Andrew Clavin dissects Trump’s gun control stance, mocking media exploitation of Florida shootings while blaming systemic failure over firearms access. He critiques Trump’s Fifth Avenue boast and bipartisan Senate meeting, questioning whether his proposals—like suspending due process for gun confiscations—reflect policy or political strategy, especially amid mixed reactions from commentators. Clavin contrasts Trump’s pragmatism with ideological purity, asking if supporters will abandon him over such shifts, while framing Hope Hicks’ "white lies" as standard political behavior. The episode pivots to Andrew Jackson’s rise, comparing his outsider success—from the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814) to New Orleans (1815)—to Trump’s trajectory, defending Jackson’s populist legacy against critics like Dinesh D’Souza and linking both figures’ defiance of elite expectations. Ultimately, it suggests historical parallels reveal how leadership transcends conventional narratives, urging listeners to weigh principles over loyalty. [Automatically generated summary]
All right, every day I come in here and I give you my opinion about stuff and I tell you how I see things, but today I really want to get your opinion and I will tell you why and explain it.
You don't have to be a subscriber this time.
I will give you an email address you can write to or you can leave comments on Facebook if you're watching live, Facebook or YouTube.
Stay tuned.
I have a question I want to ask you.
Tricker warning, I'm Andrew Clavin and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky donkey.
Life is tickety boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky donkey.
Ship shaped tipsy topsy, roll up into zippity zing.
It's a wonderful day.
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It makes me want to sing.
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Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, here we are already on the very brink and edge of the Clavenless weekend, standing at the precipice, looking down into almost eternal darkness, it looks like.
But so stay tuned because this is your last chance.
Hold on with grip with your fingers to keep from falling into the Clavenless weekend.
Brian Kilmead is here today.
We taped an interview with him, but it was, I have to tell you a funny thing.
He's written this book, this really entertaining book, Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans.
It's about the Battle of New Orleans.
I have to tell you, though, it's really funny.
You know, Brian is the host of Fox and Friends.
Obviously, you probably know him.
And, you know, he's got a co-writer, Don Yeager.
And when you're dealing with a TV guy who's got a co-writer, you don't know if he actually knows what's in the book.
So I brought him on.
And I'm asking, I'm a little nervous because I know a lot about Andrew Jackson and I'm really interested in him.
He's a fascinating character as we talk about.
And so I asked him real questions about this and I'm terrified he's going to look at me like, you know, yeah, somebody else wrote this book.
But turns out Brian is an actual historian, really knew his stuff and have had really passionate feelings about it.
It's a terrific interview.
So stay tuned for that.
We will stay on Facebook and YouTube.
We'll let you watch the whole thing.
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't subscribe.
In fact, it should make you feel so guilty about not subscribing that weeping, you come to thedailywire.com with your lousy 10 bucks and give us 10 bucks to subscribe for a month or 100 bucks.
You can subscribe for the entire year and get the leftist tears mug, which every time you mention Andrew Jackson, the leftist tears mug automatic mug.
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A lot better than paying off those credit cards.
People really don't read the small print on the credit card.
It really is like, you know, you expect the goons to show up at your house.
Collect that.
Do Lightstream.
You will avoid all of that.
All right.
It's going to take me a while.
Due Process Debate00:15:58
I'm going to wind up to this question.
I have a question I want to ask you.
If you're watching on Facebook, you can just put your comments right there.
If you're on YouTube, you can put your comments there.
If you're listening later on, instead of sending, I don't want you to have to be a subscriber.
I want you to be able to answer this no matter who you are.
Write to A-Clavin at dailywire.com.
How do you spell Clavin?
K-A-N- There's no E's.
There are no E's in Clavin.
If you put E's in Clavin, I won't see it because there are no E's.
There even is no E's in Clavin.
A-K-L-A-V-A-N at dailywire.com.
Now here's the thing, this really is bothering me, I gotta be honest.
And instead of just telling you, you know, yesterday I kind of told you what I think about all this, but instead of just telling you, I want to hear what you think, because I really wonder about this.
And the only time I ever get to hear from you is in the mailbag and you're asking me questions, but I just want an answer on this.
It has really disturbed me what's happened with this gun debate.
I thought that CNN was absolutely despicable and then ABC picked it up and the networks picked it up and basically the whole press used these traumatized children and their silly young person's left-wing ideas.
You know, I think it was Winston Churchill who said, if you're not a liberal when you're young, you have no heart.
And if you're still a liberal when you're older, you have no brain.
So these kids are liberal kids.
They're crying.
They're upset.
Some of them are very media savvy, like that kid hog.
You know, it's kind of unappealing to me.
The polls show, the polls show that this isn't working.
That most people think, what is to me, the obvious case, that the shooting in Florida was a failure of government to do its job.
Doesn't matter.
Now Dick's and Walmart, these two big sporting goods stores, they sell guns.
They say, well, we're not going to sell automatic weapons and we're not going to sell AR-15s or we're not going to sell them to people who are 18.
They're making their own rules about this.
Everybody has been scared by this.
And I wonder with businesses all the time why they do this.
And I think one answer is because they're looking for younger people and younger people because they're not as educated as older people.
They haven't lived.
They haven't learned stuff.
They tend to be more liberal.
And then as you learn stuff, you say, oh, I get it.
There's a reason people have been thinking this stuff since Aristotle.
There's a reason not to change things that are working.
But I'm just really disappointed.
And yesterday, Donald Trump had this meeting with a bipartisan collection of senators.
