldn't question the FBI, are you?
Because we might show up at your house.
It's like, question anybody.
You're just the government.
You just work for us.
And if you get dirty, we're going to clean you out.
That's the way it works.
So this is all about the FISA memo.
The other reason he might have gone is Christopher Wray went and looked at the FISA memo.
The Devin Nunes, who wrote the FISA memo and has, or at least organized the FISA memo, invited Ray to come in and say, look at this.
Just take a look at this and tell me what you think before we vote to release it.
Now, let's talk about what this is about.
FISA, obviously, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, okay?
Now, this was passed, people forget this, but this was passed during the Nixon, after the Nixon administration, 1978, because Nixon had been spying, using foreign intelligence warrants to spy on radical demonstrators within the country, right?
It was all this kind of in the 60s, all the riots, all the demonstrations, and Nixon had been using spying on our own people.
And they said, no, you've got to go to a FISA court.
It's a secret court, but you have got to show cause to spy on Americans.
We don't want a government spying on us.
This is supposed to be America, right?
So the thing that everybody's talking about is, did the Obama Justice Department use this OPO research called the Steele dossier, completely unverified information, as part of the way to get FISA warrants to spy on the Donald Trump campaign?
There's one guy, Carter Page, I think his name is.
There's one guy they're saying was a Russian spy, which seems absurd, but that was the excuse they were giving to spy on.
So just think about this, because there are Democrats now.
There are Democrats now saying, you know, well, it may have been only one reason.
If you're using, the DNC and Hillary Clinton paid for the Steele dossier, it was Russian misinformation.
It hasn't been verified.
To use that to spy not just on me, on some American guy, but to spy on an actual political opponent.
I mean, that is bad.
You know, that is bad.
That is a major, major scandal.
And it is appalling the lack of curiosity the press is showing.
It's appalling.
I mean, if this were obviously Republican corruption, they'd be all over it.
But the fact that it is this great sacred Barack Obama who ran the government like a Chicago machine and it's coming out now, and this is part of what's coming out.
Again, I don't know what's in the memo.
I'm not going to tell you that it actually shows that they did this.
But if I were a reporter, I would be salivating.
I mean, I don't care, Republican or Democrat.
I would think, wow, this is the story of my young lifetime.
This is going to be the big scandal that I cover in my life.
I would be all over this.
So here, first of all, Adam Schiff comes out, and I've called him Joe McCarthy before, but here is an actual video of Adam Schiff lying.
Okay?
I mean, he comes out, this guy who looks like a turtle escaped from his shell, and he comes out after they pass this vote.
And it's along, there are more Republicans than Democrats on the House Intel Committee, and they vote that we're going to release this memo, which is what they say it is, is a compilation of information they got that was otherwise classified.
So it's essentially an end run around the classified information to release this information.
And here he comes, the cut I want on this is cut number two, right?
That motion was voted down by the majority.
The majority expressed a concern that something in the minority memoranda or otherwise could compromise sources and methods.
And for exactly that reason, we asked that both memoranda be vetted by the FBI and the Department of Justice.
But that was voted down.
So what he's saying there is they voted to release the GOP memo, but voted not to release the DEM memo, a counter memo that Adam Schiff wrote.
That's not true, okay?
That is simply not true.
What they voted was before releasing the GOP memo, they voted that everybody in the House should get to see it before they voted whether to release it to the public.
So now they voted to do the same thing to the Democrat memo before releasing it to make sure everybody in the House gets to read it before they release it to the public.
So they voted to do the same, treat the Democratic memo the same way they treated the Republican memo.
This in spite of the fact that the people who have seen the memo say that the Republican memo is about the FBI, the Democrat memo is about the Republican memo.
So now they are coming out with this absolute panic to make sure, you're going to start to see some leaks, by the way, because as long as the Republicans were the only people who had seen this, you saw no leaks, but once the FBI gets a hold of it, they will start to leak it out.
And what they'll do is they'll leak it out to make it seem like it's not as bad.
But you know it's bad because Nancy Pelosi was on the Chris Cuomo show and Cuomo had the temerity at one point, you almost never see anybody do this on CNN, to push back a little bit and say, why should we trust you?
You know, why should any, we all know how political everybody is, so why should we trust you?
And I took, I had our guys take Pelosi and just put together all her answers that she made, just one answer after another.
