Ben Shapiro dissects Stormy Daniels’ dubious claims—$130K from Cohen, a "threat" from her in a parking lot, and a sketch resembling her ex—while mocking her "Make America Horny Again" tour as self-promotion. He contrasts genuine heroism like Navy pilot Tammy Jo Schultz’s engine-failure landing with Democratic virtue-signaling over tax cuts, then skewers James Comey’s hypocrisy for attacking Trump’s "orange skin" while positioning himself as morally superior. The episode pivots to cultural wars: defending Trump’s North Korea diplomacy as pragmatic, rejecting liberal performative activism, and debating homosexuality through a Christian lens—arguing judgment belongs to God, not man—before ending with polling showing 46% want Comey prosecuted for leaking memos, signaling public fatigue with partisan grandstanding. [Automatically generated summary]
CIA Director Mike Pompeo has revealed that he has had secret meetings with insane North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-un.
Pompeo said he had wanted to reveal the meetings earlier, but he had signed a non-disclosure agreement after receiving a payment of $130,000 from Trump attorney Michael Cohen.
Pompeo said he was further intimidated into silence when he was approached by a blonde porn actress in a parking lot who told him, quote, leave Mr. Trump alone.
He belongs to me, unquote.
Stormy Daniels denies threatening Pompeo, but says she too has been meeting with Kim Jong-un, and Kim has agreed to denuclearize the peninsula in exchange for sex.
Then I woke up.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-donkey.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winged, also sing hunky-dunky-dicky.
Shipshaw, tipsy-topsy, the world is appity-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hooray, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, it's mailbag day, and here I am all alone in Austin, Texas, with no one to say woo-hoo.
So I'll have to say woo-hoo myself, but I will answer all your questions.
And you can ask more questions for next mailbag if you subscribe to the Daily Wire, which is a lousy 10 bucks a month.
And for a lousy hundred bucks, you subscribe for the whole year, and then I will answer your questions honestly.
Plus, you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr, which I don't have with me.
I miss my Leftist Tears Tumblr.
Meanwhile, we should talk about Blue Apron, because Blue Apron is the leading meal kit delivery service in the U.S.
And while many people know what they do, many don't know about the types of meals you can get when you cook with Blue Apron.
I've tried it.
It is really good.
They come, they deliver it right to your house.
It has all the ingredients pre-packaged, pre-prepared.
And then you get a little menu card that tells you how to do it.
And then you sit there and watch your wife make dinner at my house, at your house.
Possibly it works in a different way.
All kinds of good food that you can choose from.
Go on and go on the site and look because they've got things like steak frites with roasted broccoli and lemon aioli, roast pork and salsa verde with sauteed vegetables, beef empanadas with roasted sweet potatoes and creamy zucchini.
It really is good stuff.
And what it is, is like you cook it yourself and you cook it in your own house, but it tastes like you're eating in a restaurant.
I mean, you could hear those things.
Go on and take a look at the pictures.
You will want what they've got.
So check out this week's menu and get your first three meals for free at blueapron.com slash Andrew.
I mean, they're giving away food.
I think that's a pretty good deal.
Blueapron.com slash Andrew.
Blue Apron is a better way to cook.
All right.
So, you know, I have to talk about this Southwest Airlines.
Southwest Heroism00:04:52
I've been flying all the Southwest.
I flew Southwest to Phoenix, flew Southwest to down here to Texas.
And, you know, as a novelist, I'm always really fascinated by motivation, right?
That's what I write about.
That's what you have to know, what makes people tick.
And when I was a kid, everybody was really enamored of Sigmund Freud.
And that was pretty much like what everybody thought, that what made you tick was basically Eros.
You know, not necessarily sex, but your sex drives and everything could be traced back to kind of physical urges in you that you then kind of spiritualized.
And that became kind of dogma.
It really was dogma.
You go back and watch some movies from the 50s before my time.
And it's like every show you see has got a psychiatrist or a hero or somebody.
It's like the last scene in Psycho where they explain everything away.
And it really, people really believe that stuff.
It's amazing when you look back how it took people over.
I think people do things for spiritual reasons.
I think one of the things they do is every single one of us knows that he's not what he's supposed to be.
No one is righteous, no, not one.
And we all know it, and we're all trying to deny it, and we're all trying to prove to ourselves and to others that we, in fact, are better than we are.
And I really do think that avoiding shame and avoiding guilt and avoiding the appearance of lack of virtue, which all of us are experiencing, shame, guilt, lack of virtue, is one of the things that really motivates people.
And heroism, of course, is the ultimate display of virtue.
I think when I was growing up, my generation, the baby boomer generation, was deeply affected by the fact that all of our fathers were in World War II and there was no good war for us to fight.
And I think a lot of the protests of the 60s, a lot of the noise and everything, was make-believe heroism.
It was make-believe heroism to make us feel that we were being just as heroic as our parents.
And I think a lot of that is going on today, too.
And then you have a genuine, genuine hero.
