Andrew Clavin dissects the "Trump-as-authoritarian-racist" media narrative, mocking progressive hypocrisy—like comparing MS-13 to having a "divine spark"—while defending his legal arguments, such as self-pardons and Russia probe investigations, as constitutional gray areas. Jenna Ellis argues the Masterpiece Cakeshop case exposed anti-religious bias in Colorado’s LGBT-affiliated Civil Rights Commission, which forced baker Jack Phillips to create pro-LGBT cakes while allowing anti-gay messages elsewhere. The Supreme Court’s narrow 7-2 ruling left free speech for artists unresolved, sparking fears of compelled participation in celebrations. Clavin ties this to broader culture wars, like Miss America’s swimsuit ban, framing them as attacks on traditional values under the guise of progress. [Automatically generated summary]
The Democrat Party has been working hard on some new slogans for the midterm elections, and they've got some samples ready to run up the flagpole.
For instance, one is, vote Democrat.
We defend calling women the C-word and think MS-13 gangsters are twinkly with the divine spark.
That doesn't float your boat.
There's also Democrats.
You have a job now, but so the hell what?
Or maybe vote for Democrats.
It's Obama's policies that really rescued the economy.
It only looks like it's Trump's policies because, okay, it's Trump's policies.
If those don't sing for you, there's also Democrats taking blacks for granted since we stop being Klansmen.
And hey, black people, never mind that job Trump helped you get.
Don't you remember when he said something that sort of sounded like it might be racist if you interpreted it just right?
So vote for us.
Finally, one Democrat committee came up with the slogan, vote Democrat.
Our hatred for Trump is causing us to destroy ourselves, but we love power so much.
So please vote for us.
Please, please, please.
Still a work in progress.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boom.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-hunky.
Shipshape, dipsy-topsy, the world is it bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray.
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right.
Tomorrow is the mailbag.
And so you know what that means.
Probably you don't know what it means.
Let me explain to you what it means.
It means that you should go on thedailywire.com and subscribe for a lousy 10 bucks a month or get the whole year for 100 bucks.
Plus, you get the leftist tears tumbler, which believe me, you're going to need more and more as the days progress.
But while you're there, after you subscribe, hit the podcast button up at the top, hit the Andrew Clavin podcast, and then there's a little mailbag symbol.
Punch that, and you can ask me anything you want.
Ask me about religion, politics, your personal life.
All the answers are guaranteed 100% correct and will change your life sometimes for the better.
Also, today we have Jenna Ellis.
Her name is Jenna Ellis.
She is a constitutional attorney.
We're going to talk to her about the Supreme Court case about the cake baker who didn't want to design a cake for the gay wedding.
And also, while I'm talking, you might want to go to the Wall Street Journal and read my op-ed today on the Barbie girls, as I call them.
All right.
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So at this point now, the media is no longer reporting news, if they ever were.
They're just selling a narrative and they're selling the narrative to both themselves and to us.
And the narrative is basically that Donald Trump is a dangerous authoritarian, that he's trying to seize monarchical power or dictatorial power, wants to be a king or a dictator, and that also that he's a racist.
I mean, these two things are very important.
He's got a special animus toward black and brown people.
And because these media guys work in offices where everyone around them basically agrees with them, and no one around them voted for Donald Trump, they've sold themselves on this.
They don't have to do very much to sell themselves on these narratives.
They sell the narratives and they just kind of assume that their interpretation of what Trump says is the right interpretation.
And then they just take it as given.
They take it as given that everybody must believe this.
It's obvious to see because nobody around them is arguing with them.
And so they become this kind of myth-making machine.
You know, they hope they, it's kind of like they both hope that it's true, they believe that it's true, and they hope they can convince you that it's true simply by accepting it.
I mean, if I just go around and say, yeah, everybody knows.
Everybody knows he's a dictator and a racist.
I mean, it's obvious.
He said this, he said that.
Just remember when he said the Nazis, there were great people on the Nazis.
I actually heard a guy on MSNBC, I think it was, say, Trump said there were really fine people on the side of the Nazis.
So I thought like, you know, my basic feeling, and I know this annoys some people, my basic feeling is Trump is not a very good guy.
You know, I write about this in my op-ed, you know, but he's been a very good president and on track to become possibly a great president.
When I say he's not a good guy, you know, he cheated on all his wives.
I've lost count of his wives.
And he insults people who don't deserve insulting.
He doesn't treat people with respect.
He's sold and bought into idiotic conspiracy theories.
And he sometimes has had a cynical lack of ethics.
But he is doing what he promised to do.
He's learning on the job.
He's appointed the best people, just like he said he would.
I know the best people.
He knew the best people.
It was like he got it just right.
And he's stuck to his conservative governance, which was another fear I had.
