Andrew Clavin’s Ep. 502 exposes mainstream media’s hypocrisy, slamming CNN and The New York Times for framing Republican wins as Democratic victories while ignoring scandals like the IRS targeting Tea Party groups—despite 96% of journalists donating to Hillary Clinton. He mocks outlets for obsessing over Melania Trump’s hat instead of the Iran deal, then pivots to dismissing gender bias claims, arguing all humans are flawed, and rejects hell as arbitrary punishment, comparing moral consequences to fitness outcomes. The episode ends teasing Dennis Miller’s sharp wit, blending partisan jabs with unconventional takes on faith and envy. [Automatically generated summary]
In a special election, Republicans held on to a congressional seat in Arizona yesterday.
CNN says the Republican win is a win for Democrats because if Democrats win, that's a Democrat win.
But if Republicans win, the win goes to the Democrats.
After CNN crunched the numbers in CNN's patented number-crunching machine, many of the numbers lay crunched to the point of no longer being numbers, but simply mangled symbols representing nothing in particular.
This allowed CNN to announce that the Republican win was yet another sign of an oncoming Democrat wave that would sweep the country with Republican wins favoring Democrats.
Meanwhile, Fox News has once again won the ratings cycle with CNN, which CNN says is a win for CNN.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
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Jim's Serious Moment00:15:22
So the disparity between what is happening in the news, for instance, Donald Trump's meeting with the French president, and the way the news is reporting it, I just sat there and I thought to myself, you know, the biggest lie, the biggest lie that American journalists tell themselves, the biggest lie American journals tell is the lie they tell themselves.
The lie that they are doing a good job and the lie that if they're being attacked, it must be because they're being adversarial heroic reporters.
There's an old expression, and a lot of people are said to have said this: love your country but don't trust your government.
Well, my expression is: love the First Amendment, but don't necessarily trust the people who use it, who benefit from it.
I mean, I am an absolutist when it comes to the First Amendment.
I don't believe there should be any censorship.
I believe you should be able to say whatever you want, tell whatever you want.
That's why I'm so annoyed and disrespectful of Google and Twitter and YouTube for silencing conservatives.
I think everybody should get a chance to talk, but that doesn't make you a good reporter and it doesn't make you a good journalist.
And when I look at these guys, they are working so hard because Trump attacks them so much as they deserve, they tell themselves that it's Trump.
You know, that's the lie.
They tell themselves, oh, we must be really getting to him.
When instead, all they do is lie and lie and lie.
And you know, our press basically has now become an arm of the Democrat Party.
I mean, there's just the numbers just show it.
7% of journalists identify as Republicans.
28% identify as Democrats.
Something like 50% identify as independents, and they are lying.
They are just lying.
They are Democrats.
If any of those 50% who identify as independents has ever voted for anyone other than a Democrat, it's a socialist.
I mean, they are not middle of the road.
A lot of places won't let journalists donate to campaigns, but those journalists who did donate, 96% of them donated to Hillary Clinton in the last election.
And that doesn't mean they never report malfeasance on the part of Democrats, but when they do, it's basically self-criticism.
They're saying, you know, why aren't the Democrats doing a better job?
And it makes their coverage a standing lie.
If you did not report, if you did not report on Obama's IRS scandal, the way at the level you reported on the non-scandal about Russia collusion, you are a liar.
You're lying.
That means CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, that means all of them are living in a bubble of dishonesty and everything they say.
So, but the thing is, I used to think to myself, they're purposely propagandizing for the Democrats, but no.
The biggest lie they tell themselves is the biggest lie they tell is the lie they tell themselves, which is that they are being objective.
So there is an article in Variety, which is the show business trade paper, right?
That it's called Inside the Intense Combative World of Covering the Trump White House.
And who do they interview?
They interview two of the biggest nudniks in journalism, two of the biggest idiots, April Ryan and Jim Acosta.
Jim, look at me, I'm Jim Acosta.
That's his nickname.
His nickname is Jim.
Look at me, I'm Jim Acosta.
And they are, there's also a Washington Post woman in there.
Her name is Ashley Parker, but she never gets to speak because the two of them are so busy telling what heroes they are, these tremendous heroes.
So let's look at just a couple of quotes because they actually did get some of it on video.
They talk, play cut number nine, this is April Ryan, Jim Acostan, how heroic they are because people are threatening them with death.
I actively get death threats and just for asking questions.
I mean, even when the president at that fateful first and only solo press conference, when I asked him about the urban agenda or his urban fix, and then he asked me to get the Congressional Black Caucus together, I started getting so much hate as if I did something wrong.