We have this montage of her.
This is cut number seven during this amazing thing where for once Chris Cuomo actually pushed back and said, you know, shouldn't the information go as if, almost as if he were a journalist and wanted information released to the public, which is what journalists are supposed to do, he pushed back a little and she goes, she's insane.
I mean, so this cut, this is a montage, cut number seven.
What they're putting forth is a total misrepresentation.
It is false.
And they're putting it out there as if it is factual and then saying, we're going to show this to the American people, but we're not going to show the rebuttal to it by the Democrats.
Now, this isn't not to be politicized.
This is about fact.
This is about security or not.
It's about people in our country who work so hard to protect the American people in the intelligence community and to be frivolous with their identity or roads that can lead to them.
You're saying that you think it puts lives at stake if there's no country.
You're saying that intelligence that it's necessary for other countries to share with us, why would they put it at the mercy of Dennis Nunes, who doesn't even read the memo and say the American people should see it.
This dark cloud hangs over the Capitol.
It's called their tax cut.
It's taken us $2 trillion additional into debt.
That makes them afraid of incurring any further debt.
So they don't want to spend money on their domestic agenda.
And look what they're doing with family unification, making up a fake name, chain.
Chain, they like the word chain.
That sends tremors through people in our country.
Well, you read something into everything concerning what they're doing.
Of course I do.
I see them every day.
I'm having hysterics, I'm hysterical.
I can't stop when I get like this.
I can't stop.
I'm hysterical.
I'm a double idea.
Just to summarize Pelosi's position, she says the memo is false, but it damages our national security.
So if the memo is false, it doesn't damage anything because who knows, you know, it's not real information, but it damages our security and it distracts from the fact that we now have lower taxes, which is a disaster.
And meanwhile, they're putting immigrants in chains because they call it chain migration.
That's her argument.
Now, compare this to Trey Gowdy, and this is before the vote to release the memo.
Gowdy went on, Gowdy who has backed the Robert Mueller investigation relentlessly.
He has said, leave him, in his words, leave him the hell alone, let him do his job.
He has said this relentlessly.
But when asked why they should release the memo on the Sunday show, this was his clearly reasonable answer.
This memo is nothing but the distilling, the reducing of thousands of pages of documents provided to us by the department and the bureau.
So there's nothing in this memo that the department is not already aware of.
If you think your viewers want to know whether or not the dossier was used in court proceedings, whether or not it was vetted before it was used, whether or not it's ever been vetted, if you are interested in who paid for the dossier, if you're interested in Christopher Steele's relationship with Hillary Clinton and the Democrat National Committee, then yes, you'll want the memo to come out.
If you're Adam Schiff, who is consistently wrong when it comes to issues of disclosure, he didn't want us to find out any of this information, Chris.
He fought.
In fact, GPS went to court.
Fusion GPS went to court to keep us from finding out that the Democrats paid for the dossier.
So if you're Adam Schiff, of course you don't want the information to come out.
You didn't want us to find it in the first place.
So look, a really simple question.
Who do you trust?
The people who want information to come out to the public or the people, including the press, who are trying so hard to keep it secret?
For the answer, let's ask someone who knows.
The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide.
Thank you, President Obama.
Okay.
So Andrew Hyatt is coming up, a terrific director who has directed a new movie about St. Paul.
We'll talk to him first, but first we have to talk about Bolin Branch because Bolin Branch are these, they have these terrific sheets.
They are made from 100% organic cotton, which means they feel incredible.
They look amazing.
And since Bolin Branch sells exclusively online, you're not paying the expensive retail price that you would for that.
That's half the price for twice the quality.
Now, these sheets are great if you go to bed to sleep.
But if, like me, you go to bed to stay awake and lie awake and think about things, then they're even better because you're comfortable all night long.
They really are.
They get more comfortable the more you watch them.
Anyone who sleeps on Bolin Branch Sheets loves them.
That's why they have thousands of five-star reviews.
The New York Times, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal all rave about them.
Three U.S. presidents have Bolin Branch sheets, and I myself am not one of them.
But I do have them too.
I do love them.
They're very, very nice, and they really have great designs.
You can just go and pick out anything.
Go to Bolinbranch.com today, and you'll get $50 off your first set of sheets, which is great since they're already much less expensive than they would be in the store.
You get $50 off plus free shipping in the United States when you use the promo code Clavin.