And I'm really impressed that Trump does this.
Let me say this out front.
He's talked about the art of the deal.
He leaves the camera on.
He's very good at moderating these meetings.
He talks to people.
He brings people out.
But he says things in these meetings that sometimes make the hair on my arm stand up.
It would stand up on my head, but there's only so much I can do.
But he says these things, like in the immigration meeting, he said, you make the law and I'll sign it.
I'll take the heat.
And I thought, well, wait a minute, you know, really?
You campaigned?
You promised us they're going to build a wall.
These people are heroin addicts.
They're drug dealers.
You know, I'm going to keep everything out.
And then you're saying, oh, whatever you guys come up with, I'm going to sign it.
I thought, not so much.
Now, later, he backtracked.
And look, I don't overreact to anything Trump says because I'm never sure what he means.
And he is a deal maker.
And for instance, he then offered, it was almost 2 million people amnesty, but he set terms that maybe he knew the Democrats wouldn't go for.
So now he's in the political position where he can say, hey, I offered you 2 million.
That was more than Obama offered.
And you didn't show up, your fault.
You know, so maybe it's all politics.
But yesterday he held this meeting on guns.
And I was reminded of something he said about guns during the campaign when he talked about his voters' loyalty.
And this is what I'm trying to get at.
This is cut number one.
You'll all remember this.
And you know what else they say about my people?
The polls.
They say, I have the most loyal people.
Did you ever see that?
Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?
It's like incredible.
Okay, so a lot of people said he could shoot people.
That was what he said about guns then.
So now he's standing around and listening and he keeps the camera on.
Again, like I said, he's practicing the art of the deal.
And John Nolte said on Twitter the other day, I have a 72-hour rule before I react to anything he says, because sometimes what he says doesn't matter.
But one of the three things he did at this meeting.
One, he kept picking on the Republicans for being in league with the NRA.
This is the guy who got, I think, the earliest endorsement from the NRA of any candidate ever.
And he kept slapping the Republicans around about being in league with the NRA.
Here's just a portion of this, cut number two.
The reason I had lunch with the NRA on Sunday, I called him, I said, you got to come over.
I said, fellas, we got to do something.
And they do have great power.
I agree with that.
They have great power over you people.
They have less power over me.
I don't need it.
What do I need?
But I tell you, they are well-meaning.
And I said to him, very nice, I said, fellas, we got to do something.
We can't keep restricting and we can't keep, we have to do what's right.
So first of all, this whole idea that we have to do something, I'm not convinced.
The second, you know, again, the argument should be, the argument is not whether you can make the world safer.
The argument is not whether it's a nice thing to do.
The argument is whether you want to be a free people who can defend themselves in the case of tyranny.
That's why we have guns.
We have guns so we can defend ourselves.
All the celebrities who are anti-gun are surrounded by guns.
We can't afford their bodyguards.
We just want the guns so we can protect ourselves, not just protect ourselves from the bad guys, but protect ourselves from the people who would come and, for instance, take our guns in spite of the Constitution.
Ignore the right.
So when I hear him saying we have to do something, I think, why?
Why do we have to do something?
You know, gun violence is down.
The homicide rate is down.
Schools are safer than they were in the 1990s.
This is all ginned up by the press.
It's all emotional nonsense.
Why do we have to do something?
Okay.
So then this is the thing that set Twitter absolutely ablaze, was they started talking about guns for the mentally ill.
And of course, mentally ill people should not have guns.
There should be background checks.
There should be ways of testing.
There's been an idea floated.
I think David French did it over at National Review, where he talked about a way that, you know, if your brother is nuts, you can call up and say this guy should not have a gun and you can confiscate guns.
So Trump did this, and maybe it's just big mouth, but he said this thing about due process.
This is cut number four.
Or might take the firearms first and then go to court, because that's another system.
Because a lot of times by the time you go to court, it takes so long to go to court to get the due process procedures.
I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man's case that just took place in Florida.
He had a lot of fires.
They saw everything.
To go to court would have taken a long time.
you could do exactly what you're saying, but take the guns first, go through due process, second.
Now, of course, there's no such thing as going through due process, second, of course.
That's not the way the law works.
But let's give it a little bit, because that was taken out and put on Twitter and everybody went nuts.
But let him explain it a little bit more.
This is him talking about taking guns from the mentally ill.
It's Cup 3.
This is a piece of learning.
But you have to do something about the mentally ill not being able to buy a gun.
I mean, they have so many checks and balances that you could be mentally ill and it takes you six months before you can prohibit him.
So we have to do something very decisive.
Number one, you can take the guns away immediately from people that you can adjudge easily are mentally ill, like this guy.
You know, the police saw that he was a problem.
They didn't take any guns away.
Now, that could have been policing.
I think they should have taken him away anyway.
Now, a lot of different reactions to this, a lot of people screaming.
Tom McGuire, a blogger, said, in my humble opinion, Trump misunderstood or misstated gun violence restraining orders.
The procedure would be a court order, confiscation, and then a hearing to end or extend the order.
Trump conflated the hearing with due process.
That's his opinion.
That's his interpretation of it.
And just remember, the thing about due process is like when they said, you know, we just want to take guns away from people on the no-fly list.
They can put anybody on the no-fly list.
That's some bureaucrat just says, yeah, you're a terrorist.
Plenty of innocent people have been put on the no-fly list.
That doesn't mean they lose their constitutional rights.
Mentally ill, anybody can say you're mentally ill.