And then when Sean Spicer told me to stop shaking my head, how dare you?
You are nothing but this, that, and the other, and death from above, we're coming after you.
Oh, it was terrible.
I probably receive more death threats than I can count.
I get them basically once a week.
And there was one this week that came in after the Easter egg roll situation.
And it was a threat of violence.
It was an email that came to me.
I alerted.
CNN made them aware of it, and our security people took care of it.
And it's an unfortunate side effect of this environment that we're living in right now.
You know, nobody should send death threats to anybody.
You should never send death threats to the press.
But just because you're getting death threats doesn't mean you're not a schmuck.
I mean, Jim, look at me, I'm Jim Acosta, is one of the worst journalists I have ever.
He's a clown, and April Ryan is absurd.
But they think, they tell themselves that, they tell themselves that because people are threatening them, because Trump is angry at them, they must be in an adversarial position, and therefore they must have been in an adversarial position with the reporters who come before.
Let's just play one more cut from this interview, this self-aggrandizing interview.
And I love the fact that the lady from the Washington Post can't get a word in edge-wise.
She never really says anything.
But here they talk about the fact that it's always, it really has always been, they've always had an adversarial relationship with everybody they cover, but with Trump, it's just, he's just so mean.
Here they are.
Well, under Obama, and April can speak to this, she was in the briefing room.
And Ashley and I covered Mitt Romney, obviously there was this adversarial relationship between the press and the people you're covering.
There were tense moments, obviously.
There's tension.
There's that natural tension that exists between the journalists and the press and the people that we're covering.
But it was never like this.
We were never called fake news.
We were never called the enemy of the people.
And that, I think, just created a totally different climate and environment that we're all sort of trying to make sense of and trying to figure out how do we cover the news in that kind of toxic environment.
And so that's why, you know, for a lot of us, it's very challenging, but it's also very rewarding.
But, you know, there's one thing, there's a thread.
You know, for the last four presidents that I've covered, there's a thread.
There's always retaliation, but never on this scale.
You know, if you write something or report on something that they don't like, of course they're going to give you a call or call your bosses or come to you, literally, and talk to you about, well, it wasn't this way or you've gotten it wrong.
This administration, you'll get a fakeie, an award, or they'll call you out.
They'll try to embarrass you.
They will try to disparage your name.
So let's just see for a minute.
Let's go back and visit the adversarial relationship that these reporters had with the Obama administration.
Let's play cut number 11, April Ryan asking the really tough questions of President Barack Obama.
Long before today, you've been considered a rights president.
Under your watch, people have said that you have expanded the rubber band of inclusion.
And with the election and the incoming administration, people are saying that rubber band has recoiled and maybe is even broken.
And I'm taking back to a time when Air Force One going to sell Alabama when you said your job was to close the gaps that remain.
With that, what gaps still remain when it comes to rights issues on the table?
And also, what part will you play in fixing those gaps after, in your new life?
And lastly, you are the first black president.
Do you expect this country to see this again?
I mean, that's no, it's hard to understand why Trump would take after these people, but not Obama, why Obama was so nice to them, why Obama did not, you know, when Obama got any kind of a question that asked, the press discussed for days whether it was because of race that he had been asked the tough questions.
Now, let's look at the way these guys talk about Donald Trump.
Donald Trump put out a tweet about sanctuary cities in California, cities in California rebelling against the state's declaration that we're a sanctuary state, right?
And he put out a tweet, said, there's a revolution going on in California.
So many sanctuary areas want out of this ridiculous, crime-infested and breeding concept.
Jerry Brown is trying to back out of the National Guard at the border, but the people of the state are not happy, want security and safety now.
So it seems obvious to me when he said this breeding concept, what he meant was this concept, this idea that's just getting worse and worse.
Listen to Ryan and Acosta ask what this word means.
And you tell me if they would ever, ever, ever have taken anything from Obama out of context like this.
Listen to this.
When he used the word breeding, was he making a derogatory term about Latinos in California that they breed a lot or that they're prone to breeding?
No, he's talking about the problem itself growing and getting bigger.
What does breeding mean to this president?
Because when you think of breeding, you think of animals breeding populated.
I'm not going to begin to think what you think.
Certainly, I think that it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.
But the president is talking about a growing problem, and I addressed that with Jim.
I don't have anything else to add.
They got asked twice.
They got asked twice about his use of the word breeding.
They must be out there breeding.
And they did this.
You know, it was serious when they did it in Charlottesville, you know, when they did it about that.
That was serious.