I mean, you have this flight, the Southwest 1380 flight, and it's a very tragic story.
You know, an engine blew.
The propeller seems to have come out, crashed through a window.
A woman, Jennifer Reardon, with two children and a husband sucked out of the window.
The guy, people around her pulled her back in, but she died afterwards.
And that is a genuinely tragic story.
But of course, there were a lot, many more people on the plane.
And the pilot, Tammy Jo Schultz, the first woman to fly a fighter jet for the Navy after the Air Force wouldn't take her.
And she loves being a pilot, she says, because she loves to witness for Christ every flight.
And, you know, I have a pilot's license.
I don't fly anymore, but I did learn to fly.
And I've always been incredibly impressed with pilots.
Obviously, Sully, the Salzburger, the guy who landed the plane in the Hudson, yeah, the Hudson River, one of the great pilots, piloting moments in history, because it's very tough to land a seaplane, let alone a jet, an injured jet, in the water like that.
Incredible.
This was not as incredible, but what was incredible was the steely serenity.
I mean, I don't even want to say calm, but it was like the serenity of this lady as she brought this plane down.
I want to play just a minute of this because you can hear the guys on the ground.
And God bless the guys on the ground.
They do, you know, a lot of the work that keeps planes safe.
And remember, there has not been a death on an American commercial airline since 2009.
That is an amazing, amazing safety record.
But the guys on the ground in this audio that you'll hear, they sound more upset and nervous than the pilot, Tammy Joe Schultz.
But it is an amazing moment of heroism on her part and also on the ground workers' part to bring this plane in and get everybody else in safely.
Just listen to this.
It is moving.
Southwest 1380, you'd like to turn.
Start turning it down.
Southwest 1380, just start turning southbound there.
There's a Southwest 737 on a four-mile file.
We'll be turning southbound.
Start looking for the airport.
It's off to your right and slightly behind you there.
And altitude is your discretion.
Use caution for the downtown area.
Advogier maintain out of 2,200 for the MBA.
Okay, could you have the medical meet us there on the runway as well?
We've got injured passengers.
Injured passengers, okay.
And are you, is your airplane physically on fire?
No, it's not on fire, but part of it's missing.
They said there was a hole and someone went out.
I'm sorry, you said there was a hole and somebody went out.
Southwest 1380, it doesn't matter.
We'll work it out there.
So the airport's just off to your right, reported in sight, please.
In sight.
From 1380 airports in sight.
I mean, listen to that.
Listen to that steely calm.
And like I said, it's almost more serenity than calm.
I was thinking, it's kind of funny right now that the news, I mean, I understand that this is a tragic story because somebody died, but so many people didn't die that it is also an upbeat story in that sense.
But so much of the news right now, the real news is actually kind of good.
Real News Is Good00:15:53
Like the economy is good.
You know, Trump, they announced yesterday that Mike Pompeo, the CIA director who's up to become the Secretary of State, that Pompeo had over Easter had had top-level meetings with Kim Jong-un and had actually been meeting with Kim Jong-un, preparing for a meeting between Trump and Kim in maybe as early as June or July, which would be an amazing thing if this actually moved forward.
Now, if Trump gets taken to the cleaners like Clinton did, and we wind up shoveling Kim money while he continues to build nuclear weapons, not so good.
But it's an opening.
You've got to admit, it's an opening.
And I don't think Trump is going to get conned the way Clinton did.
And he doesn't need the news that much.
But it would be an amazing, amazing thing.
I was like, well, let Trump just talk for a minute as he announces what's going on.
We've had talks at the highest level.
Well, let's leave it a little bit short of that.
But we have had talks at the highest level.
And it's going very well, but we'll see what happens.
Classic Trump, we'll see what happens.
But still, you know, good news.
I think, you know, some people say you should never talk to tyrants because it gives them legitimacy.
I don't agree with that.
I actually agreed with Obama about this, that you should talk to just about anybody if you feel you can get somewhere and make the world better.
So that's always good.
Taxes.
Was yesterday tax day?
Yes, or the day before.
It was the 16th this time, but then they delayed it a day because all their computers went bluey.
But taxes are lower.
You know, taxes are lower.
And I love this.
So this is what I'm talking about.
All the real news is good, right?
Taxes are lower.
Here's Larry Kudlow, who's now part of the administration, describing what the new tax plan is going to mean to people as they start to see it in their wallet.
Most of the polls that I've seen show close to 50% support for the tax cuts.
And mind you, we're just really getting started.
The paychecks and the withholding rates, as I said earlier.
You've got child tax credits, you're doubling, you've got doubling of the standard deduction, you've got lower income tax rates, you've got lower business tax rates.
I think it's a winner.
So that is pretty good.
But so that's the real news, right?
Real news, open negotiations.
The plane landed safely.
Taxes are lower.
Now, you know, I don't even want to say fake news.
It's just an attitude, a way of approaching the news.
The Democrats are actually campaigning on raising your taxes.