And it's all working.
I mean, things are getting better in the country, and he's making America great again.
I mean, the guy is a walking slogan.
And so I think we should take a look.
I've just told you all the things that I don't like about Trump, some of his behaviors as a human being.
You know, we all pass judgments like this on each other.
But as far as what he does for me, for the pay that I give him through my tax dollars, I think he's doing a terrific job, right?
So I think we should take a look at this media narrative that is being sold, that there's something really dangerous and authoritarian about him.
Yesterday, it's really come over the weekend.
There's been this flap about whether Trump can pardon himself if he ever gets charged with anything.
It's a big question of whether Trump can be indicted.
You know, usually they say that the remedy of bad behavior of the president is impeachment, not indictment.
But Rudy Giuliani is on George Succalopicus, right?
And Sukalopakis asks him this question because they set these questions up.
They set these questions up so we can all be shocked.
And he asked Giuliani, what about this pardon?
You know, in the Constitution, the president has very broad pardoning power.
Could he pardon himself?
And here's what Giuliani said.
Do you and the president's attorneys believe the president has the power to pardon himself?
He's not, but he probably does.
He has no intention of pardoning himself, but he probably does.
It doesn't say he can't.
I mean, there's another really interesting constitutional argument.
Can the president pardon himself?
I mean, I used to run the pardon attorney.
It would be an open question.
I think it would probably get answered by, gosh, that's what the Constitution says.
And if you want to change it, change it.
But yeah.
A lot of focus on the president.
I think the political ramifications of that would be tough.
Pardoning other people is one thing.
Pardoning yourself is another.
Other presidents have pardoned people in circumstances like this, both in their administration and sometimes the next president, even of a different party, will come along and pardon.
So that's Rudy obviously talking off the top of his head as a lawyer about what it says in the Constitution.
And then Trump, once, of course, the left starts going crazy, Trump has to stir the pot.
He loves to get their goat.
And he sends out a tweet, as has been stated by numerous legal scholars.
I have the absolute right to pardon myself, but why would I do that when I've done nothing wrong?
In the meantime, the never-ending witch hunt led by 13 very angry and conflicted Democrats and others continues into the midterms.
That's the president's tweet.
So this is the myth-making machinery at work.
I just want to show you how this works, right?
So that's what he said.
That's the question.
Trump echoes the question because he loves to start trouble.
The New York Times, a former newspaper, runs the headline, Trump and his lawyers embrace a vision of vast executive power.
While no president has ever purported to pardon himself and is not clear whether Mr. Trump could legitimately take such a step, the president's claim was the latest in an aggressive series of moves to assert his control over federal law enforcement.
Last month, Mr. Trump crossed a traditional line.
He's always crossing the line.
They're always saying this.
I don't know who draws these lines.
I think it's like a little old lady at the New York Times.
I just drew a line.
I think he crossed this line.
I drew that and then he crossed it.
It's like, you know, it just wasn't there before.
Last month, Mr. Trump crossed a traditional line by ordering an investigation into the Russia investigators.
And late last year, he boasted he has an absolute right to do what I want with the Justice Department.
So this is the way they do this, right?
Now, the Constitution, Giuliani is just reading the Constitution.
The Constitution says the president shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in the case of impeachment.
So if they're impeaching him, he can't get out of it.
But, you know, this is something that he can do.
We don't know.
It's such a broad statement, right?
Now, when they passed that law, when they put that in the Constitution, there were almost no federal crimes.
There were like three federal crimes.
And now the federal government has expanded so much that there's a lot more pardon power in that.
So around the media, this 1974 memo comes out because Nixon had floated the idea that he might be able to pardon himself.
And they're saying, oh, no, this memo from the Department of Justice, this settles it.
This settles it.
He cannot pardon himself because the woman who wrote it said that you can't serve as your own judge.
Well, nowhere does it say that pardoning people, you're serving as your own judge.
It just says you're serving as the president.
And in this memo, it actually says, in the memo, it actually says that the president could step down according to Article 25, and then the vice president could pardon him, and then he could step back up and take his job again.
So the memo is all over the place.
I mean, they're saying this as if it's true.
There's a legal site called Law and Crime, which is pretty even-handed.
It's that guy, Dan Abrams, who does Mediaite.
And they say they had in 2017, they said, could a future president Hillary Clinton pardon herself?
The short answer is she could certainly try and may get away with it.
What's more, there's very likely little, there's likely little Congress could do about it, even with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
My point is simply this.
It's an open question.
They asked him the question.
It's an open question.
Trump, yes, he's stirring up trouble.
But the thing with Trump is you cannot name a thing that he has done that is outside the law, that is outside the rules of American governance.