Remember Miracle on 34th Street where they tried to prove that Santa Claus was mentally ill?
If they can take Santa Claus's guns away, they can take your guns away.
But no, anybody, in all seriousness, anybody can say that you're mentally ill and then you shouldn't lose your due process rights.
Ben Sas from Nebraska is never a big Trump fan.
He said, strong leaders don't automatically agree with the last thing that was said to them.
We have the Second Amendment and due process of law for a reason.
We're not ditching any constitutional protection simply because the last person the president talked to today doesn't like them.
And sometimes it does seem like that.
Tom Tyllis, a Republican from North Carolina, said, I don't think that he was saying that there's a place where you suspend the Constitution and suspend due process.
I don't just believe that.
I know you heard the words.
I just don't believe in my heart of hearts that that's exactly what he meant.
Always a problem with Trump.
When Trump is talking off the cuff, he says stuff you think like, I don't know.
The thing that kind of went up my spine was when he was sitting with Diane Feinstein.
Diane Feinstein wants to ban, basically, she just wants to get her hooks in the Second Amendment and destroy it.
That's really what she wants to do.
Now, she's in trouble.
The Democrat Party isn't endorsing her for another run.
They're saying she's not far left enough, which is amazing.
But she wants to ban, especially AR-15s.
That's her foothold.
That's the foot in the door of the Second Amendment.
She wants to get in.
And they're talking about a bill that's been knocking around for five years for background checks.
And it has both Democrat and Republican support.
And he's talking about tacking things on to this bill.
And he's going back and forth with this Democrat senator.
And Diane Feinstein is sitting next to him when he says, let's talk about what she wants as well.
Just doing something on this background check issue and using that as a base.
And then I would like to add some of these other things we've talked about.
I think would make a major difference.
If you could add that to this bill, that would be great, Diane.
If you could add what you have also, and I think you can, into the bill.
Yeah, Joe, are you ready?
Can you do that?
Joe, can you do that?
Pat, can you add some of the things you're not going to agree with?
If you help.
Well, no, I'll help, but can you add what Amy and what Diane have?
Can we add them in?
And I know you can add what John.
I have another.
Did you see Feinstein's reaction?
I have never seen that kind of glee.
We got a close-up of it.
Look at this.
I feel pretty.
Oh, so pretty.
I feel pretty and witty and gay.
I mean, he certainly made one of the leftist senators happy, and you could see the looks of discomfort on the Republicans' faces.
Now, look, Trump ran as a different kind of guy, and I respect that.
I really do.
I have even, you know that I have troubles with his lack of civility, but I have even set those aside because I feel that his lack of civility serves to shatter political correctness, which I think is a mental prison.
Again, you know, the one thing you have never heard me do, you've never heard me do the balls and strikes thing.
You know, you've never heard me do the good Trump, bad Trump, because I don't believe politics works like that.
I believe politics is a compromise game.
I believe you lose some, you win some.
I want to see the ball moving toward the freedom goal line all the time.
If it moves one yard when I wanted it to move 10, that's too bad, but I'll take the one yard.
If it moves five yards down and three yards back, I get it.
That's politics.
It's not all about everything Donald Trump says at every minute.
It's not all about everything he gets at every minute.
My question to you is this.
I read the stuff you write on Facebook and sometimes on YouTube as well.
I hear how passionate you are about Donald Trump.
I hear you saying, God bless our president.
I hear every time I criticize him that you come after me and you say, oh, I shouldn't have said that.
I hear it.
Is he right?
Is there a point?
Is there no point when he said he would shoot somebody in Fifth Avenue and you would still be loyal to him?
Is that true?
I mean, is there a point where it would be enough?
It's just a speculative question.
I'm not saying he's coming after your guns.
I am not saying that.
I know that there's a long, long road between Trump's lip and the real world.
I get it.
I do.
But I want to know what he would have to do to lose your loyalty if you're a Trump supporter.
Or if you hate the guy, what would it take for you to bring you around?
Because I think his accomplishments have been amazing.
His conservative accomplishments in the first year have been amazing.
And that's why I don't ball and strike him, because I think he's doing a good job.
But when he says stuff like this, I think, really, really, no due process to take away your guns?
Really, you're going to ban AR-15s?
Dianne Feinstein is dancing around the room.
Really?
And the NRA supported you and now you're going to browbeat, and he really did.
He did it throughout that meeting.
You're going to browbeat Republicans for being servants of the NRA, which isn't true.
I mean, obviously, the NRA gives money to people who support their cause, but people don't support their cause to get the money.
I mean, they're standing on their principle, and the NRA says good.
I mean, obviously, maybe there's some people who are bought off who sell their principle, but I don't think that that's the norm.
So what is he talking about?
And when he falls into this, I mean, why are we even having this discussion when the problem is really government malfeasance?
I just want to know, did this bother you as it did bother me?
And is there a point?
Is there a point where you would just say, you know what, we elected you, pal.
We can unelect you as well.
So leave your comments on Facebook if you're watching live or on YouTube.
Or if you're not, write to me, aclavin at dailywire.com.
The question is, what would it take for you to stop being loyal to Donald Trump?
Is there anything that he could do, especially on this issue of guns, that would make you say, you know what, you have lost your way?
A. Clavin, a-k-l-a-v-a-n at dailywire.com.
Because I keep saying, I keep saying the same thing.
I keep saying, follow the principle, not the man, because men, you know, are sinful and they will lead you astray.
Put not your faith in princes.