They make the guy look like some kind of racist madman so that Kanye West has to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune because he actually is friends with Donald Trump, who's won awards for his work among the black community.
It's utterly absurd.
It is utterly absurd, but they lie.
The biggest lie they tell is the lie they tell themselves.
You know, the New York Times had an article, it's a former newspaper, you may have heard of it.
They had an article about what you never, you never see that point of view in the mainstream press.
And they took a poll of about a thousand people.
What would you like to see in the mainstream press that you never see?
And of course, the biggest one was you never see any Trump supporters.
You never see anybody.
And Trump supporters.
And at the same time, they said, oh, also, we'd like to see more open communists, open social.
Like, we never see people on the left.
Now, I believe the Times is lying about this, but I think everybody must say, how come you have no Trump supporters in your newspaper, not one?
So he says, well, the guy writing it, he says, well, yeah, it's true that we don't talk enough about Donald Trump, but the Trump problem strikes me as trickier to solve because so much of Trump's political style depends on lying.
Well, so much of the New York Times depends on lying, too.
If you covered, if you did not cover the Obama IRS scandal, the greatest presidential scandal of my lifetime, a lifetime which includes Watergate, if you didn't include it, cover it the way you just won this Pulitzer Prize for covering the scandal that doesn't even exist about Russia, then you're a liar.
Even your good reporting just contributes to the lie.
You know, I know that Joy Behar is not a journalist, but I just want to play this for one minute.
Joy Behar, that horrible cackling humanoid on the view.
You know, they had this picture at Barbara Bush's funeral where Obama and George W. Bush and Clinton were all there and they're smiling and they're, you know.
And Joy Behar says, isn't this wonderful?
Isn't this the way it ought to be if only Trump could be like this?
So listen to Joy Behar.
This picture made me nostalgic for the America that I grew up in, basically, where there were statesmen running the country instead of Caribbean and Trump.
Now, one of those people in that picture denigrated the press.
I think that that differentiates all of those from Donald Trump.
They didn't like the press.
There were many acrimonious moments where people got into trouble with the press.
You know, even George W. and Clinton, they were not happy.
But this guy goes after the press as if the press is the enemy and makes up fake stories.
And that's why they're different from him.
That's one of the main reasons why we should be looking at that picture and understanding what we've seen.
Joy Behar said of the George W. Bush administration, I don't know what it's going to take for people to really wake up and understand that they are liars and they are murderers.
This is the George W. Bush administration.
That's what I mean, though.
This is what I mean.
I know she's not a journalist, but they're all like this.
They're all like, they don't know.
They don't know that they said the same thing about Mitt Romney that they say about Trump, that they treated George W. Bush like scum.
They treated him like dirt.
They kicked him around like a soccer ball and they treated Obama like the second coming of Christ.
I mean, even Barbara Walters said that.
We thought he was this new coming of the Savior.
And they think that doesn't affect the way they cover it.
And they think we don't see the way they cover it because they think it's reality.
See, that's the thing.
They think, yes, yes, we did treat Obama like Jesus because he was Jesus.
You know, that's why.
That's why we do it.
And we treat Trump like a devil because he's Satan.
Anybody can see it.
I mean, this is the thing.
They're living in this lie.
So let's just look.
It really always helps, at least once a week, it always helps to stop, look at reality, look at what's really happening, and then look at the coverage in the press.
And it couldn't be any funnier with Trump meeting with the French president, Macaroon, or whatever the heck his name is, Makara and Makaya McKinney.
They had their first state dinner, first state dinner.
And first, before I start on the rest of the press, I have to give kudos to CBS, who finally noticed something that has really gotten to me, is that Melania Trump is a great first lady.
She's far, far better than, you know, she's, it would be hard to top W's wife, Laura Bush.
It would be hard to top Laura Bush, but she has been elegant, classy, and after all, her husband is under fire.
Her husband has probably done terrible things in their marriage, and it's all coming out.
And yet, she remains incredibly classy.
And CBS finally noticed the disparity.
Play that clip.
But if she seemed mysterious, maybe one reason is the media hasn't exactly embraced her.
Trump supporter James Woods pointed out an apparent double standard on Twitter.
Michelle Obama graced more than 30 major U.S. magazine covers when her husband was president.
So far, Mrs. Trump has been on exactly none, and only one foreign magazine.
Nearly 20 years ago, when she was dating Mr. Trump, the New York Times said she might be the perfect political spouse.
She said then if she ever became first lady, she would be traditional like Jackie Onassis.
And since the inauguration, when she first drew comparisons to Jackie Oh, she's weathered her husband's storms with dignity, much like her famous predecessor.
