Kanye West’s 2024 Twitter storm—calling Trump his "brother" and blasting Obama’s legacy—ignited a firestorm, exposing the cultural left’s stranglehold on dissent. Andrew Clavin frames it as a test of courage: from Hank Azaria’s Simpsons backlash to Hollywood’s ULAC-era betrayals, conformity now demands ideological purity, crushing figures like Candace Owens and Robert De Niro. Trump’s economic gains for minorities (black unemployment hit 5.4% in 2019) and unfiltered rhetoric mirror a disruptive force—like Jesus overturning "Pharisees"—while late-night comedy hosts like Colbert thrive on leftist alignment. The episode argues that resistance, from Dennis Miller’s comedy to Azaria’s defiance, is the only antidote to a system where talent and truth are sacrificed at the altar of performative outrage. [Automatically generated summary]
I dreamed I was on Twitter and suddenly Kanye West was tweeting not only that he loved Donald Trump, but about how Barack Obama had failed to help black people in America.
And I was like, whoa, no way.
And then all the leftists were coming after Kanye and he wouldn't back down.
And then Chance the Rapper started tweeting about how black people didn't have to be Democrats.
And then some gay people started tweeting that gay people didn't have to be Democrats either.
And then women started tweeting that as well.
And Matthew McConaughey started saying that anti-gun activists were trying to destroy the Second Amendment.
And I'm like, this is a dream, right?
Because now the only person left in America voting for Democrats was Bill Crystal, who said he preferred an unaccountable deep state governing America to Donald Trump.
And then he just started screaming incomprehensible gibberish and he turned into a gigantic gargoyle and flew away while candy canes fell out of the sky.
And then I woke up and it wasn't a dream.
Kanye and Chance, McConaughey, and Crystal, they all really said those things.
And my bed was covered in candy canes.
The gargoyle part, I think, was because I was an acid.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging all so sing hunky-dunky.
Shipshaw tipsy-topsy, the round of zippity-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
Another week has shot by like a bullet, and the Clavenless weekend threatens.
You know, you even, you forget.
You know, we get so involved in our week.
We forget that the Clavenless weekend is coming.
We have no reason to be happy because it'll just be darkness all over the land.
We have Dennis Miller, the mighty Dennis Miller.
You know, very few people have ever made me laugh so hard that I fell off the couch.
Robin Williams made me laugh so Dennis Miller, I remember his last, it was an HBO special.
I just remember laughing so hard, I slid to the floor.
He was like just a really, really funny guy and a guy who has had the guts not to follow the herd and not to be a typical Hollywood leftist.
So it's always going to be interesting to talk to him, especially on a day like this when the cultural left is in disarray.
Meanwhile, let's talk about Freedom Project Academy because, you know, I'm not one of these people who would like pounds my fists on, oh, you know, our schools have fallen apart.
But face it, our schools have pretty well fallen apart.
They are not, you are not sending your kid anymore to school to get lessons in civics and why America is the way it is.
You know, instead, you get this constant, constant stream of propaganda.
And it's just not like, you know, a place where they're going to come back knowing what you need them to know.
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Enrollment ends in July, but classes fill up fast.
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Don't forget to tell them that I sent you so they know that we are supporting them.
So my biggest thought when I saw what was happening yesterday on Twitter, which was dreamlike, is that really the only power the cultural left has is our cowardice.
They have no power except for the fact that we back down.
And this is really, it's really important to remember because this has been going on now forever.
So Kanye comes in and he says he loves Donald Trump.
And Shapiro, I didn't see this myself, but Shapiro told me there was a picture of him watching Jordan Peterson on TV.
It's like, they said he lost 10 million Twitter followers after this.
And then, I mean, that was one thing.
And Kanye's all over the place.
He's always been Trump's pal.
They've always been friends.
But the other thing is that Chance the Rapper comes out and he says, you know, black people don't have to be Democrats, which is pretty straightforward.
I mean, of course that is true.
And then the Matthew McConaughey was just kind of icing on the cake.
Matthew McConaughey said, you know, these people who are protesting our guns really do want to take our guns away.
And so this constant bullying goes on.
You know, and it's not just Twitter.
It's not just the Twitter birds that come down and basically crap all over you.
It is also the comedians at night.
You know, every single one of them, you know now that you're a target, you're a laughing stock.
It's this kind of, you know, let's watch Stephen Colbert on Kanye because it's this kind of upper class, you know, like disdain.
So here is this, you know, middle class, this middle-aged white guy, as he himself would say, this middle-aged white guy, delivering his, you know, verdict on what Kanye West should be talking about.