And they're campaigning on raising your taxes in the name of God.
I mean, this is unbelievable to me.
They are telling you that paying taxes is your holy duty.
The New York Congressman Joe Crowley was out saying that people who want lower taxes have no souls.
Listen to this.
I heard one of my colleagues talk about the fact that he's doing a lot of soul searching after he voted for this tax scam.
And I suppose, sister, we have to assume as people of faith that they may have souls, but they didn't demonstrate it when they passed this bill.
You have no soul if you want to keep the money that you earned.
Speaking of soul, it's Thomas Soule who said that, according to liberals, you're greedy if you want to keep your money, but they're generous if they want to take your money away.
Nancy Pelosi, I love Nancy Pelosi.
She is absolutely one of the best things we have in the government today because she guarantees more votes for Republicans.
But she was out there promising.
She's promising if they win the majority, if they take back the government, they will raise your taxes.
Here's Pelosi.
This is not about our values.
A budget is supposed to be a statement of our national values.
What is important to us as a nation should be how we invest in our children's future, in the retirement of our seniors, in the air that our kids breathe, in the opportunities in the economy and the rest.
Be fair.
Fairness.
That's not what this budget is about.
It's a shame.
It's wrong.
It's wrong.
And we just, we cannot let it stand.
We won't let it stand.
We won't let it stand.
But so they're promising, they're chanting, they're making a chant of it.
We will raise your taxes, we will raise your taxes, which I tell you, you know, it's the difference between virtue and virtue signaling, the difference between heroism, the lady landing that plane, and make-believe heroism.
I mean, it's all about make-believe heroism.
And Trump, with his kind of, you know, that big, obstreperous, sometimes rude, sometimes crude personality of his, makes everybody want to seem like the hero who's going to take him down.
And they keep doing this thing where instead of taking him down, they find themselves somehow stooping to his level.
And somehow he can do it.
He can get away with it.
I'm not sure why exactly.
And they can't.
So now you've got James Comey out there.
I mean, this is really something else.
James Comey has blown himself up, basically.
He went out there.
You know, he was going to do the whole virtue signaling thing.
And of course, there's still some animosity from the left against James Comey because of his late in the election announcement that he was going to reopen the Hillary Clinton case, which he now says that he did under the impression she was going to win.
So he was making his decisions according to the polls, which are maybe not the best way for an FBI director to make decisions.
But it's really interesting.
He had about an hour in the sun.
Stephen Colbert was fawning all over him.
But the rest of the press is starting to turn on him.
And they're not, you know, they're obviously not conservatives.
Savannah Guthrie really started to needle him in a kind of, I found a kind of startling interview.
Listen to this a little bit.
It feels like you might have some scores to settle, you know, that you might have a little bit of anger left over and a little bit of bitterness.
Would you plead guilty to all that?
Yeah, I wouldn't, actually.
I would take that one to trial because I think it is raw in the sense that I find it really painful to relive.
Reading that book, doing the audiobook left me physically drained, but I really don't feel a sense of anger.
I'm very worried, actually, which is why I'm doing something I don't love, which is talking about it and writing about it, but not anger.
There's been a lot of reactions to the book so far.
Some of the most widely cited parts have to do with your description and words about President Trump.
I mean, including calling his skin orange and saying his look like he had tanning goggles.
And, you know, some people said that was kind of, for lack of a better word, that was a little catty.
Did you enjoy taking those shots at the president?
No, I didn't think of them as shots, and I still think.
Really?
The orange with funny white eyes?
It's not a shot.
You know, there's something, one of the things that I think is actually turning people against Comey is that there is something girly about the guy.
He's always talking about his feelings.
And by the way, I like girly and girls, but guys, sometimes it just doesn't come across really well.
He's always talking about his feeling states.
I mean, you could see even Savannah Guthrie used the word catty, which is usually a word that she used to describe women.
There's something about this guy that just comes across as, I don't know, just kind of weak, I guess, is the word I'm looking for.
Just somehow, you know, he's not coming across the way he wants to.
And he's suffering from what I've come to call the Trump effect, which is that somehow Trump can do this stuff where he attacks people personally.
And when they try and do it back, they look bad.
So here is this guy pretending that he is the pinnacle of honor, the pinnacle of integrity, the absolute model of decency.
He himself says he falls in love with his own virtue.
And you can just see James Comey alone with his own virtue.
Virtue, I love you.
I love my virtue.
And yet, and yet, here he is doing what Trump does, which completely contradicts and takes away from the effect of it.
And so he's trying to be a hero, but instead he's coming off like kind of a buffoon.
And CNN, Evan Perez, his name is, and he's their justice guy.
He's their justice commentator.
And even he comes on and he has started to notice the Trump effect, basically, the way this blows back on the guy.
And here's a guy he's talking.
I think he's a liberal.
He's obviously speaking from a liberal point of view.
His beef with Comey is what he did to Hillary Clinton.
But listen to what he says.