Melania Trump is the first lady of the century, like Jackie O was the first lady of last century.
Paolo Zampoli is a longtime friend of both Trump's.
We have seen clearly the way that she's changing the White House, the way she's decorating the White House.
She has her own taste.
Very elegant, very classy.
Melania's Hat Buzz00:08:08
So good for them, because really she has gotten nothing but flack.
She has been elegant and composed and kind to kids and really, really, you know, she just, she makes you proud.
You know, she makes it proud that she's representing the country.
And I was not somebody, you know, I've said that it's kind of a cognitive dissonance because her background is not what you would think the background of a first lady has been, but she's just been doing a good job and good for them for mentioning it.
All right, so Trump and Macaron get it together and they obviously love each other, the two of them.
It's like an actual relationship.
The hilarious moment, we got to play it because it's just hilarious.
It's Trump brushing the dandruff.
They can't keep their hands off one another and Trump brushes the dandruff off the French president's shoulder.
But we do have a very special relationship.
In fact, I'll get that little piece of dandruff off.
We have to make him perfect.
He is perfect.
It's great.
All right.
It's a funny moment, but they're talking about serious stuff.
And Trump has these objections to the Iran deal, the Barack Obama's Iran deal, which was pushed forward through lies and by tricking the press openly.
They say they tricked the press.
And he's right.
He's right to have.
These are worthwhile objections to have, but he is also in a bind, which was that the Iran deal was diabolically set up to give Iran all this money, to give everything to Iran up front, and only get whatever benefits we get afterward.
And so we get this 10-year delay in their nuclear weapons program, considering the fact that they are demonic terrorist nutballs.
That's nothing.
10 years, you know, that's the thinking of a child.
I mean, John Oliver was on him saying 10 years is better than now.
10 years is now when you're talking about nuclear weapons for Iran.
It's absurd.
It is a childish, stupid deal.
Trump is right.
And the Europeans have their own self-interests, which is that they like dealing with Iran.
They like to deal with the oil, and they do a lot of commercial dealing with them, trading with them.
And so it's good for Europe.
So Macron is trying to get Trump to maybe renegotiate the deal.
They're talking about serious stuff.
Okay, that's what they're talking about.
Let's talk about what the press is talking about, okay?
Here is CNN's editor.
What's his name?
The editor at large, Chris Saliza.
He's looking at, in case you're not watching, you're just listening, he's looking at a picture of the French First Lady and Melania and Macron and Trump all holding hands and raising up their hands triumphantly.
And some of them have their, the French people have their fingers, I guess, lifted.
This is Chris Salizi reporting the news.
This is the four of them after they both gave, Macron and Trump both gave speeches.
So obviously lots of people talking about Melania Trump's hat.
That's the buzz of the picture.
But I just want to point one thing out.
People will say, oh, I find the political theatrics fascinating.
What is going on here and here?
Why is Macron doing the hook'em horns?
It's very, it's either that or the Gene Simmons Kiss guitarist thing.
But either way, it's super weird.
Melania Trump grabbing his other two fingers.
That's a pro move.
Donald Trump grabbing, I think, just Macron's middle finger.
Super, super awkward.
These are the things that I spend my life trying to figure out, Brooke.
It's a blessing and a curse.
It's a curse for us.
It's a blessing for you that you're getting paid to do that, that you got paid to waste 45 seconds of actual airtime talking about that.
And let's just go back to the New York Times for a minute, how they're covering this.
It's an obvious friendship between these two guys.
And, you know, who knows why it is.
It's like they hit it off.
They like each other.
All right, here's the New York Times talking about what they call le bromance, right?
For all of the disagreements and differences of opinions that the presidents hashed out privately on Tuesday, none more prominent than whether to keep or scrap the nuclear deal with Iran, Mr. Trump and Mr. Macron seem to revel in each other's presence, pouring on the charm.
Perhaps it was a diplomatic strategy on the part of Mr. Macron, who hosted Mr. Trump last summer at the Bastille Day parade in Paris.
Or perhaps Mr. Trump was simply trying to please or dominate his guest.
The idea that they might just like each other never occurs to them.
Mr. Trump took, you know, because how could they?
Because the New York Times doesn't live in a world where that's possible.
Mr. Trump took Mr. Macron's hand as they went to walk into the Oval Office, not letting go as they strolled away.
It was a stark contrast to the chilly reception Mr. Trump appeared to receive from his wife Melania earlier in the day as they awaited the Macron's arrival on the South Lawn when he reached his fingers over gingerly to try to clasp hands with Mrs. Trump, who at first did not reciprocate.