I think Kanye's lobbying for a job as Trump's new communications director.
They could just change his name to Kellyanne Kanye.
But the height of Kanye's Trump praise has got to be when he tweeted, you don't have to agree with Trump, but the mob can't make me not love him.
We are both dragon energy.
He is my brother.
I love everyone.
I don't agree with everything anyone does.
That's what makes us individuals.
And we have the rights to independent thought.
Yes, we have the right to independent thought.
And I independently think that Kanye has lost his mind.
You know what, Kanye?
You know what?
Donald Trump is your brother.
It is true.
I am your brother too.
And brother to brother, I just want to say, put the phone down.
Okay, you could have stopped at 10 a.m. this morning with, I'm nice at ping pong.
So, you know, if there were comedians who disagreed, who weren't part of the herd, that would be fine.
So one comedian goes after you, another comedian goes after somebody else.
But since they are all in the herd, what has really happened is that Kanye West has broken out of the herd.
And let me, you know, I started out this week making jokes about Kanye West as a great philosopher and all of this stuff.
That's not the point.
The point is not Kanye West.
It really is not.
It is simply his basic right as an American to think for himself without this kind of monolithic communication organ, which is the news, the entertainment media, the academy, falling down on top of him like the temple on Samson.
That's the only thing that's important about it.
And the important thing is that it instructs us.
Again, you don't have to participate in celebrity culture.
You don't have to think that Kanye West's ideas are important.
His ideas are no more important than Robert De Niro's, right?
I mean, when Robert De Niro comes out and says he wants to punch Donald Trump, that's not important either, except as an example of the fact that you can say what you want to say.
And that is the whole thing on the left is, yes, we can say what we want to say, but not you.
And, you know, the person who has become kind of the Greek chorus on this is our friend Candace Owens.
You know, this started out with Kanye saying that he liked the way Candace thinks.
And she has been on kind of giving a background of meaning to this that I think is really fair.
And she's in a position to do it where other people aren't.
And once they enslaved our bodies, the Democratic Party, let's say they have enslaved our minds.
They have told us who we must love, who we must hate, what we must think, what ideas are unacceptable.
And in the long run, it just doesn't add up.
Listen, I think differently.
Kanye West thinks differently.
I can guarantee you if he and I get in the same room, we will have a lot of disagreements.
The one thing that we will celebrate is our right to think differently.
I don't understand what's so controversial for the left to understand this.
The way that they have demonized him in the last 72 hours is almost sickening, but at the end of the day, it's going to have adverse effects.
I can guarantee you that.
Yeah, because the adverse effect is if Kanye doesn't crack and suddenly the curtain is pulled away and you realize the cultural left has no power except our cowardice.
You know, how many times have you heard on the mailbag or just in speeches I've given where people come up and the question they ask is, how can I say this?
How can I convince someone this?
How can I talk to my professor about that?
And what they're really saying is, how can I do this without paying any social price?
And the idea is, you don't.
You pay a social price.
You know, it's like Rhett Butler says, and gone with the wind.
With enough courage, you don't need a reputation.
That is really what it comes down to.
Candace Owens has the courage.
Kanye West has the courage.
It's not about whether you agree.
It really is not about whether you agree with them, whether you admire them, whether you like them.
It is simply about the fact that the other side has no power except when we stand down.
And if you want to see an example of this, take a look at Hankazaria.
Now, you know, this really pains me because, like I said before, my dad was a voiceman.
He was one of the great voicemen who ever lived.
Hankazaria is one of the great voicemen.
He is up there with Mel Blanc, who was the guy who did all the Warner Brothers voices, Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig.
They were all, you know, Daffy Duck.
They were all Mel Blanc.
Hankazaria is that level of a talent.
Now, that doesn't make him a genius.
It doesn't make him a philosopher.
It doesn't make him a good political guy.
But he has the right to, you know, we want him.
We want this great talent to be practicing his craft because to bring us entertainment.
So he does this character, Apu, who is one of the many, many cliched, silly characters on The Simpsons, happens to be an Indian guy, comes under fire, and The Simpsons basically had the temerity to answer back with a scene that said, you know what, we're not going to do anything about this.
Basically, you know, take a walk, pound sand.
And Hankazaria comes out and he's basically, you look at him, he's like, broken.
This thing has broken him.
But listen to the reason it has broken him.
Listen to what he says.
The most important thing is we have to listen to South Asian people, Indian people in this country, when they talk about what they feel and how they think about this character and what their American experience of it has been.