You might say promo code, that's a strange word.
How do you spell that?
Well, it's K-L-A-V-A-N.
As Rob likes to say, there are no E's, there is no E's in Clavin, as everyone who knows me knows.
That's $50 off plus free U.S. shipping right now at Bolinbranch.com.
That's spelled B-O-L-L and Branch.com because it's cotton.
That's why.
Bolinbranch.com, promo code Clavin, Bolinbranch.com, promo code Clavin for great sheets for cheaper than you would get them in a store and then 50 bucks less because you listen to me.
All right, we got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, but we will, you can come over to the I lost my train of thought there.
You come over to thetawire.com, you can listen to the rest of the show, or while you're there, subscribe for a lousy 10 bucks a month and you can watch the show, the whole thing right there, and you don't have to be cast out and you can be in the mailbag.
The mailbag is tomorrow.
So get your questions in, subscribe, and get your questions in.
All right.
We will take a break.
So let me tell you about Andrew Hyatt.
I met Andrew Hyatt.
He was working at Empower, which was still there.
It's not doing as much as it used to do, but it was a way of funding, trying to get money, channel money, and channel talent toward Christian-based, faith-based films or films with any kind of faith-based.
And Andrew and some of the other folks over there optioned a screenplay of mine.
And so we got to be friends, and he invited me to one of his early kind of indie small pictures.
And it was called The Frozen.
And I'm watching The Frozen, which was kind of a spooky film about people lost in the woods.
And there was one shot very early on in The Frozen.
I remember it.
It was guys on a snowmobile were going by the woods, and there was just a glimpse of somebody standing in the woods.
This very frightening thing.
And I have been telling directors forever that it's much scarier if something goes by so fast you almost don't see it than if they linger on it, but directors do not have the willpower to do it.
And the minute I saw that shot, because it was perfect, it was just right, it scared the hell out of me.
And the whole audience jumped, but you just, you weren't even sure you saw it.
The minute I saw it, I thought, ooh, this guy actually has talent.
Bible and Hollywood00:14:36
He's not just this guy who hangs around.
He actually knows what he's doing.
And so he went on making small films.
Last Light was another one.
But then he made this film called Full of Grace about the Virgin Mary, and it was really a turning point.
So let's bring on Andrew Hyatt, his new film.
Oh, actually, do we have the capability to play this promo?
His new film is called Paul Apostle of Christ.
Have I got that right, Andrew?
You got it.
All right, and just today, they released the promo for it, right?
The trailer?
That's right.
Before we talk to you, let us watch the trailer for this.
I, Luke, send a message to all those that follow our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a terrible evil in the world.
darkness is spreading.
I know you are suffering persecution.
Faith is being tested.
I know you question the way.
But I've come to Rome to find Paul, to write his story, to bring hope, to bring light into this present darkness, and to remind us all how God changed a hateful man who will change the history of the world.
Luke, am I dreaming?
From stained with the blood of our brothers and sisters.
Wow.
This is what trusting God gets you.
People are desperate.
We're the only light left in this city.
I cannot fix this.
You can inspire me.
All right.
We'll cut it there and let you go see the rest of the.
You've got a great eye, Andrew.
You really do.
Your pictures, they always look terrific.
Anyway, how you doing?
It's good to see you.
I'm doing good.
I feel like this is the future of the talk show.
You in your fancy wood-paneled room and me in my hotel room.
I didn't even have to put on pants.
I did.
That's too much information.
Don't tell me.
Oh, okay.
I appreciate it.
I always tell people, I don't see my friends anymore.
We just interview each other.
That's it.
It's probably better for our friendship, right?
Yeah, exactly.
So let's talk.
Before we get to this, you're a small filmmaker.
You're making indie films.
Obviously, for none of us, is there a real future in that unless somebody starts to pick them up?
And then you make Full of Grace.
What made you decide to do that?
Well, yeah.
You know, I wish I could say I had this beautiful conversion and I felt called to make a film, but honestly, I was broke and these guys called me out of Chicago and I needed the money.
So I said, that's the way it works.
But, you know, one thing led to another and it was really a beautiful experience and really grew a lot through that film, both as a filmmaker and just in my personal life.
And yeah, this is what's led to Paul.
So it was a godsend for sure.
I mean, Full of Grace is a very small movie.