And ultimately they did hold hands.
You know, I actually saw this piece of video and he's, you know, got his little fingers kind of knocking her face.
You know, who knows?
She may not have even felt it.
Who knows what's going on?
I mean, remember, but just to show you where the New York Times stands, because the New York Times thinks that they are an objective newspaper with a slightly urban liberal tilt, right?
That comment, that comment is the same as MSNBC.
Now, I rarely pick on MSNBC, right?
Because they're an openly leftist organization.
The New York Times I pick on because they lie, because they think, and they lie to them.
The biggest lie they tell is the one they tell themselves that they play it straight.
But let's just listen to MSNBC talking about the same thing, the fact that the president and Macron touch each other all the time.
It was interesting to watch all of that today.
There's clearly a relationship that's developed between Trump and Macron.
I have a relationship.
Well, I don't know, but we do not see that with Merkel, who's going to be able to do that.
We do not see that with Melania.
I've never seen him.
I've not seen him touch Melania that many times.
I mean, it is, you know, like I expect it from MSNBC.
I expect it from the New York Times too, but the New York Times doesn't expect it from himself.
Let me end this with just a little piece from one of the really good websites is Campus Reform, which goes out and talks to college kids and just shows how little they know about things.
Recently, they went out and they asked them about Trump sending troops, National Guard troops, to the border to protect the border.
And first asked about Trump and then told them, only then did they tell them that Obama had done exactly the same thing.
And listen to this and think about the media because this is what the media is like.
I don't think it's good to send, you know, militarized troops to people who are coming in unarmed.
Walls don't really like key people out.
And like, just think about it, like, how many airplanes are there?
They're basically there to, like, does it shoot to kill?
Like, what's like, I don't want there to be any loss of life.
Like, that seems like the only goal here.
Did you know that President Obama did the exact same thing when he was president?
Like.
Honestly, I'm not super up to date with politics.
I didn't know that.
I just think that we need to be so like compassionate toward other people, and it's definitely not what he's putting forward.
And did you know President Obama did the same move?
He also sent a few thousand troops in the United States.
I did not know that.
Is that surprising?
I mean, yeah, I guess, yeah.
I would say, yeah, that's kind of surprising.
It sounded like you're opposed to that when President Trump did it.
Were you opposed to it when President Obama did it, though?
When President Obama did it, I felt that there was, I suppose, different coverage as to what the intentions were.
I don't know anything about that, personally.
But that is the American press.
That is the American press.
When Donald Trump comes out and says this deal has problems, the Iran deal has problems.
I guarantee you, if Trump had made this deal with Iran and Obama were trying to overturn it or renegotiate it, it would be like, oh my God, this deal is so bad.
It's who does it.
It is who does it.
And you know, it wouldn't all, they could fix it easily, hire some Trump supporters, put some Trump supporters on the editorial desk.
Easy, easy fix, but the biggest lie they tell them to tell is the one they tell themselves, and it is that they are objective.
And it's because Trump is attacking them that they must be doing what's right.
And they're not.
They are not.
The mailbag is coming up, which means you're just a few minutes away from all your problems being solved.
Consequences Of Bigotry00:08:12
This is a great day for you.
Start drinking.
Come on over to TheDailyWire.com.
Mailbag!
Yeah.
See, that was perfect timing.
We should always do it like that.
I just have to draw.
If I drag out the bag a little bit, it gives us time to hit that button.
All right.
From Iago.
Dear great patriarch Clavin, destroyer of feminist myths, I am afraid I am becoming a sexist in the misogynistic sense of the word.
Recently, I've been noticing more and more how the differences between the sexes play a major role in history and society.
Camille Paglia made it clear that societies that start adopting feminine qualities start to see the beginning of their society crumble.
Women just aren't as interested in the truth and how women tend to make decisions based on emotion and security rather than reason and freedom makes me think that women are, pardon the harsh words, ladies, inferior in the development of philosophies or societies that work.
My entire life, I've had more female friends than male, but I just can't get over how irrational and emotional most women have been sounding as of late.
Lord Clavin, help me see the errors of my views, or at least how women aren't as bad as I'm making them sound here.
Thanks, and I'm sorry to any women watching that I may have offended.
I'm really not that bad a guy.
All bigotry is the same.
All bigotry is the same.
It's when you are bigoted against a group, it is not that you are saying anything wrong about the group, it is that you're overestimating yourself.
It is not that other people don't have problems.