I keep saying the same thing, but maybe you're thinking, eh, you know, he's done pretty well.
I do put my faith in him.
Maybe that's the way you feel.
I just want to know.
I mean, I really do.
And he lost his, Hope Hicks said she was resigning.
Kind of an interesting story because nobody knows.
She's been saying she wanted to resign.
People keep saying that she's been telling him this for weeks.
But she apparently is one of his closest advisors along with his family.
And he's going to get isolated.
You know, people can't stay in this heightened world of the White House for too long.
And they say she was questioned.
You know, I have to just comment on this just as a little bit of a tangent.
She was questioned for nine hours by the House Intelligence Committee on this Russia probe.
And she said she answered any questions that took place during the campaign, which was when Russia collusion could have taken place.
But when she got into the White House, she didn't claim executive privilege, but she said, I'm not answering those questions.
I'm a confidant of the president, and he's got to be able to have confidential advisors without my coming in here and testifying.
So she didn't do it.
And of course, Adam Schiff immediately read that in the worst possible way in his McCarthyite way.
However, they did get this one admission out of her where they got her in one of those traps lawyers get you into and they said, Have you ever been asked to lie for the president?
And she said, I've told some white lies.
And this made the headline in the daily in the New York Times, a former newspaper.
But is there a White House communications director who has not told white lies for the president?
So, in other words, she was not good enough at this game of being questioned to maneuver out of the hole they got her in.
They got her in a corner and she had to say, in order not to perjure herself, she had to say, Yeah, I've told white lies.
White Lies in War00:16:11
Do people even know what a white lie is?
A white lie is a harmless lie.
White lie is like your wife comes to you and she's just spent 50 bucks on a hat and she can't get the money back and she says, Does this look all right?
And you say, Yeah, you know, that's a white lie.
That's no, seriously, that's what a white lie is.
A white lie is not, you know, we did not collude with the Russians.
That's not a white lie.
A white lie is, yeah, Donald Trump, you know, read that memo, but he maybe he didn't.
He just told him about it.
That's what a white lie is.
So every single communications director ever on earth, anyone who's ever been in politics, has told white lies to the press.
So that was like, to me, a non-headline, but they got her.
You know, they just nailed her on it.
Anyway, let me know how you feel about this.
When I say don't follow people, follow principles.
Do you think to yourself, no, I will follow Donald Trump wherever he goes?
I want more Trump.
You know, they had that CPAC meeting.
Something like 75% of the people said they love Trump and that's the base and they're going to go with Trump.
Is there a point?
I mean, do you trust him?
Is there a point where he just goes too far, offers too many illegal immigrants amnesty, wants your guns?
Something, is there something he could say that would turn you against him?
Let me know.
Let me know your thoughts about it.
Because the funny thing is, you know, I listen to people on TV and on talk shows and on podcasts, and they all sound very definitive.
But when I go out and talk to people, you know, as I'm traveling around, they have very nuanced, intelligent views.
So I'd like to hear what you think.
All right, we're going to bring this interview with Brian Kilmead on.
And his book is called Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans.
And I was joking with him.
This is about the Battle of New Orleans and what Andrew Jackson accomplished.
It really was an amazing, amazing battle.
And, you know, I joked with him in the course of this interview that people are so ill-educated now that I wouldn't even want to ask them when the War of 1812 took place.
And when I was a kid, this song about the Battle of New Orleans was-I mean, I was a tiny little kid, but it was number one on the box office charts.
And teenagers in the 50s and 60s, when I was like, I wasn't a teen yet, but I was a little kid, loved this song.
I mean, this is how imbued we were with American history.
This is how much American history surrounded.
Here's just a quick little cut of this song, The Battle of New Orleans.
In 1814, we took a little trip along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississippi.
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans, and we caught the bloody British in our town in New Orleans.
We fired our guns and the British kept for coming.
There wasn't as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to run it.
So you couldn't make that song a hit today, but Brian Kilmead, the host, of course, of Fox and Friends, he's also the author of George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates.
This book, as I say, Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans, he talks about it really well.
It's really interesting.
So find out what the miracle of New Orleans was in this interview with Brian Kilmead.
Brian, thank you so much for coming on.
I appreciate it.
I really enjoyed the book.
And it comes with a blurb from Brad Thor, who says it's a stay-up all-night, like a stay-up-all-night thriller.
And if anybody knows about stay-up-all night thrillers, it's Brad.
Right.
Let's start with this.
Why Andrew Jackson?
What drew you to Andrew Jackson?
Well, I mean, the first thing I thought, I did wrote two books about sports and what sport, how sports helped you in life.
The games do count.
It's how you play the game.
And I thought, you know, I wanted to be able to use that, be able to speak to kids, groups, and teams about, you know, you don't have to be a superstar.
You know, your payment, your success could be delayed.
And after doing that, and if you're putting a few years, seeing how Fox took shape of a solid news network, and I originally came here doing sports, say, all right, I'm done with books.
But at the same time, my passion was always history.
And I stumbled onto George Washington Inspiring.
And for 20 years, I studied it, talked to people in my own backyard, could not believe it actually existed.
It's actually more complicated than I could have imagined.
And then I finally just said, you know what, I'm going to, I saw Bill O'Reilly's success with his books.
I'm so passionate about it.
I go, I'll put it out.
Even if five people read it, something I wanted to accomplish.
And I wanted to bring something new to the story.
And there's still so much left to uncover.
So that went well.
And they say, listen, you got to go back and do this if you're passionate about it.