And as you know, in television terms, listening to voices means inclusion in the writer's room.
I really want to see Indian, South Asian writer, writers in the room, not in a token way, but genuinely informing whatever new direction this character may take, including how it is voiced or not voiced.
You know, I'm perfectly willing and happy to step aside or help transition it into something new.
I really hope that's what The Simpsons does.
And it just, it not only makes sense, but it just feels like the right thing to do to me.
He wants to be a decent human being.
He wants to be a decent human being.
Eharmony's Colonization of Manners00:02:32
And we, who have let the culture go, we have allowed the left to define what a decent human being is.
So that in order to have, in order to do what you need to do, in order to practice your profession, in order to make people laugh, in order to have actual comedy and actual truth being spoken, you need courage because they have colonized our system of manners.
But their colonization, just like the colonization of four guys who take over an entire community, they have no power unless we stand down.
They have no power except for our cowardice, our basically accepting their standards of what politeness and what decency is.
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The Courage to Be Rude00:09:45
You know, the fact that the left has colonized our system of manners, has colonized our standards of decency, and means that it requires courage to simply do what's right.
If you think about Hankazaria, think about the end result of if everybody did that, it would mean the most talented voiceman in America can't do people's voices if he doesn't have their color skin.
I mean, that is insane.
That is insane, right?
If a guy like Hank Azeria can't do any damn voice he wants, that is crazy.
So you think about the end result of what they're doing, you realize it's not decency, it's not politeness.
They've simply colonized those systems of values between us and made us think that we are not decent and not polite if we don't do what they said.
And that's the point of Donald Trump.
And that is why, even though I, you know, again and again, I keep saying Trump should clean up his act sometimes, again and again, it has been useful to have Donald Trump out there.
You know, Jonah Goldberg was on the show, what was it, two days ago, talking about his terrific new book, Suicide of the West.
And he was on, what's his name?
Noah.
I can't remember his last name.
Trevor Noah.
What did?
Trevor Noah, that's right.
Trevor Noah.
He was on Trevor Noah, also selling the book.
And he had this to say about what frustrates him about our politics and about Trump.
And it's a really interesting point in this conflict that we're in.
This drives me crazy about my own side these days, where I talk to young conservative activists, college students, and I say, look, by all means, fight political correctness if that's what you want to do.
But just because being rude is politically incorrect doesn't mean being rude is good.
And so much of what's happening, I think, on both sides of the political aisle is this idea that you can do almost any horrible thing if it annoys the right people.
Right.
And that's a huge part of the defense of Donald Trump, which I just find intellectually bankrupt, which is, well, he's got the right enemies or he's making the right people upset.
Well, you have to look at what is actually upsetting them.
Right.
And some of the things that upset liberals and leftists, I can agree with and I'll support.
But some of the other things are just sort of crassness, rudeness for its own sake.
And I don't see why I should defend that just because he's on my team, as it were.
And I agree with Jonah so far as he goes.
I mean, obviously, like, I do oppose rudeness.
I do oppose calling people names and political arguments and all this.
And it does bring down the standard of conversation.
But, but in the broader sphere, we do have to realize how completely everything we do has been taken over and that it requires courage to stand up and stand back.
And when people say, you know, oh, well, Donald Trump, at least he fights, and a lot of the never-Trumpers make fun of that.
They say, you know, oh, you know, he's this terrible guy, but at least he fights.
No, this is something really true.
It does, you know, when you are in a place where you're surrounded by your friends and where you don't want to be the guy who says the bad thing and you don't want to be the guy who's nasty and you don't want to be the guy who everybody points at and laughs at or yells at, right?
It means that you cannot find your own way to what you believe and to what the truth is.
And it takes a little bit of breaking the glass walls to get out of that prison.
And they have no power.
They have no power if you do not, if you stand up to them.
They do not have any power except for that.
And that's why Trump.
You know, we should listen to what Trump had to say about Kanye.
It was kind of amusing.
But it actually makes a good point.
He was talking on Fox and Friends.
I have known Kanye a little bit, and I get along with Kanye.
I get along with a lot of people, frankly.
But Kanye looks and he sees black unemployment at the lowest it's been in the history of our country, okay?
He sees Hispanic unemployment at the lowest it's been in the history of our country.
He sees, by the way, female unemployment, women unemployment, the lowest it's been in now almost 19 years.
He sees that stuff and he's smart and he says, you know what?
Trump is doing a much better job than the Democrats did.
And by the way, if they ever got in and started putting back all these rules and regulations where you can't breathe, where businesses go out of business, our country would be in big trouble.