It's not that any group that you put together, whether it's a random group or a racial group or a sex group, are going to have problems that are related to that actual group, that actual grouping.
It is the idea that you are better than they are, that somehow you don't have those flaws and that your flaws aren't equally destructive to the world at large or to people at large.
I have had the advantage of working both in an office that was all men and in an office that, except for me, was all women.
And I can tell you that when there is not balance, you've got serious, serious problems.
You really do.
And it may be, it may be that men who have a greater propensity for risk are more at ease with freedom than women are.
But some of the fiercest defenders of freedom I know are women and some of the worst violators against freedom because they believe that the opposition should be crutched, crushed, like we were talking about yesterday.
They believe that freedom can only be maintained if we crush the opposition.
You think, well, that's not freedom anymore.
You know, those tend to be men.
So your mistake is not thinking, oh, women are more emotional than men.
Women are more emotional than men.
Your mistake may not be thinking that men have the capacity to be incredibly coldly rational.
Your mistake is not seeing the flaws of men.
Your mistake is not seeing the flaws of men.
You sound like Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.
You know, women are irrational.
That's all there is to that.
And why can't there be men who are so reasonable and pleasant and nice?
It's not what he's saying about women.
It's what he's saying about men.
We are all of us.
We are all of us deeply, deeply flawed.
We are all of us a danger to society and ourselves.
We are all of us a danger to freedom, every single one of us.
That women are going to be flawed like women and men are going to be flawed like men.
That's true.
That is true.
But that women's flaws are greater than men's flaws is ridiculous.
It's all about good people and all about people who support the right ideas.
That's all it's about.
All right.
I hope that convinced you.
Otherwise, you're going to have a very lonely life.
From Kathy.
Andrew, do you believe in hell?
I understand the argument about why there's evil on earth because God doesn't want to force us to follow him.
And in order for there to be a true relationship, there must be freedom of choice involved.
A natural consequence of this is the existence of evil.
But the prospect of facing eternal damnation for choosing not to form a relationship with the Creator seems a bit like putting a gun to someone's head and telling them they're totally free to choose if I can rob them or not.
Interesting point.
First, let me answer, just in all honesty, I almost never think about what happens after I die.
I mean, first, I'm never going to die.
And secondly, when I do die, I'm coming back because just to repay those who have offended me.
So, you know, I just don't think about it.
And when I read the Gospels, when I read the Bible, there's very, very little actual information.
Most of it, most of what we think about hell and what we think about heaven is deduced.
So you ask me all these things, you know, do I believe in hell?
Yeah, I suspect that what I believe is that the arc of morality is longer than life.
The moral arc is longer than life because God lives longer than life and we live longer than life.
We live in God's world.
And the things that we do in this world have an effect and they have a result.
And it seems perfectly likely to me that the things we do in this world continue to have an effect as we go forward.
So you say that's a threat, but it's not really a threat because it's something you're doing to yourself.
If you don't work out, you're going to be out of shape.
If you do work out, you'll be in shape.
Now, I hope you enjoy working out.
I enjoy working out.
But, you know, still, you do it also for the results.
Everything you do is for the results, really.
Everything you do, except just the experience of joy itself, you do for because of a purpose, right?
You do for a purpose, and you know that there are going to be consequences.
You know, if you drink hard tonight, you're going to feel bad tomorrow.
You know, if you don't, you know, you're going to feel better.
Everything has consequences.
So the fact that we live in a world of consequences, you can look at as being a threat, or you can just look at it as the facts of life.
And if you believe, you know, you cannot believe in those things, but it's just going to lead you where it leads you.
And the thing about it is, is because it would be, to me, unfair if everything went great in life and then the trapdoor opened up beneath you and you fell through the roof because you didn't know the right name of God.
I don't believe that.
I don't believe that that's what happens.
I don't believe we're living in a game show, a random game show.
It's like, ah, sorry, you didn't say Jesus, Jesus.
Boom, you're done.
You know, I don't believe that that's the way it works.
I believe that if you follow what is the best instinct within yourself toward virtue, you're going to get there, get to the right place, get where you want to go.
And so if you're not doing that, you already know you're doing the wrong thing.
So it's not like a big surprise if as you go through into the afterlife, the consequences continue.
The one thing I will say is this.
Somewhere in my heart, I believe that in the idea that damnation is eternal, Jesus is always saying that the fire is never extinguished, but he doesn't necessarily say nobody ever gets out.
And I've always wondered if there is a moment when anybody and everybody can still be saved.
That is more in keeping with my idea of God.
But again, I don't think about it that much because it's really literally above my pay grade.