So I came to Thomas Jefferson Tripoli Pirates.
So the next, and that went well because it was our first war on terror against Islamic extremists.
And Jefferson did so much that no one really focuses on that.
So I said, let me grab something no one's really looking at.
Led me to the War of 1812.
And I thought there's got to be something there.
Originally said, Battle of Baltimore, most intriguing.
The war turned around on it.
We were debating the national anthem at the time, whether it was any good.
And then I say, I was urged, check out Battle of New Orleans.
And when I looked at Battle of New Orleans, who Andrew Jackson was to lead us to that success, how unthinkable and unexpected the victory was and thorough.
And then being that you and I get to meet a lot of people in the military, they say at war colleges, they still teach it.
I said, I got to do this story.
And that's what really led me to it.
That's very cool.
I mean, you know, the Jefferson book had a relevance today to today because of the war on terror.
When I opened this book, I don't know whether how this got in there, but this billion-dollar Donald Trump for president fell out of the book.
This is actually true.
Is that true?
It's absolutely true.
It's not mine.
I don't know where it came from.
But, you know, I was thinking, I'm pretty fascinated by Andrew Jackson, too.
And he's a very controversial figure with good reason.
But one of the reasons he was controversial is because the founding generation kind of looked at him and thought, this guy's a nobody.
He's a boar.
He's absolutely no, comes from nothing.
He has no heritage.
Were you thinking at all of Trump and the reaction of intellectuals to him when you picked him?
Yeah, Andrew, great point about Jefferson, too.
Not only were we in the war on terror, but we got into this Olibya situation while I was studying the Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates.
And you know, the decisive battle is at Derna, right outside Benghazi and right near Tripoli.
That was what Libby was called Tripoli back then.
And then here I start doing this book and Donald Trump was hosting The Apprentice.
So I had no idea about the comparisons.
Oh, wow.
But then when you look into his background and you see a 14-year-old orphan already volunteered to fight in the war that hated the British, and you see the founding fathers were pretty much all knew each other in Philadelphia, New York, and Virginia.
And this outside of this hick that should have been a vagrant or a criminal ends up being a lawyer, a judge, a congressman, a senator, a militia general, and a two-term president.
I go, wait a second, isn't that the American success story?
We believe we're into that naive notion that we can achieve anything we want, no guarantees, but the opportunity to be successful.
And then when you see the fact that he was so disdained, John Quincy Adams didn't even stay in the White House for the handoff, nor did he show up at the inaugural.
No one also thought Andrew Jackson would win.
No one thought Thomas and Donald Trump would win.
When Donald Trump was pushed back by his own party, he brought his case to the people.
Guess who did that?
Andrew Jackson was the first to go to the masses and ignore Virginia.
And in the beginning, the founding fathers want no part of him, but he had the confidence to do his own thing.
I think it's safe to say Donald Trump has the confidence to do his own thing.
I guess that's a pretty uncontroversial statement, probably.
Yes, thank you.
Now, before the War of 1812 and the Battle of New Orleans, there was an incredibly important battle at Horseshoe Bend.
Is that what it was called?
Can you tell a little bit about that just to set up who this guy was?
Because as you say, he came out of nowhere, but Horseshoe Bend was a big deal.
Well, a couple of things.
Number one, it was not a surprise that George Washington was picked to lead us in the Revolutionary War because he was the guy who had the military background, whose brother served in the military, who was a colonel fighting in the French-Indian War, made his mistakes.
And people could see the template and they thought, well, if we got to win, we got to go with Washington.
Sure.
Nobody thought that this backwoods lawyer, this self-styled backwoodsman with no political connections, would ever be a significant successful general.
When all the other generals seemed to fail and be ill-equipped, it was Andrew Jackson who said, look at me.
He was this leader that was feared yet revered.
They feared letting him down.
He would stand up to the toughest person, fight on the front lines, never felt he would ever get touched, much like Grant, much like Washington.
They would be fearless because they just thought their destiny was great, or if they were going to die, this is where they wanted to do it.
So to prove himself, one of the things he did is fight at Horseshoe, what they call his Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
And by the way, he did it with a bullet in him.
He was in a duel because he never took a backward step his entire life, was a second, stepped in and took a bullet.
And they wanted to take his arm off.
He battled through it, ends up leading his unit, 1400-man unit, to take on these Native Americans who were fueled, inspired, and radicalized by the British to fight us.
And he was getting revenge really after they massacred a bunch of American settlers who didn't have guns or weapons.
And what they did to butcher them were out of the page that we see of ISIS today.
So I don't want to go into details, but it's brutal that I even left out.
So when this battle went on, it was Jackson's men who took the battle to the premier fighting force, the premier fighting force among the American Indians and took them out.
And when people are critical of president, now the soon-to-be president Andrew Jackson, and they say, well, it's the way he treated Native Americans.
I don't use this as an example.
This was a fight.
And this was an order given.
And when you fight and you're with Jackson, the goal is to win.
Yeah, and it changed.
It virtually ended the Indian Wars.
I mean, it was really a turning point in American history.
So now, nowadays, the way education is, I would be afraid to ask a student when the War of 1812 was.
I think it would be good if you could explain what the War of 1812 was, what was at issue.
Well, listen, I wouldn't even blame students from our generation, previous generations, because we didn't learn much about it.
But I had a chance to take a tour through the White House, and they showed me the burn marks that still exist intentionally with what was left of the White House after the British burned it to the ground.