He, unfortunately, is suffering the same fate that everybody who decides to play by Donald Trump's playbook, right?
Using some of the same tactics, some of the cheap things, frankly.
I think they're cheap.
to be making comments about the president's marriage, to be making comments about his tan and his tie and all that stuff.
You know, I think that's what happens to you when you go there.
And you saw this in the campaign, right?
People who decided to go mano amano with candidate Trump ended up looking worse for it.
And so I think my fear is that I think for Comey, and I think we're going to start digesting this over the next couple of weeks, he's going to come across looking worse than I think.
And I don't want to be.
You know, it's funny he's sitting there saying that on CNN.
I thought they must have been sitting there going, wait, what?
We're not supposed to attack his marriage.
We're not supposed to attack his looks.
We're not supposed to attack him every minute.
Maybe that's why only seven people are watching us and all of them are running to catch a plane at the time.
You know, the same thing, virtually the same thing is happening to Stormy Daniels.
You know, now Stormy Daniels, you know, the Stormy Daniels story is originally a Wall Street Journal story.
They're the ones who broke the story about Michael Cohn paying off the porn star to keep quiet.
And the sense that it becomes a financial story and a legal story as it's becoming with this woman, Kimber Wood, I think her name is the judge, who is such a partisan judge that she actually officiated at George Soros' wedding.
All of that may pose real dangers for Donald Trump.
So far, I don't see any, but still, it could pose real dangers.
What would have to happen is first they would have to get Michael Cohn on bank fraud, and then they would have to prove somehow that Trump had basically told him to do it.
Not only that he had taken out a home loan to make these payoffs, but Trump had said take out a home loan to make these payoffs because otherwise, whether they have, they have maybe Donald Trump conspired to misuse campaign funds.
It's very, very tough stuff.
It's not going to happen.
I just do not believe that this is going to reach the level where the public will stand for impeachment because even the people who dislike Trump, maybe the people who hate Trump don't care what he gets impeached for, but even the people who dislike Trump do not want to see elections overturned.
It is not a good look.
It is not a good look to overturn democratic elections using legal means to criminalize the opponents because that's kind of the South American way, that is the tinpot dictator way to come and arrest you for being in the other party.
But Stormy Daniels herself is just starting to look, I don't know, like a cheap porn star or something like that.
I don't know.
She's on the view and she is putting forward this idea that she was threatened.
And she says she remembers this guy's face.
Here she is talking about how she was threatened to keep quiet.
He walked up behind me and I saw his reflection and I turned around.
I thought for sure he was going to say, hey, do you know where the such-and-such class is or what building is whatever?
And he had his hands in his pocket and he looked at my daughter and I just remember him saying like, oh, it's a beautiful little girl.
It'd be ashamed if something happened to her mom.
Forget about this story.
Leave Mr. Trump alone.
And it was like, it didn't even register to me at first.
And then he turned and walked away.
And like I said, his face is burned in my memory.
So her face, that's painful to have a face burned into your memory.
But then she put forward this, you know, this, what do they call them, where the crime artist, the forensic artist, does a description from your description, does a drawing of the suspect.
So they put up this picture.
Do you have the picture of the suspect?
There it is.
It's Steve Crowder, obviously.
Some people said it was Tom Brady, but I don't know.
I've never seen Crowder and this guy together.
But obviously the funny one is that her ex-husband looks exactly like this drawing.
I mean, he's almost a dead ringer for this drawing.
I don't know.
Listen, I wasn't there.
Maybe the story is true.
It sounds like cheap dialogue from a B movie.
Guy does the picture, looks exactly like her ex-husband.
Very suspicious.
But she goes on to say, oh, so then they asked her on the view.
They asked her why she hadn't come forward before.
And so she unreals this story.
First of all, I was scared.
It was expressly what he told me not to do.
And I went home and like regrouped.
I was going to, because I always feel like you should stand up for yourself and you should report it.
But the problem with that in this particular instance would I would have gone to the police and would have gone, okay, a man approached me.
This is what he said to me.
He told me, you know, leave Mr. Trump alone.
And their very next question, the detective would have asked me, why would somebody tell you to leave Mr. Trump alone?
And I would have had to answer that question, which was not public at the time.
And I would have had to tell an entire police department, and police reports are public record.
I know that for a fact.
I had sex with Donald Trump.
And then the whole world would have known.
And I was in the process of trying to quiet that or figure out what to do.
And honestly, I was just afraid.
And I didn't want everyone to know.
I didn't want my family to find out that way.
I didn't want my life turned upside down.
Again, not believing this story.
I'm not buying this story.
So she's a porn star, but she didn't want to damage her sexual reputation.
I mean, is that the story?
I don't know.
I mean, look, I am absolutely sure she's telling the truth.
I'm not absolutely sure.
I'm fairly sure she's telling the truth that she had a relationship with Donald Trump.
I'm pretty sure she was paid off to keep quiet, all of that.
But I do think she is basically manipulating, you know, getting this moment to get her moment, her 15 minutes of fame.