It's literally the thing that you're not supposed to know.
From Jeremy, hi, I am wondering about your theme song.
Is it original or am I missing a cultural reference?
My kids come running when they hear it and sing hooray hurrah.
They run away when they hear Shapiro's guitar riff.
Run for your lives, children, when you hear that guitar riff.
Shapiro is coming after you.
That's how you scare your kids into doing the right thing.
Do better behave or Ben Shapiro is coming after you.
The song is inspired by a Danny Kay.
Danny Kaye, who's one of the funniest comedians who ever lived, and he had a very big movie career.
His movies are okay.
And some of them are great.
The Courtester is a great, great comedy still.
I think it still holds up.
But he's in a movie called The Merry Andrew, right?
And in this is one of the worst songs ever written by one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived, Johnny Mercer, called Everything is Tickety Boo.
And he's supposed to be an Englishman, and their English are supposed to say everything is tickety-boo.
So the Merry Andrew is singing Everything is Tickety Boo.
So I once came in and made that joke, and I think it was Jeremy Boring, the God king of the Daily Wire, who suggested we turn the joke into a song.
So we, Jeremy and I, wrote the song that was supposed to be a kind of takeoff.
Why Marriage Brings Joy00:08:46
We didn't think we could just steal everything is tickety boo.
And so that's how the song came to be.
Jeremy wrote the first verse and then I went through and made it worse.
I said, this is not quite bad enough for a theme song.
So I went through and made it worse.
All right, from Christopher, Dear Galactic Viceroy of all that is mediocre, all that is mediocre.
I am an, I guess if I'm the Lord of the Multiverse, that includes the mediocre.
I am an Army reservist in Idaho and I'm up for potential deployment.
If I deploy, my fiancé and I were planning on getting married legally before I leave, then having the ceremony and reception immediately upon coming home.
That way she's entitled to my benefits in the case that I get blown up.
God forbid.
This will also increase the amount that I'm paid in my allowance for housing.
That way she won't have to worry at all about rent or living, considering she will be finishing college while I'm gone.
We have been waiting to have sex until we are married because of our Christian faith and have been seeking a multitude of wise counselors and gnolls.
That's what it said.
Wondering if we should have sex after we sign the legal document or wait until I get home and have the religious ceremony before we get it on.
I am her spiritual leader, as we believe a husband should be, and she will be in favor of whatever I decide.
Would I be leading her into sin if we have sex after signing the legal vow but before taking our religious ones before our friends and family?
Well, I don't understand why.
There's another question like this about living together and one, it's almost the same question.
Somebody, they want to move in together because they can't afford the wedding.
So here is my take on this.
First of all, this whole notion of big weddings now that has become a big deal, I don't care about it.
I virtually eloped with my wife.
We had 10 people at our wedding.
That was like 40 years ago.
We've been very happy ever since.
You know, you don't need a big wedding.
I don't understand in this question why you can't have a quick service done by an actual minister, solve your problem, and sleep together and be married.
And then if you want to have a big ceremony when you get back or when you have more money, do it then.
I don't understand why you can't, why that seems like a very simple solution to me.
Why get all legalistic and wonder, does this work?
Just have the ceremony performed by whatever your religion is very quickly and then come back and have a big wedding if you want.
Take my advice, come back and don't have a big wedding and instead get a nice house, you know, invest in a house and have something that you'll have forever.
But I don't even understand why you're setting up this dichotomy.
If it bothers you that you'd only be married legally and not religiously, get married religiously quickly and have a big party when you get back and stay safe.
From Marissa, dear Lord of most wisdom, I was brought up, see, not many people know that title.
That's one of my more obscure titles.
I was brought up in the Christian faith and have always tried to follow the Bible to some extent.
I have recently started spending more time trying to read, understand, and follow faithfully.
I have noticed that I repeatedly struggle and fail with battling jealousy.
I am a student athlete at college and have been working very hard for the last two and a half years to compete at nationals.
This year, I have been pathetically underperforming while a freshman will more than likely be making nationals in the same event.
She's a wonderfully smart, beautiful, dedicated, and hardworking individual, and I want to be her friend.
However, even when I talk with her outside of practice, I feel a competitive urge and slightly jealous.
Do you have any suggestions on what I should do to stop regarding her as competition and drop my jealous feelings of her so I can have a true friendship?
Thank you in advance, Marissa.
This is a big deal.
You know, Ernest Hemingway wrote a whole book about this called The Green Hills of Africa, the moral of the story, which is envy ruins everything.
Jealousy ruins everything, which I truly believe.