It really, you know, it continues to be one of, you know, one of your indie films, very beautifully shot.
The whole thing, I mean, unbelievably good to look at, and the acting is great and all that, which is part of what directors do.
But then who then called you about doing St. Paul?
We did a small screening in LA after Full of Grace came out.
It was sort of a friends and family screening.
And a couple of friends that work at Sony came to it.
And they felt the same way that you did about the film and gave me a call right after and said, what are you working on next?
And I had been percolating this Paul idea for a while, doing a little bit of writing here and there.
And when I mentioned it to them, they said, well, we've been looking for a Paul film for years, haven't found anything.
We'd love to check it out when you're done.
And so finished the script, sent it off, and it really was one right away.
They said, this is it.
You cracked the story.
Let's go make the film.
Wow, that's, as you know, that's very rare.
That doesn't happen.
No, it is very rare.
And also, I mean, one of the things that happened after Mel Gibson made Passion of the Christ is all these studios started building faith-based divisions, right?
So Sony's, what they called, a firm, is that?
Affirm films, yes.
Affirm films.
So that's their faith-based division.
But because nobody in Hollywood actually has any faith, they kept making these movies, these Bible movies, that basically insulted anyone who believes in the Bible.
So they would make, you know, the Noah movie, and it was about God destroying the world for environmentalism.
And then they would make the Moses movie and Christian Bale, terrific actor, but he would go out there and say, Moses was kind of a terrorist.
And you think like, huh, I'm not going to that movie.
And then they would tell you, oh, well, Bible-based films don't make any money after insulting the people who would have gone to see them.
But in this case, you are obviously a devout guy.
You're a faithful guy.
You must have written a story that basically reflected the biblical point of view, right?
Well, you're spot on.
I mean, a lot of films since the passion have swung for the fences and completely missed.
And I just think we just took a very respectful, reverent approach to it.
And we looked at scripture and we said, okay, how can we bring Paul to life in a way that is not just aimed at the Christian audience?
Because I think that's sort of the failure of Hollywood is to think, oh, you know what?
We can get to these people.
We know how to talk them into going to see this film.
Instead of, let's just make a movie for this audience.
And that's what I really hope Paul is.
It's just for this audience.
It's something that I believe will be inspiring, encouraging, and just respectful of who Paul is.
You know, for millions and millions of people, he is a superhero.
He's more important than Spider-Man, Superman, Batman put together.
And we tried to treat it with that reverence.
Anything that Marvel would do to respectfully bring one of those characters to life, we said, let's do that with a Bible movie and see what happens.
So I'm excited for people to have the same response, which is, wow, wait a minute, they actually did it right.
Yeah, because I mean, the guy did.
I mean, he went through shipwrecks.
He was tortured.
He was imprisoned.
And it is kind of a testimony to, you know, a lot of these guys were preaching the gospel in Jewish areas where they were basically, they were putting their life on the line to tell people who had been there, who had been there, that this happened.
So, you know, it wasn't like you could pull a con and it was like you were putting your life on the line.
So it had to be this intense faith experience.
And Paul obviously just went through hell to say what he had to say.
Really an amazing story.
And Jim Coviesel was in.
Jim Coviesel.
Yeah.
Jim Coviesel plays Luke and then James Faulkner plays Paul.
Okay.
And they're both phenomenal.
They both were very open to their goal, as you know, from my other films is to find the human touch, to find a humanity through these characters instead of the normal cardboard cutout Bible figures.
And they were both very open to just going deep and finding the humanity.
So the performances are wonderful from them.
And we've got a great, great secondary cast as well.
Now, I know, obviously, you don't want to, you're not going to diss the, you know, bite the hand that feeds you, but being religious in Hollywood can be an experience.
I mean, to sort of put forward the idea that an intelligent, you know, sane person believes in things that are beyond the natural.
Just be a tough sell in a town that really revolves around money sex and prestige.
And is there a place, have you now found that you have found a network of people who are friendly toward what you're doing?
Or are you still maneuvering through the cracks?
Are you still kind of dodging bullets?
I think that we've definitely found those people.
And what's pretty amazing with Hollywood is, I have to say, I think there's less of a prejudice towards that when the dollar signs start adding up.
So I think they're very quick.
Yeah, they're very quick to maneuver opinion if money is showing up in the bank.
And so I think that there is a respect.