And again, Trump can do things that I don't approve of that maybe look a little, you know, rude and crude, and yet somehow he gets away with it, maybe because there's no hypocrisy to the man.
He is what he is.
He's not what he, he's not, he hasn't pretended to be anything that he's not.
Whereas here's a woman pretending to act out of virtue.
Again, she's pretending to be a hero, coming forward, daring, you know, to stand up to the powerful men, but basically any money.
Megan McCain on the View takes her out for exactly that.
You didn't have anything to do with the case.
It seemed a little like you were just trying to get attention, which I understand that you're being sued by our president, but it does seem like you're benefiting a lot.
I mean, you've gone on your Make America Horny Again tour.
I'm sure you're making a lot of money.
No disrespect.
I hadn't heard your name until all of this had happened, and now you are literally live on the View giving an entire interview with us.
So it has been beneficial for your career.
Yes, I've gotten more bookings than usual, but I'm doing the job that I've been doing for the last almost 20 years.
Yes, there's a lot of publicity, but I didn't do it for that because this isn't what I want to be known for.
You know, I'm going to be at the University of Texas Austin tonight.
I'm going to be speaking.
What I'm going to speak about, I just want to talk about the narrative.
You know, I hate going to these speeches with this idea that I'm some kind of warrior and I'm going to beat down the opposition and all this.
I really just want to talk.
I actually want to hear from the students, but I do want to talk about the narrative because, you know, you're living in this country that's free.
You're living in a country where it's less racist than other countries.
You're living in a country where there are heroes, like a lady who can land a plane after its engine blows out, which is no easy thing.
You're living in a country where people are still, you know, where the president and all the levers of power are working to try and make the world more peaceful, which is a complicated thing to do.
And then we're living also in this world of the narrative, where Stormy Daniels is supposed to be a hero, where James Comey is supposed to be a man of integrity, where things are dark because Starbucks is such a racist company and we have to protest Starbucks, which is utter nonsense as far as I'm concerned.
I'm still calling BS on that story.
Occasionally, They Will Change Your Life00:02:04
It hasn't come out fully yet, but I just do not know why two guys, when the police ask them to leave a coffee shop, why they don't leave and why they shouldn't be arrested.
I don't understand that.
But still, we don't live on television.
And in the end, in the end, I do believe that we're going to support the people who actually do courageous things and the people who actually make the world a better place.
And these people who are just play acting, who are just virtue signaling, as they say, who are just trying to establish some form of heroism in a world that doesn't provide all those many opportunities for heroism because it's so safe.
I do not think they're ultimately going to believe.
I don't be believed.
I don't think they're ultimately going to be followed.
In worst case scenario for them, they suffer the Trump effect and are completely dissed and completely left behind in the dust.
All right, we got the mailbag coming up, but I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube from Austin.
Bye, bye.
You know, you can come on over to the Daily Wire and listen.
I think you can listen on YouTube as well.
But, but if you want to participate, if you want to be a part of the Andrew Clavin show, if you want to ask questions on the mailbag, if you want that leftist tears tumbler and who does not want a leftist tears tumbler, you got to subscribe to thedailywire.com.
Laus 100 bucks for a year's subscription.
We'll get you that leftist tears tumbler and you can ask as many questions on the mailbag as you want.
And occasionally I will answer.
And occasionally, all the answers will be correct.
And occasionally, they will change your life.
And even more occasionally, for the better.
Come on over to thedailywire.com.
It's the mailbag.
Far away from far away in my lonely, my lonely Austin Tower.
I hear the mailbag.
All right, from Louise.
We have dear Saint Claven.
And yes, that is my ultimate title.
I haven't quite achieved that yet, but I will eventually.
I am a 23-year-old millennial woman.
And about two years ago, I suffered from a relatively brief but very severe case of a debilitating disease called feminism.
Ah, I'm sorry to hear that.
Sin And Responsibility00:14:56
That is bad.
While I was ill, I made a lot of impulsive sexual decisions I thought were empowering, but were really just reckless and self-destructive.
What is worse is that I allowed many of these decisions to be filmed.
How do I come to terms with these past mistakes?
And if your sins are caught on camera, can Jesus still wash them away?
Thanks and love the show, Louise.
First, of course, of course, of course, Christ can wash away your sins, whether they're filmed, whether they're engraved in stone.
He can wash them away.
And I'm sorry that happened to you.
And I'm sorry the feminists did that to you.
They do do that to people.
And I'm sorry it's caught on tape.
There's no question that that may come back sometime in your life and haunt you.
But here's the thing about sin.
We talk a lot about things that are sinful, acts that we say, oh, that's a sin, or that's a sin, or this is a sin.
To me, and I really do think when you read the gospel closely, this is what you see, is sin is actually more of a state.
It is a state that you are in.
It's a state in the Greek that is the New Testament language is basically Aramaic translated into Greek and you read it in Greek.
The word is hamartia for sin and it means to miss the target.