I wrestled with it a great deal in youth and I overcame it.
And to be honest, I'm not, I've tried to go back and trace what I did to overcome it.
I mean, I learned to take great pleasure in the achievements of my friends.
Now, listen, I've done most of the things in my life that I wanted to do.
I have like achieved, that doesn't mean that everything I did always succeeded, but I've achieved everything that I set out to do.
And so that does kind of make you relaxed.
But, but it was, I really do believe it was more than that.
I really understood two things early on.
One, I understood that I wasn't actually jealous of other people's achievements.
I was angry that I wasn't achieving something.
So that's the first thing.
You say in your letter that you have been pathetically underperforming.
And the question that immediately comes into my mind is why?
Are you pathetically underperforming because you're not working hard enough?
Are you pathetically underperforming because you don't have as much skill as you thought you had?
Why are you pathetically underperforming?
Because that's your real problem.
Your real problem is not that this girl is going to the nationals, it's that you're not and you're not living up to your expectations.
And so that's the problem you have to solve.
I mean, even when I experienced envy in the old days, I realized that I didn't want my friends to fail.
I loved my friends.
I wanted them to succeed.
I was actually happy for them.
I was just dissatisfied with my own life.
And that was a very, very important distinction.
So the question here is, you know, why aren't you inspired by this competitor to do better?
Why aren't you using her skills to move you up the ladder so that you're doing better?
Why are you underperforming?
That's the first question that comes into my mind.
The other thing I learned to teach myself is where my joy came from.
What made me joyful?
What made my life joyful?
And what I learned was everything in my life that was joyful came from love.
Whether it was big love, like my love for my wife and my family, or my love for my work, which gave me big joy, or little love, like my love of doing puzzles, which gives me joy.
You know, like I've learned that to actually live into the things I love and live into the joy of those things.
And that starts, means that you look at other people who have things that maybe you don't have, like a billion dollars, and you think, would that give me joy?
Really, I don't love money that much.
I mean, I like having enough money.
I want to have enough money to do the things I want to do, but I'm not in love with money, so that wouldn't give me that much joy.
That means that I don't envy people who have a billion dollars.
I don't envy people who do things at a level that I don't think is very good, even if it wins them popularity, because I love excellence.
I love writing well.
I love doing what I do well.
And even if it means that my stuff is a little quirky and offbeat and not as popular as some guy who's writing for the bestsellers, it just doesn't bother me because I live into the joy.
So those are my two recommendations.
Hemingway was right.
Envy ruins everything.
It just saps your joy.
So my two questions are: why are you not doing what you want to do?
How can you solve that problem?
And two, what really gives you joy?
Does your athleticism give you joy?
Does competing give you joy?
Does doing this stuff give you joy?
Do those things?
And then you won't have to envy anybody.
All right, we've got to end there.
It is time for Tickety Boo News.
Come with me if you want to live.
Come with me if you want to live because the New York Post has an article on what six easy ways men can live longer.
And the first one is by staring at boobs.
That is the headline.
Staring at boobs is just one of six easy ways men can live longer.
And this is tickety boo news because it means I'm going to be with you forever.
I'll never die.
No, the real reason this is tickety boo news is because that was their headline.
You know, stare at women's breasts and you'll live longer.
That apparently that, you know, I guess what would we say?
An interest in an interest in life and sex keeps you alive.
I guess that's what it is.
But the other five that are really interesting because they led with the stuff that they knew would get you to read the article, right?
What does it say?
It says, the same effect occurs when men look at cute animals.
Staring at women's breasts creates a positive mindset in men.
I could have told you that.
That's ridiculous.
And looking at cute animals also.
And positive thinking has a good effect on your health.
So the real headline is positive thinking, right?
They made it as sexy as they could.
Have lots of sex, right?
But having lots of sex helps you live longer.
Getting married also helps you live longer.
So, have lots of sex in your marriage.
See, they tried to make this as dirty as they possibly could, but really, what it's telling you is a positive mindset, get married, have kids, be responsible, and you don't have to worry about having a little extra weight.
Apparently, that you know, having a little extra weight is good for you and keeps you alive.
So, looking at those things, you know, looking at women, having lots of sex, get married, have kids, be responsible, get a little extra weight.
I'm golden.
I care till I'm 110.
Positive Mindset & Extra Weight00:00:47
Dennis Miller will be with us tomorrow.
Is that right?
Dennis Miller, a hilarious comedian who has not been afraid of expressing his political leanings toward the right, he will be with us.
I will be with us.
I hope you will be with us.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
is the Andrew Klavan show.
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.