Suddenly, we put a couple of behind the scenes things out and some trailers out.
And the feedback was monumental.
I mean, we had six and a half million views in two weeks on one of the teaser trailers.
And so I think it kind of made everybody stand back and say, huh, okay, maybe there's something here.
I don't need to believe in it, but if I can make some money off of it.
Yeah, yeah.
You would think they would say that, but after Mel Gibson turned like $25 million into a billion dollars about, you would thought they would have just started filming one Bible story.
Give me anybody.
Give me AAP.
I'll take anything.
But they did.
Speaking from a very blinders-on point of view, and I'm sure there are people out there that would love nothing more than to this kind of content not be made.
So I don't want to say that as a generalization, but I've been blessed enough to be with the people that are being supportive and allowing us to do our thing and really not stepping on our toes with scripture and what we feel is important to the audience, which is great.
Now, let's look at this from the other side for a minute, because one of the problems I have is that a lot of Christian films come out and I don't like to name them because it's not like I hate them.
I find they're rom-coms for Christians, basically.
Everything works out right.
Whenever people stray from the Christian path, bad things happen.
Whenever they go back, they're happy and joyful.
And you just sit there and go like, wow, I wish that was life, you know?
But it doesn't resonate with me.
And I don't think it resonates with audiences who might be sympathetic, who might turn up and say, well, St. Paul's a good story.
How do you avoid that?
How do you avoid that kind of candy land Christianity?
I mean, I hear you.
And yep, we won't name names, but one of the things we just always approach it was he said, you know, just because you say yes to Jesus and you convert doesn't mean everything's wrapped up with a pretty bow and your life works out.
It's just not the story.
In fact, it's not the scriptural story either.
You look at these guys.
And as you said, Paul goes through hell for 30 years preaching the gospel.
It wasn't nice and tidy.
He didn't get a new car and a big house and live happily ever after.
But, you know, his life changed and he gave everything.
And so I think as much as we can avoid that sort of saccharine, just vanilla approach to Christianity and just offer something deeper and more human and more of the experience that I think we all have.
I mean, I'm like you.
I would love to meet the people that that's what happens today.
They go to church on Sunday and they win the lottery on Monday and it's like, wow, that's awesome.
That doesn't happen to me.
You know, I'm a sinner.
I follow my face every day.
And I need something a little deeper and a little more gritty and more human.
And I think that's what Paul offers.
And so we just hope that it sort of maybe turns that ship a little bit as far as, and I hear you, it's the inspirational drama versus a real faith experience.
Right, exactly, exactly.
And Paul is a great example of that because, I mean, like, like he's just, he's such a tough guy.
He's a very hard-boiled individual and he goes through so much stuff and he never, there's not one point in the letters where he starts to think like, maybe not.
You know, maybe I'm out of here.
He's very, very tough about it.
The other thing that sometimes can just get in the way of storytelling, and I remember you did have this experience a little bit with Full of Grace, was that you have to toe a theological line.
You have to be very careful not to step on anybody's toes because there are some people who believe if you stray one word from the gospels or one word from the Bible, you're going to go up and smoke.
How hard is it to convince Christians to let you tell your story, to let you tell the story as a story?
That's a great point.
And I think all we can really do is we try to just be so woven into scripture that there's never a moment in the movie that we feel that we've stepped over that line.
And of course some has to be fictionalized.
We don't have everything.
Of course, you know, the villain of the movie is sort of a combination of Romans that appear in the Bible and we've had to put it into one character.
So while, yes, it's fictionalized that we never feel at any moment that we're sort of making things up that we can't say for certain would exist or had existed or really fall into line in scripture.
And I think that's the hard thing is just sort of you off every checks and balance to just say, man, I know we have to say that this happened and it's not here, but okay, look at what happened before, after, around.
We can safely say that this is a fair assessment.
That everybody really wanting to, again, be really respectful to Paul and bring something beautiful to this character and this story that it sort of gets away from, as you said, the Hollywood approach of, wow, that's not narratively interesting.
Let's just change the whole dynamic here.
You know, surely, I'm sure they, you know, disagree.
You don't notice.
So, so, what now?
I mean, are you afraid of getting typecast as like the Bible guy?
Or, I mean, do you want to go on and make a broader range of stories?
You know, I mean, from the earlier films you saw, I love thrillers, I love horror movies, I love the Twilight Zone and these things.