And had I not gotten elected, Hillary would have come in.
She would have added more rules and regulations.
We would have been out of business.
He's making a perfectly valid point.
That is a perfectly valid point.
He's doing a better job than Obama did for the people Obama was supposed to represent.
He is.
He just is.
Their lives are better, economically speaking, than they were before.
And the press can twist everything he says to make it sound racist or to make it sound authoritarian.
But Obama was far more authoritarian, far more, he exceeded the rules of constitutional governance far more than Trump has.
And it's all an illusion created by the press.
Maybe not Trump's rudeness isn't, but the rest of it is.
And to break through that prison just takes a little courage.
You know, I just want to add one thing.
It doesn't take rudeness to fight back.
It doesn't take rudeness to fight back.
It takes the courage to be called rude.
It doesn't take indecency to fight back.
It takes the courage to be called indecent.
Those are different things.
And they have no power.
Again, they have no power if you have the courage to be called those things.
Just to show you an example, Jim, look at me, I'm Jim Acosta, accosted Sarah Sanders in the press briefing yesterday.
Acosta in that article, I think I was talking about it yesterday in Variety, basically said Americans are stupid.
Anybody who doesn't see what I see is stupid.
And then he said, well, I was taken out of context.
So Sarah Sanders gave him a little bit of the dig.
He was going after Ronnie Jackson, the guy who was going, the doctor who was appointed Trump's pick to run the VA, and he's now stood down because all these allegations came out against him.
He says the allegations are untrue, but he stood down.
And Acosta goes after Sarah Sanders and she says, well, you know, you know what it means to be taken out of context, right?
And Acosta goes nuts, right?
But listen to the way she handles him.
She's not rude at all.
She just stands up for what she has to say.
As I stated a moment ago, we support a free press, but we also support a fair press.
And I think that those things should go hand in hand.
And there's a certain responsibility by the repress to report accurate information.
I think a number of people are not.
I think a number of people in this room do that every single day.
They do their very best to provide fair and accurate information.
Certainly support that.
That's one of the reasons I'm standing here taking your questions.
And a lot of times taking your questions in a tone that's completely unnecessary, unneeded, and frankly doesn't help further the conversation or help the American people get any more information in a better way, which is your job and my job, and that's what I'm trying to do.
I'm going to move on.
David, look at the president's tone towards the press.
Jim Press.
The president's tone towards the press obviously is not helpful at times, and I think that that's plain to see.
I mean, there's nothing rude about that.
The only one being rude is Jim.
Look at me.
I'm Jim Acosta.
You know, Acosta in her.
I mean, the guy's aptly named.
He's like Charles Blow, who blows.
He's Acosta because he's constantly accosting people.
But it doesn't take rudeness.
It doesn't take antiquity.
It takes the courage to be called those things.
And once you show that courage, like Kanye did, you know, say what you want about Connie, but he has that dragon blood in him.
They gave him the courage.
Once you have it, they disappear.
They just vanish.
They have no power except for that.
And why, you know, it matters.
You know, I haven't talked about this all week.
And there's a reason I haven't talked about it.
It's so awful that in some ways, you know, you can't put into words what's so awful about this thing that's happening in England, okay?
England, which was once the most polite country in the world, this thing about Alfie Evans, his name is Little Baby, has some kind of disease.
Nobody is quite clear what it is, but some kind of rare degenerative disease.
And the court has determined in England that he must die.
And they've essentially decided to put him down like a dog.
That is essentially what they did because the parents want to keep him alive.
They want to fight for his life.
The court says, no, you can't do it.
They took him off life support.
The baby keeps on fighting, keeps on fighting and is still there.
What's awful about this is if the National Health says this baby is too expensive to keep him alive, fine.
But the parents want to take him to Italy where they're willing to treat him.
The Italians sent in a chopper to get him.
They send out police to keep the baby there so that he can be killed.
You know, this is a culture where England is a culture where the ordinary man has lost his voice, where when you speak up against Islam, you can get arrested.
When a guy gave the finger to a traffic camera the other day and they said they were going to put him away and somebody trained his dog to give the Nazi salute, which I thought was pretty clever, actually.
Trained his dog to give the Nazi salute as a joke and they put him on trial.
This is a place where the ordinary man has lost his voice.
It can happen here.
And when it does happen, you have a state that believes you belong to them.
I don't know anything about, I would not presume to make some kind of medical statement about where this baby is or what's right for this baby.
I don't know.
I only know that it's the parents' right to choose.
It is not the state's.