It means your aim is off.
And really, I really do believe that sin is a state in which you're facing away from God.
And when you have faith, one of the reasons that faith is counted as righteousness is because when you have faith, you are turning the ship of your life toward God, and you are no longer in a state of sin, because you're facing God.
And when Jesus says to people, be perfect, like your Father in heaven is perfect, people say, well, huh?
You know, how am I going to be perfect?
I can't do that.
But that's not what he means.
The word in Greek really means to be going in the direction of your completion, to hit the target, as it were.
So you have now turned your life away from this thing that you were doing and are, I assume from your question, are moving in the direction of God.
And so you are no longer in a state of sin.
Now, the thing is, you did those things.
They're going to haunt you.
Maybe they'll come back and haunt you in a literal way because they're on tape.
But they're not going to haunt God.
And here's the thing.
You know, they call Satan the accuser.
That's one of his names.
And for all I know, that may actually mean the accuser, but they call him the accuser.
And the reason they call him the accuser is he loves your guilt.
He loves for you to wallow in guilt.
He loves for you to be drawn back into your past continually as if you were fighting against the tide instead of sailing really forward toward God.
And so those accusations, that heavy weight of guilt, you can let that go.
You're now turned in the right direction.
You're turned in the direction God wants you to be turned in.
And you don't have to look back.
You don't have to look back over your shoulder.
If there are people you hurt, you should ask for forgiveness.
If there are things you made wrong, you can try and make them right.
But you do not have to wallow in the pain of what you did.
You can actually be looking forward into the future and just let it go.
And so that's the answer.
Those videos that were taken of you are instruments of the accuser.
But your life is in God's hands, and your life is going in the right direction now.
And that's really all that matters.
That is what God is all about.
So here I have two questions that I put together.
And the reason is a lot of, there's been a lot, a lot of reaction to my discussion with the Catholic priest, Father Michael, about homosexuality.
A lot of people writing to me, taking issue with me, some of them, most of them being really nice about it, but explaining why they feel that homosexuality is a sin per se.
And I'm going to explain my attitude toward this because a lot of times I feel people get my attitude wrong.
They don't actually hear what I actually said.
So far, I have found all of their arguments really convincing in the sense that they have convinced me of something that I already believed, which is that the center of life is a marriage between a man and a woman that produces a child.
That is the center of human existence.
That is what all human existence swirls around.
Every city we build, every piece of technology is built to protect that essential act that continues the human race.
I really do believe that.
But no one has quite convinced me that homosexuality is necessarily a sin per se.
That just to be in a homosexual relationship with someone you love is necessarily against God and certainly is whether it's some kind of mortal sin, I guess would be the word.
So here are two questions that come in that I think are really good questions and kind of the same question, but both worth hearing.
From Adam, dear Mr. Cleve Venn, he writes because he was making fun of the fact that there are no E's in Clavin, but there is no E's.
It's not easy being Clavin.
Just remember that.
If you feel homosexual sex is permissible to strengthen the bond of love between two men or women, would you say the same for sex between two siblings or a parent and a child who desired an incestuous relationship?
And if not, then by what logic or moral authority would you deny it to them?
Thanks.
Love the show.
And the other is from Caleb, who says, dear king of the multiverse clavin, which is, of course, my proper title, as someone who has struggled with pornography, what is the difference between me and someone who is living a homosexual lifestyle?
You said that homosexuality was not the intended use of human sexuality, but could serve another purpose in people's lives.
My contention is that the same could be said for pornography, which is not the intention of human sexuality, but could also be construed to have a benefit for an individual.
So everybody asking essentially, if I'm okay with gay sex, what is my moral reasoning for not permitting every other thing?
And obviously, they're not asking about the obvious ones, like abusing animals or abusing children where there can't be any consent.
Now, my position is there are two issues here.
One is in terms of religion and one is in terms of law, right?
My position in terms of religion has always been, I simply have no cause to have an opinion about this.
I am never going to commit a homosexual act.
It's not a desire.
I don't have to worry about this.
So why am I sitting in church when Jesus has said to me, you know, before you take the moat out of your neighbor's eye, take the plank out of your own eye, when I am purely and completely convinced that there are so many planks in my own eye that I could build a small cabin with them, maybe a large cabin, why am I worrying about a sin that I will never commit?
I mean, I simply don't know why I would.
Secondly, because in the case of a loving, committed, lifelong relationship between two people of the same sex, I can't see any harm that is done to society necessarily.
Because of that, the only way I could see it being a sin is if it turns you away from God.
Now, how would I know if that's what it does, if there's no crime committed?
How would I know, since I'm never going to commit it and haven't committed, whether that turns any individual person away from God?
I think it's exactly that that Jesus is talking about when he says, judge not lest you be judged.
He is saying that what you are not supposed to judge is whether somebody is turned in the direction of God.
Now, obviously, if someone is committing a crime, that's different.
If somebody's hurting other people and hurting themselves, that's different.