So, I'm always open to anything, but it's wherever God is leading.
You know, I'm going to go.
And, you know, depending on sort of the response of this, there's other stories in that vein that I find very interesting.
And then there's other stories outside of the realm that are also interesting.
So, nothing at the moment.
We're just kind of all eggs into the Paul basket for the next month while we finish the film, and then we'll see what happens.
So, it comes out March 28th?
March 28th, yep, exactly right.
March 28th, so Easter weekend and nationwide.
And so, we just hope that there's a great buzz, great response, and we'll find it encouraging and inspirational.
And bring your friends.
Yeah, yeah, very exciting, very exciting.
Now, you're going to invite me to a pre-screening so I can talk it up.
You're going to get an invite very soon, yes.
Good.
Right after I get off the interview here.
Well, I'm looking forward to it, Andrew.
Congratulations.
It's such a great.
It's a great thing, and I've seen your stuff.
You are a terrific director, so I'm sure it's going to be great.
Andrew Hyatt, the name of the film, give me the real name of the film so I get it exactly right: Paul, Apostle of Christ.
Paul, Apostle of Christ, March 28th.
All right, I'll see you soon.
Jokes About Nikki Haley00:08:28
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
It does look good.
I mean, the guy's got an eye, you know, like it's just that first moment that I saw that guy standing in the woods, and I thought, that's the way you do that.
That is how you do that.
He's really got a good eye.
All right.
Sexual folly from St. Paul to sexual follies.
So, Jimmy Kimmel, after the State of the Union, who has become a smarmy kind of, you know, political operator, you know, using emotions to sell his point of view, he's having this porn star on after the State of the Union on his show.
the porn star that President Trump has been accused of sleeping with and having an affair with.
And, you know, it's really interesting to me that whenever there's a sex scandal on the right, what the left, because the left is all for sex, right?
All the left ever sells is sex.
Any kind of sex you want.
You can be any sex you want.
You can do anything you want.
No one has any right to say anything.
You can't slut shame people.
You can't shame people about anything they do.
But suddenly it becomes an issue.
And what they always say is on the right, it's hypocrisy.
Because if it's, you know, if they're accusing Ted Cruz of something, well, he's a big Christian, so he's a hypocrite.
They don't really understand what Christianity or hypocrisy means, but that's okay.
At least they're making a point.
Point.
With Donald Trump, he's a billionaire who ran beauty contests.
We know exactly what he was doing.
We have no doubt in our mind how Donald Trump was spending his free time.
So why is this even a story?
And why is Jimmy Kimmel against sleeping with porn stars?
Does he not think one should sleep with porn stars?
What is exactly he's saying?
See, the whole thing is it's not the sex, it's the politics.
And we have been taken in by this too long.
Part of this is because Ronald Reagan helped bring the evangelicals into the conservative movement and into the Republican Party, and we have used their votes.
And conservatives and evangelicals get very excited about these sex issues.
But do they really matter very much in politics if we are talking about people doing what they do?
In other words, they're not talking about rape.
We're not talking about beating somebody up.
Michael, just to show you that this is not sexism politics, this guy, Michael Wolfe, who wrote this book, what was it called, Fire and Fury, which is just innuendo, he went on and did something so disgusting that even an occasional Democrat, he was on Bill Maher show and Maher was encouraging him.
And he said, is there anything in the book that we don't know about?
It was obviously a setup.
Obviously, Maher knew what he was going to say.
And he started dropping this innuendo.
Oh, yes, Trump is sleeping with someone right now.
And if you read my book carefully, you know who it is.
Listen to this.
Who is he?
You have to read between the lines.
What lines?
Tell us the line.
You say it's in the book.
It's toward the end of the book.
Okay, well, it's in the book.
You know, you just have to.
You'll know it.
I'll know.
Now that I've told you, when you hit that paragraph, you're going to say bingo.
All right, so you're going to say bingo.
Apparently, people who've read the book, and I'm not going to read the book, my life is too short, come out and say there's this innuendo about Nikki Haley.
Now, I make lots of jokes about Nikki Haley.
I make lots of sex jokes.
I make jokes about everything, so I feel absolutely free to do this.
But if you had not got that information, and apparently he has not got it, and some of the stuff he says, you know, he says, oh, she's spending a lot of time on Air Force One.