This woman, somebody pointed this out on Twitter, that this woman could have killed this baby, aborted the baby before it was born, and now they won't let her keep it alive.
So suddenly she loses choice.
Death always wins.
Brian's Late Night Observations00:15:06
Hey, is Dennis on one?
Dennis Miller, like I said, one of the few comedians who has ever made me fall off the couch.
I laugh so hard.
He's a five-time Emmy Award winner for his show Dennis Miller Live.
He most recently served as host for eight years of the nationally syndicated Westwood One radio talk show, The Dennis Miller Show.
He's had four New York Times bestsellers.
He is about to start performing live again.
It's Saturday, May 19th.
He'll be at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee Friday, June 15th.
He will be at the NYCB Theater at Westbury on Long Island.
And in June, he'll be taping his 10th stand-up special.
It was one of his stand-up specials that made me literally roll off the couch.
I laugh so hard.
Dennis, are you there?
What's up, young Drew?
How are you doing?
It's gotten so bad in England now that after literally local citizens are beheaded on a bridge in the restaurant district, the mayor rushes out to a podium, Sadiq Khan, to say this is not terrorism, but rather the work of a solo crazed individual.
And I thought, what did Sadiq Khan turn into the mayor from Jaw?
It's like, oh, Martin, the beaches will be open.
We will have to suffer on Amity.
That's all it needs is those violins, right?
Bump, So you are a guy who has, in fact, defied the cultural left.
You are guilty of doing comedy while not being a leftist.
What do you think when you're looking at Kanye West on Twitter?
Good for him.
I mean, I admire him.
That takes some courage to step out like that.
And the fact that he's pushed all his chips in on Trump, I would say, well, the hashtag I put up is orange is the new black.
The rap community is going to start going over to Trump.
And it's pretty an old-type selection at that point.
Because I really think there is some crazy lock on people's, I love when he talks about freeing your mind up.
And then I saw another, listen, I'm not plenty the elder of the hip-hop world, but I saw a guy named Chance the Rapper say that, yeah, being black doesn't mean you have to vote Democrat.
And I thought, oh, man, whatever, I guess right now it's probably in Terry McCullough's office, Dem Central.
They must be freaking out if this if that firewall is going to start breaking.
They would have nobody.
I mean, if they lost the black vote, they would never win another election, basically.
Listen, if people just started getting free thinking, you know, I think it always sounds to William Shockley when you start talking about black vote.
I'm just saying, if people are, if any, you know, gender or any racially defined group or any of that just started freeing their thoughts, just to hear Kanye West say, Obama was president for eight years and nothing good happened in Chicago.
I thought, boy, you never see where it's coming from.
But it's almost like it reminds me of Kier DeLay in 2010, not 2001, where he said, you remember his talk?
He said, it's beautiful.
He can see the thing breaking down.
It's beautiful.
Oh, my God, so many stars.
And I was thinking when I was watching Kanye, I thought, boy, who would have thought Kanye West, when I would watch him so insolent and I think publicly drunk, grabbing a young girl's Grammy out of her hand and being a bit of an embarrassment?
And you think, there's life.
You never can predict it.
I think he might set off something here that, well, all I would say is, oh my God, so many stars.
Because if people start getting illuminated, listen, there's going to be some things on the right that don't make any sense to me.
But I'm telling you, there are more on the left right now.
The rigidity of the lockstep has gotten comical at this point.
When I watch the North Korean Army in a missile parade, I think, wow, they're looser than we are.
A scary thought.
I mean, you have been, it seems to me, fearless.
For all I know, you go home and hide in the corner and tremble, but you seem fearless in expressing your opinion.
You've been on Bill O'Reilly, which puts a target on your head.
Have you suffered for this politically?
I mean, professionally.
I think suffered is an overused word in this call.
You should go visit Walter Reed or Bethesda or St. Jude's.
Listen, I got to sleep with myself at night.
It doesn't matter how big my house is, which is one reason the book probably stayed locked up in Hollywood.
At the end of the day, you're heading to a spot that's like a roadrunner cut out of your body.
You got to sleep in the board.
It doesn't matter to me about being decried.
I'm a 64-year-old man.
If I've taken the long ramble from being born through 64, and I haven't learned that you don't have to care about what other people think as long as you're trying to be a civil human being, trying to be reasonably kind.
I see that in that Kanye tweet where he just said, I'm sick of the thought, police.
For God's sakes, what am I supposed to do?
Like, you know, go through the whole cycle and then ask somebody on the view to pre-approve my death rattle when I get to the end.