But in this case, I do not see how without committing the act or wanting to commit the act, I can know what that is.
And I don't know why I should.
I don't know why I should bother.
I don't understand why my purpose here is not just to love my neighbor and love God.
So that's where I stand on this.
In terms of the law, okay, when you talk about something being permissible, the question is who permits?
Who is going to permit it?
And then you have the question of whether you want the police to be able to arrest somebody for being a homosexual.
And no, I do not.
I do not want that to happen.
That could happen when I was young.
I do not think it was a good thing.
I do not think the lives of artists and thinkers and all the things that gay people contribute to the society, workers and everybody else, I do not think that they should be hounded by the law for having homosexual relationships.
So if you're talking about something being permissible, that's what permissible means.
And I do not want that.
It is true.
I don't think the government should have that power to govern our sex lives, anybody's sex life.
And, you know, with marriage, my whole problem with marriage is I feel that the marriage that we're trying to protect, which is the marriage as defined by the church, ended.
That marriage as an institution ended when we allowed no-fault divorce.
And I think the minute you have no-fault divorce, that marriage as a sacrament was over.
Jesus was very clear about this.
That marriage was a sacrament and is over.
And it just seems small to then say, oh yeah, we ruined this thing.
We're only pretending it's still a sacrament, but gay people can't come in because then we won't be able to pretend anymore.
That just seems hypocritical to me.
So that is my problem there.
But in terms of the law, then you have to say, well, if the law cannot stop people from having gay sex, why can't it stop them from having other kinds of sex?
Now, I would argue, actually, I am actually against polygamy.
And polygamy is legal in many countries.
I actually believe it is bad for society, bad for women, bad for the culture, that it is within the purview of the state to prevent.
It actually is that bad.
It actually deprives women of their rights.
How you police it, I don't know, since if you don't marry someone, you can live with as many people as you want.
And so it's not something that's like going to worry me very much, but I do think it actually is a bad thing for the state for people to be polygamous.
And I think it's so bad that you can actually do something about it.
I think, feel the same way about sex between a parent and child.
I think that that is damaging no matter how it happens.
And the state, it does have an interest in keeping people from damaging one another.
The state has a legitimate interest in keeping you from damaging me and keeping me from damaging you.
So again, there's something there.
The one place where I'm not sure you can make a case is with sibling incest where there are no children, because sibling incest obviously is not that good for children.
But where there are no children, could you not make a case?
I would do it anyway, probably, because the tradition is so strong, so powerful, that I suspect that if we tear down, I don't want to tear down that fence before I know what's on the other side.
It does seem like an abuse.
It seems deeply, you know, organically unnatural.
It seems harmful to both people.
It seems harmful to both parties.
But my argument is weak there.
I totally admit it.
I just think you have to go with the fact that this is something that really resonates as something bad.
But other than that, I think if I had to outlaw one thing, if I had to outlaw one sexual act, if I thought like there was one sexual act that I could outlaw, it would be adultery.
Before I would outlaw gay sex, certainly, I would outlaw adultery because I think adultery leaves more people damaged than any other sexual act there is.
But I wouldn't outlaw that either.
From Melinda, dear Andrew the Wise, how do I know when God is trying to tell me something versus me just interpreting things wrong?
How do I know when God has spoken to me?
Thanks.
In Christianese, they call this discernment.
And it's difficult but not impossible.
You want to be careful of great sweeping waves of certainty that come over you as revelation.
I really am suspicious of those.
But when something comes to you, you know, what I have found is that when something comes to me and I look at it for long enough and I study it in light of what I know about the gospels and in light of prayer and I pray about it and all this stuff, what happens is the logic of it unfolds to me and I see why it's good.
I can act, I, with my reason, can see why it's good.
I couldn't get there by myself, but once it's put into my hand, I say, oh yeah, obviously this is the right thing to do.
And it's almost always incredibly obvious once I do it.
So, you know, you are allowed to use your reason.
If somebody is, you know, whispering in your ear, that may not be God.
So there's nothing wrong with using your reason to discern whether you're looking at the word of God.
Your reason is what connects you to God, in my opinion.
From Christopher Clavin, recently someone I was watching over committed suicide.
There were signs that I saw that I didn't necessarily acknowledge as 100% factual.
I feel the blame on myself.
What I thought was the right thing to do turned out to be the wrong thing.
How would you deal with this overwhelming guilt?
Well, let me tell you something.
I know you feel bad.
I know you're going to feel bad.
But I've dealt with suicidal people a lot.
And having gone through a very brief period where I struggled with this myself in my youth, I started volunteering for hotlines and different kinds of hotlines.
And I've talked to many people who are suicidal.
The decision to commit suicide is in the hands of the person who does it.
It is never, ever, ever your fault.
I mean, obviously it's your fault if you're torturing them or something like that.
But a person's life is in their own hands.
And when a person commits suicide, it is on them.
And I'm not saying, you know, I'm not saying what the judgment on that is in the next world is none of my business.