So you walk up right by the bowling alley and you see these burn marks and I got some pictures and I think they're still on my website on BrianKilme.com.
You see the burn marks and it's a reminder how fragile, even though we feel strong, how fragile our country is and was.
So picture this, simple.
We win the Revolutionary War.
The British never accept it.
They don't adhere to anything in the almost anything to the Treaty of Paris.
They want us to fail.
And guess what?
So does everybody else.
Because if we are successful and this election thing takes root, if you're in the king business, it's not really good.
They don't run effective campaigns for renewal.
So they didn't want us to be successful.
They didn't want us to be free.
And other colonies didn't, he wanted their other colonies to get the same idea.
So they harassed us at sea.
They blocked our shipping lanes when possible.
And they would also take our guys, take our guys off their ships and say, we need you to fight and come up with some stupid excuse.
They called it impressment that you really are British.
So they're fighting the French.
They're raning out of people.
So they're impressing our people, taking them off our boats, whether they were civilians or military vessels.
Meanwhile, they never left the Midwest, kept harassing us through Native Americans, sometimes directly with them in the Midwest and down south.
And when the so-called Warhawks got elected, there was a quick vote.
And they said to Madison, listen, Madison, Madison, we have to fight the British.
The world thinks we're a bunch of Patsies.
We have to stand up and take them on.
Now, the problem was, is that they're the number one military in the world, economic as well as defense.
And we're not.
We don't have a standing army, not much of a navy.
So when the Warhawks vote, they actually vote for war, 1913 in the Senate, and I believe 79 to 49 in the House.
We got a war.
And we think it's going to end quick.
We're going to show we're going to fight.
It's going to be over.
British go, no, we're taking you on.
And not only did they take us on, they basically destroyed us.
The whole East Coast gets essentially terrorized.
It's left almost undefensed because for some reason, Madison and Armstrong, the defense secretary, later would be Monroe, thought it would be a good idea to take what we had of an army and fight them in Canada.
Good, fantastic.
So not only are we fighting in the wrong country, we're actually losing in the wrong country and we're not defensed here.
And it was not until Jackson and a few others got involved where things turned around.
And the decisive thing was the one that was the most ominous.
And that was when the British did something that in war etiquette they shouldn't have done.
And that's you burn the nation's capital.
They didn't burn London.
They didn't burn Paris.
But really, you burn Washington.
They go in there.
They overrun a militia relatively easily and they burn the whole place to the ground.
In fact, if it wasn't for this tornado, still unexplainable, that comes out and blows the British out of the city and puts out most of the fire, we would have had absolutely nothing left.
So after that, a lot of those people on the sidelines said, all right, we're in.
This is a fight for our nation.
And the first time we showed some backbone and a way to win was the Battle of Baltimore, when we went and shot the guy that actually led the invasion, General Ross, Admiral Ross, excuse me, he led the invasion into Washington.
He'd be the first one we killed, coincidentally.
And then the British don't do anything without a leader.
So they were helpless on the ground and in the waters, the bombs burst in real air.
Francis Scott Key recorded it all.
The flag was still there.
Fort McHenry stood the tide.
The British left.
The beginning of the turning tide in the war.
Amazing.
So that was it.
And so and it all culminates.
How did it all wind up in New Orleans?
Very interesting.
And it's a great question.
When we were learned in school, and it's not necessarily wrong, is that the Treaty of Ghent was signed.
The war was ended.
We didn't have to fight the battle.
It was a great win.
It was amazing.
It was a great message to send to the rest of the world.
We didn't have to fight it.
Well, it's not true.
And thanks to Ron Drez, a decorated marine and historian, he found paperwork that revealed the British planet on holding it, stopping America from growing past the Mississippi, and flipping the Louisiana purchase because they felt as though Napoleon had no right to sell it to us because he basically got it, took it and flipped it, took the cash to fight the British.
Get it?
So they were going to do all that.
Jefferson knew it.
He was in retirement, obviously, watching closely.
Madison knew it.
And Jackson knew it.
And Jackson, 25 years later, came back and they said, great win, General.
But even after he was president, but you know, you didn't have to win.
He goes, oh, yeah.
Packenham and his Wellington's Invincibles, that was the nickname of the army they wiped out, would have held and stopped us from growing past the Mississippi almost immediately.
They would have left us prisoners in our own country because remember, the Spanish occupied Florida and Jackson took care of that in 1818.
And it really was, I mean, you call the book Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans.
It really was a come-from-behind win, to use the sports analogy.
It really was an amazing victory.
Outnumbered two to one with an experienced infantry that just destroyed Napoleon a year before, led by Wellington's Invincibles, but not Wellington.
He sent his brother-in-law, who was a very respected general Packenham, who was decorated.
And they said, he said, I don't want to go.
And he said, well, if you go, I'll give you New Orleans, the British.
They said, well, that sounds great.
I'll go there right before Christmas.
We'll party.
Many of the officers brought their wives.
However, they never met a guy like Jackson.
And Jackson won in there, had his immediate draft.
People volunteered.
Next thing you know, he went from 1,400 to 5,000.
And you'll love this, Andrew, is that this is a uniquely American army.
Choctaw Indians, Cherokee Indians, pirates, free men of color, all fought, paid the same, fed the same, depended on the same, along with his 1,400-men militia, which included Tennessee riflemen and Kentucky sharpshooters.
And together, they were able to blow away the British in under 45 minutes because the British moved straight ahead.
We dug in behind these berms.