That's about the way life is.
So then, what do you think when you see, I was talking before about Hank Azaria, who I admire so much.
I mean, my father was a really good voice man, and Azaria is up there with Mel Blank in terms of his talent at doing voices, and he has to stand down and apologize for doing APU.
I mean, doesn't that send a chill up your spine?
I don't care.
I'm a huge fan.
Hank Kazaria can do what he wants.
I'm leading Dennis Miller's life, and there's too much second-guessing right now going on, social media and all that.
God, I look at social media, I think never have lives less lived been more scrutinized.
You know what I mean?
It's like we're putting everything under the jeweler's loop.
It's like we do the Zabruder film 10 times a day on other people's intimate moments.
I remember once I met Carl Malden backstage at a video conference.
It was like an award ceremony.
He was getting a lifetime video.
I also remember that Leonard Malden was like I'm seeing that night.
And one of the subjunctions the evening was they had to get the porn award.
No, it wasn't the porn award.
It was just video all of it.
But one of them, you know, a big seller is porn.
I remember Leonard Malden had to give the award to a film called Edward Penis Hand.
So hard because he's in his tucks and he reluctantly opens the envelope because the winner is Edward Penis.
And I'm in the back row with Carl Malden.
We're dying.
And I say to Malden, and this stuck with me forever, I say, you know, Carl, I know he was talking about Ilya, how he wanted to push, and indeed he did get him an Oscar at Kazan down the road.
I said, I'm always wondering how Bud Schulberg and Ilya Kazan, who to me are the proletariat town criers.
I mean, literally, the Gutenberg of proletariat ethos in this country would name names, even if they were already named names, in front of the ULAC committee.
I remember Malden looked at me and said, it was a long time ago, Dennis, and you weren't there.
And he said, can I tell you something?
You don't know how brave you are until they chain you to the radiator.
And man, it took my breath away.
It's true.
When you ask me about Hank Azari, I don't know Hank is there.
He can do whatever he wants about this animated figure on a longest running TV show ever, much beloved.
If we live in a time now where there are people out there who are going to try to ruin and break into a thousand pieces Hank Azari's rice bowl because he does the voice of a quickie mart owner on an animated thing, two things should go off in your head.
The Simpsons just passed gunsmoke is the longest running, most popular show in the history of television.
And in the space of maybe one or two years, the curtain has come down, prohibited it.
And if Azaria chooses to go through with it, he will have to be boycotted or ruined.
Now, you can look at Hank Azaria and say, it hurts me to say, Hank Azaria can do whatever he wants because it is a complete goat stop out there.
And anybody can do what they want.
Yeah, no, I totally understand that.
And the point, the Malden point is very, very well taken.
I guess, you know, when I look at the late night comics, for instance, I don't think Steve Colbert is a bad guy.
I don't think, you know, each one of them is a bad guy.
But it does seem a little unfair to me that they're all on one side.
It's when they gang up like that.
I know each one is not individually culpable, but the fact that you cannot turn on late night TV and see somebody support Trump seems just a little bit like 62 million Americans are being ganged up on.
Well, I'll go the other way.
I don't know Colbert at all, so I don't know what sort of guy he is.
And all I know is he was third and now he's one, I think.
Or maybe I can't even remember, but I do remember he got an unexpected, you know, to me, it's like when I look at the hashtag on social media, I always think, wow, nice second act for the tic-tac-toe grid.
Lucky little symbol hanging in there, a career that was stalled, then it gets an unexpected boost from the hashtag thing.
Well, that's sort of like Alec Baldwin and Colbert.
I don't think they were, I don't know, but they were stalled, but it wasn't as hot as it is now.
So Trump's come in and give them a bit of a boost.
But I'm saying if you're looking for fairness, you've got to look for fairness in a field that might be fair show business from its very core, from its very birth.
Whenever, I don't know, you see those people slow dancing in gauze dresses way back then.
And then the moon rocket gets stuck in the moon guy's eyeball, you know, from the beginning of time.
Hollywood has been an unfair business that's predicated a lot on cosmetic issues and breaks and rough rough hewn guys running rough shot over people who are needy because they want to be in show.
You know, to think, well, I find it unfair on late night television.
I'm telling you, you've got your binoculars on the wrong field for fairness.
All right.
Fair enough.
When you do your, you're doing anaping your 10th stand-up special, right?
Who's this for?
But I went back and ordered them all.
It's my ninth, and I did eight for HBO, one for, I think it was called Epic.
And now this ninth one is just for a nice gentleman who then sells it to individual platforms.