I'm just saying that this is something that people, it is a person's responsibility.
A person's life is his own responsibility.
That is the very basic tenet of conservatism, that you are responsible for yourself.
And I'm sorry this happened.
And I know that, you know, anytime somebody dies, anytime somebody commits suicide, everybody around them feels like, what could I have done?
What, you know, what should I have done?
Did I say this when I should have said that?
Did I go there when I could have gone there?
You know, it happens in every suicide.
One of the best reasons not to commit suicide is you leave a terrible mess for the people who love you.
You leave them feeling terrible.
You leave just absolute ruin behind you.
But it is on you.
It is on the person who does the act.
And you're just going to have to come to terms with that because if somebody wants to kill themselves, there is nothing you can do in the long run.
If someone is determined to kill himself, there is nothing you can do.
From Christian, dear supreme leader of the multiverse, I answer to that name.
When discussing the value of religion with any skeptics, they often tell me that organized religion is and always has been a way to control people.
I recognize that to some degree this is historically true, but know that religion is so much more than that.
What do you recommend?
The proper response to this is keep up the great work.
You know, actually, I don't accept the premise people have used religion to control people, but that doesn't mean that organized religion is a way to control people.
This is a mistake that people make, that they say, like, oh, you know, people just need religion to keep from doing the wrong thing because they get threatened with hell or whatever.
There are religious people who use religion to control people, just as there are leftist people who use leftism to control people, and right-wingers too, who use, I mean, they're people who want control over other people.
There are really only two.
These are the two kinds of people.
Besides men and women, you can divide people into those who want to control other people and those who don't.
But obviously, obviously, religion is a way of coming to terms with the metaphysical.
Two Kinds Of People00:04:04
I mean, that's what it's always been.
They didn't invent a religion thinking, hmm, you know, how are we going to control people?
They came to think this is the way that the world is made.
You know, this is the way the world is.
Now, you know, again, sometimes I think that people, the people involved in religion, have thought to themselves, like, you know, Plato, oh, what stories are we going to tell to people to keep them afraid?
Or what stories are we going to tell to people to make them good?
But I do not think that that is the role of religion in history.
It's not.
It's never been the role of religion in history.
People, you know, if you read the letters of St. Paul, some of the things he's saying are how to keep the church in line, but he is trying to work out this tremendous event that happened and what does it mean and what is God telling us and what is happening that we should know about.
And that is what religion has always been.
And this notion, this kind of Marxist notion that religion is the opiate of the people, it really comes from an old-fashioned understanding of religion.
Religion has rarely been the opiate of the people.
Certainly in the West, it has been a comfort and a guide and a way of finding values and it has shaped the entire outlook of the West to this incredible civilization that we have today and to make it this incredible civilization they have today.
I think the people that you're arguing with are confusing the people involved in religion, who are going to be like the people involved in everything else, they're going to do the wrong things, with what religion itself is.
And so that puts the responsibility on them to look at religion as a guide to truth and deal with those truths and the ramifications of those truths.
We're not accepting them.
All right, I got to stop.
Tickety-boo news.
It's funny, sitting here in this bare office in the middle of Austin.
I see my little logos going by.
I feel far away and kind of lonely.
I'm going to end with tickety-boo news that goes back to what we've been talking about.
The latest Rasmus-Musson Reports National Telephone and Online Survey finds that just 14% of likely U.S. voters believe that James Comey was a better FBI director than most of those who held the job before him.
38% say he did a worse job than his predecessors, while nearly as many, 35%, read his job performance as about the same as theirs.
14% are undefined, decided.
But even the thing that is absolutely amazing is that 46% of all voters believe Comey should be prosecuted for leaking information to the media at the time he was director of the FBI.
You know, Comey's whole self-serving story about how I had to leak information after I was fired so that, you know, so that the truth would come out and there would be a special counsel.
And he got his special counsel.
46%, which is a plurality of the people asked, believe that he should be prosecuted for that leak of information at the time he was director of the FBI.
The math doesn't add up.
He says he didn't leak any classified information, but the math doesn't add up because he leaked a number of memos, and some of those memos were classified.
And for him to have leaked as many memos as he did, he must have leaked some classified information.
Really interesting.
My point being, the reason I call this tickety boo news is because all these people virtue signaling, especially Comey, but also Stormy Daniels, all these people virtue signaling, telling us that they are our heroes, are not getting away with it.
And I think that that is a really, really good thing.
I think that that's a wonderful telling fact that maybe tells us that we are not going down the drain as often as people tell us, as quickly as people tell us we are.
I hope that is the truth.
So tomorrow, I've got another interview with a theologian discussing this homosexuality thing again, asking him some of the same questions.
We'll see if you like his answers any better.
Be there.
I will still be broadcasting.
No, I'll be broadcasting from California.
I come back tomorrow.
So that will be nice to see everybody.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
The Andrew Klavan Show00:00:35
This is The Andrew Klavan Show, and I will see you then.
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