She says, I've been on Air Force One once, and there are plenty of other people there, and I've never, you know, been alone with the president, all this.
She just completely, completely denies it.
But even in the New York Times, Barry Weiss over there, who is the daughter of White.
Oh, I can't remember his name.
He's Weiss who writes for the Wall Street Journal.
She's kind of got a more conservative point of view.
But she goes off and she says, if he had done that to Barack Obama and the ambassador at the time, Samantha, whatever her name was, if he had gone off and done that, people would have, heads would have exploded.
I mean, people would have exploded to basically say, oh, here's a powerful woman.
I'm going to accuse her of sleeping with the boss.
She must have gotten that job by sleeping with the boss.
Should be, you know, anti-feminism 101, right?
This is an insult to every woman who has made it on her own.
You know, I make all these jokes about Nikki Haley, but there's actually jokes about me.
There are jokes about my reaction to Nikki Haley.
She's obviously doing a great job.
I continually say she's doing a great job.
It's not about sex.
It's about politics.
The hypocrisy is so strong with the Democrats because it's never about sex.
It's just about getting you outraged.
And I said this about Roy Moore, too.
I don't like Roy Moore.
I don't like what he stands for.
I don't like what he says.
I don't like what he pretends to be.
But that stuff about the sex was just about politics.
Just to show you, because it happened in real time on The View, Senator Kirsten Gilbrand, Gilibrand, was going around making a big fuss over Donald Trump and women.
Oh, he should be, basically she's saying he should be thrown out of office for the things he has done with women, none of which we actually know.
Megan McCain pointed out that Kirsten Gilibrand was a big supporter of both Hillary and Bill Clinton.
And just watch her change direction in mid-flight.
Watch this.
Let's talk about Trump first.
He has multiple allegations, dozens of allegations.
Over a dozen allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment.
He should resign because of that.
He should be held accountable.
I've not heard that from any Republicans.
And they won't hold him accountable.
Okay, there you go.
Start the trend.
He should be held accountable.
And because he's unwilling to resign, Congress should be doing hearings.
Where are the hearings on all of these allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment?
He should be held accountable.
What do you make of this, the Republican silence on these subjects?
Again, it shouldn't be a partisan issue.
We should be having a very different conversation about President Trump.
And we should be holding him accountable.
And we should be having hearings.
Senator, you have dedicated your political career to this fight, obviously.
And that's why a lot of people were really surprised that it took you 20 years to say that Bill Clinton should have resigned over the Lewinsky scandal.
So what do you say to that?
I think this moment of time we're in is very different.
I don't think we had the same conversation back then, the same lens.
We didn't hold people accountable in the same way that this moment is demanding today.
I think all of us, or many of us, did not have that same lens, myself included.
But today, we are having a very different conversation.
But people on the right were having that conversation then.
It's only about politics.
It's not about sex.
It's about politics.
It really is none of our business who people sleep with.
If it's consensual, even if they cheat on their wives, it's really none of our business.
Yeah, do I want a guy in office who has some kind of integrity, who is not, you know, who is not running around, who's not depraved?
Of course I do.
But are we going to surrender to Germany because Eisenhower cheated on his wife?
He did, you know, but that doesn't mean we're going to hand Poland back to Germany.
You know, it's not the way it works.
Think of it this way.
If you or your child, God forbid, needed a heart operation, and the greatest heart surgeon in the world was a Donald Trump smirking businessman who went around grabbing women, and the fifth best heart surgeon in the world was a devout Christian who was wise to, you know, good to his family and never cheated.
Who would you have do the heart surgery on your kid?
Me, I'd have the Trump guy, I mean, every single time.
And that's basically what we're dealing with.
The presidency, senators, congressmen, it's a job.
It is a job.
Their job is to make us free, to keep us free.
We know what their job is.
It's described in our founding documents.
It's to ensure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Donald Trump is doing that.
You know, he has done a really good job of that in his first year.
All of this sex stuff, it is just about politics.
They do not care.
And if they don't care, I don't see why we should either.
All I care about is being free.
All right.
State of the Union is coming up this afternoon.
The mailbag is coming up tomorrow, so get your questions in today at the mailbag thing on the at the mailbag thing at the Clavin podcast thing and the podcast thing and the daily wire thing.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I will see you later this afternoon.
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
State of the Union00:00:19
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.