I got it.
Okay.
So now is your material still political when you go out and do stand-up?
I'd say it's around two-thirds non-political and a third political.
Because once you're the weekend update guy, they're going to expect you to do topic-driven stuff.
But then again, I don't want to go out there and turn this into a, you know, a sort of a Falcon and the Snowman dinner table argument with people.
I want to go out and make them laugh.
So around two-thirds, one-third.
So how has Trump affected the feel?
I mean, the way I look at some of these comics, Trump has become like the F-word.
They say it, and people laugh, but it's not always that funny.
But he is a character.
You couldn't invent the guy.
You were incredibly hilarious about Obama.
How do you feel about Trump?
I mean, where do you stand on the Donald?
Well, his tweeting makes me laugh out loud.
To me, Trump doesn't drink.
So lighting up ass hats on Twitter is a segue before bed.
And, you know, I look at Trump and I don't get all of it, but I'll say this, I get a lot of it.
And to me, he's a Ted Meely and Jesus Christ superstar.
He realizes what a corrupt, crap, three-card money game the Pharisees are running in the temple.
He just comes over and flips out over the table.
He'll figure out the rest of it later.
Are there days when I think he's a little uh crazy?
Yeah, there are.
But let me say this about Trump's craziness.
I think his outer voice is an accurate depiction of his inner voice, warts and all.
I don't think Hillary Clinton's inner voice, an outer voice, have ever even had a couple.
It'd be interesting to introduce them.
So, so if I was Trump, I'd call Hillary and try to hire her to deal with the Stormy Daniels thing.
I'd say, listen, Harold, Donald, you know this drill.
You're out of work.
You've been cheated on more frequently than a blind woman playing scrabble with gypsies.
Can you take over this thing for me?
Make it America great again.
One job the side.
So I have to ask you this: who makes you laugh now?
Who's funny that you like?
Brian Regan.
Brian Regan's the best stand-up in the world.
Jerry's the ever-great.
He's the greatest stand-up of our 25-year era.
So Brian Regan and the new guy who just destroys me is Sebastian Manascalco.
I don't know if you know him.
It's a bit of an odd name.
So M-A-N-I-S-C-A-L-C-O, Sebastian Manascalco.
Brian Regan, as I said, I think is the best.
And just hanging, David Spade, and Dana Carvey at dinner.
I have to be resuscitated.
All right.
So my final question: you're going out and you're going to do appearances Saturday, May 19th at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee, Friday, June 15th at NYCB Theater at Westbury on Long Island.
Do you ever run into political trouble?
Like do the people protest or anything like that?
Bad people get pissed at you, but come on, man.
Listen, I don't have to tell you.
We've got to get rhinos to get about this.
Honest to God, the day you find yourself going back to a day's end and laying on the bed and saying somebody didn't like me.
Get your life together, man.
Who cares?
I'm not out to actively piss people off, but I can't go back and say, did I alienate a fellow human today?
You can see the internet.
You could put up that you cured cancer and some people would troll you.
So who cares what people think?
You know, that's all that's changed because I think people were always this acrimonious with each other.
But back in, you know, Torto Mata's age, you didn't know how pissed off people were at each other.
Now everybody's little mental burp is put up in 100.
Warhol was a genius in retrospect saying everybody would be famous for 15 minutes.
He was probably a little too optimistic.
It doesn't even take that.
You can be famous.
You know, the last time I saw fame bars at our bars at this level, I was at a dwarf's wake.
Now, listen, I got to pitch one more thing.
I'm doing a podcast called the Dennis Miller option.
A Quiet Place Story00:05:26
And I'll leave it at that.
People can find it on Apple or Podcast One, but I'm talking about the world.
I did one about sports, but a lot of people don't follow sports.
I'm doing the sports one, and now I do the Dennis Miller option.
And I'm sorry to hammer it, but I owe it to the people who gave me the gig to get out there and sell it because it's new.
So thank you, Andrew.
You're a good, good cat.
I appreciate your time.
Hey, thanks a lot, Dennis.
I appreciate it.
All right, later, Gabe.
So that was a perfect example of what I was saying, right?
That's the attitude.
That's the attitude you need.
You can't go back to your hotel and worry that you offended anybody.
You know, it's just, it's life is too short.
You got to sleep with yourself.
You got to live with yourself.
I mean, that's it.
That's what it takes.
Take that attitude, and all those guys who frighten you, who make you feel worried about things, they all vanish.
They got no power if you have that attitude.
Hey, by the way, speaking of, not only does Dennis have a podcast, but the Daily Wire is now on Apple News.