We dug a canal within three weeks, and they had to cross the canal and scale the berm, and they never got close.
It's an amazing story.
I'm running out of time.
Andrew Jackson's Influence00:02:17
I just, if I can ask one last question.
You know, this was obviously what vaulted Andrew Jackson into the presidential material.
When you look back, you know, Dinesh D'Souza has been very hard on Andrew Jackson.
I felt I love Dinesh, but I felt he was unfair to him.
When you look back on Jackson's presidency, I know it's a mixed bag, but how do you feel about his legacy?
Not only that, not only his eight years, I found out with Martin Van Buren, he had his protege next.
John Tyler took over.
He would actually be a president that Jackson heavily influenced.
He actually influenced James Polk.
This guy had more influence over maybe 30 years than anybody.
He was definitive.
He struck up.
He stuck up for the little guy.
He feared a national bank, as you know.
He took on his enemy.
He cajoled for legislation.
He threatened.
He pushed.
And he respected the process, loved the country.
His method was something very similar to what Trump is trying to do, what FDR did.
And it was extremely effective for an agenda I think that is uniquely pro-American.
Even though he was the founder of the Democratic Party, I don't think he was necessarily a Democrat that we know today, which, by the way, the Democrats are walking away from him.
I'll add this.
I focused on an area because when I started studying the biographies on his life, I thought they were so good and so thorough.
I knew for sure I couldn't match it.
So I just wanted to focus on this one area.
But I think one thing that stands out is that Truman, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln all had one thing in common.
They loved and studied Jackson.
Reagan insisted on having a picture taken with him before the World War II.
FDR, he insisted on not with taking his braces, unlocking them, and walking up the Hermitage Steps, which was his home.
Truman kept a figurine on his desk.
And Reagan said, My first picture as president, I went in front of the statue of the White House.
And I ask you, I am not as smart as any of those men, nor will I be as accomplished, but they were tremendous people and impacts on history.
They're not stupid people.
What do they know that maybe the historians of today who know everything don't know?
I'm going to go with those guys.
Diverse school of thought, different parties, understood what the presidency was and were awe of Jackson.
That's great.
Imagination's Role in Love00:10:09
Brian Kilmeid writing with Don Yeager, Andrew Jackson, The Miracle of New Orleans.
Brian, thanks a lot for coming on.
I appreciate it.
And oh, you wanted to mention your signing.
You're doing some signings.
Yeah, I know you guys are going to be posted for a while, but if you have a chance to come out to North Vale, New Jersey, Books and Greetings on March 1st, Thursday at 7, I'll be at 6:30.
I'll be there.
And on Friday, heading out to Atlanta to visit my WSB listeners on March 2nd.
That'll be 7 o'clock in Marietta, Georgia, at the Barnes ⁇ Noble there.
And on the 8th, I'll be in Ohio at Beaver Creek, Ohio, at Books and Company, visiting my WHIO listeners.
So it's been fun.
And thanks so much for the great questions and for reading the book, Andrew.
It's a real pleasure.
I'll talk to you again.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Really entertaining interview, I thought, just in a great way to learn about Andrew Jackson if you don't know anything about him, or even if you do and want to know more.
Stuff I like.
Stuff I like, I love it.
See, we only have, they only have the highest production values here, folks.
Now you've killed me.
I can't get through this.
I was complaining that we didn't have music for stuff I like, and I was singing, so they put it on there, and I think it works perfectly.
I think stuff I like, you work so hard.
I love it.
All right.
I want to talk about a film that has been remade about four or five times in different ways.
And it was based on a play called Parfumerie, a Hungarian play.
And the movie, the first movie version, is called Shop Around the Corner, 1940, Ernest Lubich, one of the great directors, and had Margaret Sullivan and James Stewart in it.
And the premise is they're in a little shop in Hungary, Budapest.
And Stewart and Margaret Sullivan are working there and they don't like each other, but they have pen pals whom they're falling in love with.
And of course, the pen pals are each other.
You know, they're actually falling in love with each other without knowing it while they don't like each other.
And here's just a little exchange where Margaret Sullivan tries to make up to James Stewart, tries to be nice to him, and she's talking about me too, how she appreciates the fact that he doesn't put his hands on her.
No matter what anybody else says against you, I think you're a gentleman.
Well, I try to be.
And oh, Mr. Crollick, you have no idea what that means to a working girl.
What a girl goes through in some shops.
Now, take for instance when I was with Feldish Brothers and Sons.
Well, the sons were all right, but the brothers, Mr. Crollick.
And that's why I like it here so much.
When you say, Miss Novak, let's go into the stockroom and put some bags on the shelf.
Well, you really want to put some bags on the shelf.
And that's my idea of a gentleman.
Well, I just don't believe in mixing bags of pleasure.
It's a very funny movie and a very sweet movie and has a wonderful atmosphere of Christmas in Budapest with the snow.
And it's really, really a nice Christmas movie.
It was made into a musical called She Loves Me with lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, who I believe went on to write Fiddler on the Roof and Jerry Bach.
And here's just a brief clip of this.
I've always had a sort of affection for my father just loved this musical.
I don't think it's one of the greats ever, but it does have the same kind of sweet atmosphere.
And here's the moment where this guy realizes who he has been writing to these emails, who has been writing these letters to who his pen palette is, and he reacts.
She loves me.
And to my amazement, I love it, knowing that she loves me.
She loves me.
True she doesn't show it.
How could she when she doesn't know it?
Yesterday she loathed me.