Did you know this?
So if you put us on your news channels on Apple, you will get our latest stories on the go, which is absolutely excellent.
You know, I have to talk about one other story that I just really like.
And it's, you know, it's funny.
Patton Oswalt has been a comedian, obviously actor, and he has been absolutely virulent against Trump and against the people who vote for Trump and all this.
So I don't agree with his politics.
So what?
So what?
This is a great story, and I'm really glad it happened.
His wife, who died way too young, very tragically, plunged him into grief.
She was a crime writer, Michelle McNamara, and she became obsessed with the guy she dubbed the Golden State killer, a murderer and rapist here in California.
She was writing a book when she died called I'll Be Gone in the Dark about this.
Her obsession kept the case alive.
This is no knock on the police.
The police have been after this guy forever, but her obsession kept people calling in with tips and all this stuff.
And I guess it was yesterday, was it?
Or maybe the day before the police have arrested Joseph James D'Angelo, 72 years old.
They say that they've got the DNA evidence to convict him of these horrible crimes.
Let Oswald just tell a little bit of the story.
He was on TV talking about it, and obviously just filled with pride for his late wife.
Good thing.
The guy is named, oh my God, J.J. D'Angelo.
He was a former policeman from Auburn, right near the Sacramento area where the rapes first started.
So now there's all this, you know, her book and the article that led to the book really amped up all the interest in the case and really put a lot of focus on this.
Not to discredit the work that the police and the lab technicians did, but it is this, it was like it was her dream.
She didn't care about, she always said, I don't care about credit.
I want to know that he's in jail.
And now he's caught.
The bracelets are on and it feels like this thing that she wanted so badly is now done.
I love that story.
That is really a good story.
All right, stuff I like.
Stuff I like.
I thought we were going to get a new story.
Somebody's saying that's their favorite intro song.
So I got to see A Quiet Place.
I couldn't get to it.
I couldn't get to it because, you know, it's one of those things I asked my wife, you want to see a quiet place?
She laughed at me.
You know, it's like, you want to see a quiet place?
There's no way she was going to see this scary movie.
Really good.
I mean, first of all, it's only about an hour and a half, which I think should be, that's the one federal law censoring the arts that I would support as a law saying all movies can, no movie can be over an hour and a half.
It was really right and tight.
It's directed by John Krasinski, the guy from the office.
He also stars in it with Emily Blunt, who's his wife, right?
Yeah, she's his wife.
And Emily Blunt is terrific.
But the premise of the film is there's been an apocalypse.
There are these monsters wandering around and they can't see you, but they can hear you.
So you have to be dead silent all the time.
There's very little dialogue.
It was so intense and so tense that I was twisting in my seat through it.
And an hour later, I was still wired.
It's very frightening.
There's been a lot of talk on a lot of podcasts.
I don't want to give anything away in case you haven't seen it.
A lot of talk on a lot of podcasts and radio about some of the plot holes in it.
They're not exactly, I didn't find them to be plot holes.
I found them a couple of things that made you think like, oh, well, I'm not sure that would have happened or something like that.
But it doesn't matter.
It's done with so much verve and so much skill.
And the values are excellent, which I think is really great.
It really is about family.
It was nice to see a family pray.
I always complain that nobody says grace in the movies, but people actually do say grace in their lives.
It was nice to see a family that was linked together by their commitment to one another and also just really scary, intelligent horror and great, great performances.
So that was terrific.
Last week, we always like to end the week with some music.
And last week, I guess I just kind of lost the train of thought and I didn't talk about who I had on.
It's a woman named Leon LaHavis, who is a British singer and guitarist.
And she is just a terrific musician.
My son Spencer sent her to me.
That was, we played, what was it?
It's the stuff you don't do.
It's what you don't do.
Here she is.
We will end this week with Leanne LaHavis, but I want you to hear some of the guitar she plays, as well as her beautiful, beautiful voice.
She is just terrific.
Leanne LaHavis: Beautiful Voice and Guitar00:01:52
The Clavenless weekend is upon us.
I can stave it off no longer.
Darkness falls, monsters enter the streets, the stars turn to blood.
It's a mess.
But if you survive, we'll be back on Monday.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show, and here is Leon LaHavis.
And I know they'll try to turn me with the things that they say.
But no one knows where I'll go when I walk away.
So come now, hurry up.
I don't miss this train.
Open up and let me get to you.
Take you to another side.
Come to my world.
We're getting lost in another time.
You're a hand in mine.
In my own world, on my own time.
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.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.