Now today she likes me.
And tomorrow, tomorrow.
I love her.
Isn't that a wonder?
I wonder why I didn't want her.
I want her.
That's the thing that matters.
And matters.
I'm improving daily.
Now, the other remake, musical remake, was called In the Good Old Summertime with Judy Garland and Van Johnson.
And the only thing I want to mention about this, I do have something to say about this film because it really interests me, about the story.
It really interests me.
In the good old summertime, the only thing about this is that a song that was cut out, there was a song called Last Night When We Were Young, which was written by two of the great American songwriters, Harold Arlen and Yip Harbourg.
And this was Judy Garland's favorite song.
And it was in another movie called Metropolitan.
It was cut out of that.
And it was put into this movie in the Good Old Summertime.
And it was cut out of this again.
But it is preserved.
I'll just play a little bit of it, but you can get it on YouTube.
And her voice is so great.
And you can tell she loves the song.
It's a deep dive into the feeling of the song.
Just listen to a little minute of it.
Last night, when we were young, love was a star, a song sung.
Life was so new, so real, so rough.
It's just a beautiful, beautiful piece of music and beautiful lyric.
And she's just, it's worth watching.
Turning on, they cut it out of the movie, but she just loves the song and she's totally into it.
And of course, the other version of this is You've Got Mail, which was by Nora and Delia Efron, and had it's only a good movie.
It's a fun movie, a sweet movie to watch on a weekend with your loved one or something like that.
But it does have this one great scene.
What Nora Efron was always good about was the, and Delia Efron were always good about is the difference between men and women, the little funny things that separate men and women.
There's a lot of affection for men in their writing, which I always liked.
But they have this one scene that I guess is a famous scene where Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are writing emails to each other without knowing that they are having a war between them in the bookstore business.
But in the emails, they're falling in love.
And he gives her advice from the Godfather.
And she just says, what is it with men and the godfather?
It's a terrific scene.
What is it with men?
What is it with men and the godfather?
Hello.
Oh, come on.
Hello.
Well.
Oh, what can I?
Michael, come on.
The godfather is the I Ching.
The Godfather is the sum of all wisdom.
The Godfather is the answer to any question.
What should I pack for my summer vacation?
Leave the gun, take the canal.
What day of the week is it?
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday.
The answer to your question is go to the mattresses.
The mattresses, you're at war.
It's not personal, it's business.
It's not personal.
It's business business.
Recite that to yourself every time you feel you're losing your nerve.
That's great.
That's a great scene.
A really well-written scene.
The thing that I like about this, not to get too heavy, not to put the weight of too much philosophy on top of this kind of light comedy.
But this has always occurred to me.
Every time I hear materialists talk about why people fall in love and the evolutionary reasons and the imagination, it's just an imagination.
I always think of pen pal lovers because you don't have pheromones.
You don't have, you might not have a picture in this.
They don't know what the other person looks like.
So they're falling in love with somebody without seeing them.
There's not beauty, all those magazine articles about, oh, men like this face because it reflects health.
It reflects all you're getting is the soul of the person.
And in fact, what makes this so fascinating is they don't like the physical presence of the person.
They are at odds with the physical presence of the person while they're falling in love with the person's soul.
And it is a beautiful illustration in a comic, light-hearted way of how the imagination works.
Because I've talked about the fact that the way I use the word imagination is kind of derived from the romantics.
The imagination is not, oh, I'm making something up, I'm inventing a story.
The imagination is where we experience those things that we can't see.
So it's where you experience God.
It's where you experience love.
It's where you experience countries that you've never been to.
The imagination can be wrong or it can be right.
If you're in an email relationship with someone and you fall in love with them and you find out it's really, you know, you thought it was a 20-year-old girl, it's really a 50-year-old guy who's catfishing you, you know, then your imagination did not adhere to reality.
But if in fact it shows up, she shows up and it's Meg Ryan, then you got it exactly right.
You know, that's a surprise.
The same thing is true of God.
You can have an imagination of God that's unreal or not adult or really is your father deified or really, you know, as Freud would have said, or is a childlike version of God, an old man in the clouds.
You know, that's not going to hold up as you go through some of the tragic parts of life and some of the more difficult parts of life.
But as your imagination of God becomes more realistic, you are actually communicating with the real God.
And that is going to incredibly uplift your life and uplift your heart.
And all the people who say, well, it's just in your imagination, cannot explain how people fall in love through emails.
And they do it all the time.
All right.
Send me an answer to my question on aclavin at dailywire.com or just leave it on Facebook or YouTube if that's where you're paying attention.
The Clavenless weekend now begins, so I'm sorry, many of you I know will not be coming back because people just do not survive the Clavenless weekend.
Enter into the eternal darkness where there is great wailing and gnashing of teeth, gnashing of teeth.
But survivors gather here on Monday.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
In 1814, we took a little trip along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississippi.
Few Eyes Left00:01:22
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans and we caught the bloody British in a town in New Orleans.
We fired our guns and the British kept were coming.
There wasn't eyes many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to run it.
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
We looked down a river and we see the British home and there must have been a hundred of them beating on the drum.
They stepped so high and they made the bugles ring.
We stood beside our club and they just didn't say a thing.
We fired our guns and the British kept were coming.
There wasn't eyes many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to run it.
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
Old Hickey Creek said that we could take them by surprise.
If we didn't fire our muskets till we looked them in the eye.
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
Technical producer Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
And their animations are by Cynthia Angulo and Jacob Jackson.