Unlike Obama, who abused, you know, Victor Davis Hansen made this point today that Obama was classy but lawless, and Trump is kind of crass, but he follows the law.
He follows the law.
The thing about Trump, though, is he's always in a negotiation.
And negotiation means movement.
You're always moving in a negotiation.
So what the press does is they take a snapshot of him.
He says, yeah, I can fire anybody I want.
Trump threatens to fire anybody he wants, but he's moving down the line because he just knows if he says that, that's going to get him going.
There's a political side to this.
I'll get to that in just a minute.
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So A.B. Stoddard, who I really like, she's a smart lady, very honest, hates Trump, and she was on a special report and she says, well, this is all just a ruse.
This whole thing that Rudy Giuliani is saying is all just a political game.
Here she is.
Remember, we're in the middle of a spin war, of a political campaign that Rudy Giuliani is waging in the press on behalf of Donald Trump at his request to spin things a certain way so as to form the opinions among Trump supporters and others and congressional Republicans who are supine and completely acquiescent.
So she doesn't like that Trump is playing politics with this investigation, but the investigation is political.
We don't know how it began.
We don't know who started it.
We certainly, when we compare it to the Hillary Clinton investigation, where they didn't examine her computer to see how it was hacked, they didn't put her under oath when they talked to her.
When you compare that to the way they treated Donald Trump, it's obviously a political hit, in some sense, a political hit.
They're treating him very differently.
They've appointed the special counsel without any proof that there's a crime.
So they say, well, it's a counterintelligence operation.
Yeah, that's counterintelligence, where they get to look for the crime.
It's obviously a political hit.
So Trump's fighting back.
He's fighting back.
But he has never done anything, not one thing.
I dare any of these clowns to name one thing he's done that crosses the line into authoritarianism.
So he sounds coarse, he sounds rough and tumble, but he hasn't done anything that's really authoritarian.
So let's, now I want to look at the racist thing.
You know, Don Lemon, I hate to mention him twice in two days because the guy, I'm sure I'm the only person who ever watches him.
You know, the guy just hates Trump and he thinks he's very daring by calling him racist.
So he put out a montage of things that Trump has said and declared them all racist.
So let's listen to the full montage.
The president seems to think he's the victim here.
He thinks he deserves an apology, even though he's never apologized for one word of this.
They're bringing drugs.
They're bringing crime.
They're rapists.
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.
But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.
You had people in that group.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
I saw the same pictures as you did.
Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say, get that son of a off the field right now out?
Pure Racism Debate00:06:49
He's fired.
He's fired.
That is pure racism.
And the president is cynically using that racism to appeal to his base.
We're learning tonight that in a phone call last fall with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, the president said, quote, this is a very winning, strong issue for me.
So that is one of the most cynical pieces of broadcasting I've ever heard, right?
That is racism.
It is pure racism, he says.
Let's look at each one of those, okay?
He says, first, he's bringing, they're bringing drugs.
He's talking about illegal immigrants.
Let's play the entire thing.
This is cut number 13.
Let's find a bigger chunk of it.
And Trump came back the next day and was interviewed about it.
So I'll follow it up with that interview.
When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.
They're not sending you.
They're not sending you.
They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us.
They're bringing drugs.
They're bringing crime.
They're rapists.
And some, I assume, are good people.
Now, you've tried to clarify this statement in recent days, Arnold, but I guess the question comes down to this.
Do you regret saying that specifically about rapists, or do you stand by it?
No, not at all.
Of course they do.
It's not only Mexico.
If you let that run a little bit longer, it talks about people coming from all over.
They're coming from all over.
They'll soon be coming and probably already have becoming from all over the world.
You're probably going to have people, you're probably going to have terrorists coming from the Middle East.
Somebody said, oh, we don't have terrorists.
They don't even know because they don't know who's coming.
So it's not about Mexicans.
It's about everybody.
It's about the fact that when you leave the borders open, anybody can come in and we don't know who they are.
It's also about the fact that the people who break the law are people who break the law.
And this is absolutely justified.
It has nothing to do with, it didn't have any.
And he also said, he said two things that show that it's not racist, right?
He said, they're not sending their best, right?
So he's distinguishing between some people who are good people and some people who are bad people.
If they're breaking the law, they're breaking the law.
And he said, and some of them, I assume, are very good people.
So that's the entire quote.
It's taken out of context.
It obviously, you know, does anybody really think that Donald Trump sits around and goes, those lousy Mexicans, I hate, you know, that's not what he's saying.
He's saying it's insane that we are not enforcing our laws at the border.
All right, let's look at the next one, the Muslim ban.
Obviously, Islam is not a race.
I thought the Muslim ban was a stupid idea.
He said it off the top of his head.
It never was actually put out.
It hurt him when he was trying to put out a very sensible ban that actually was something that Obama had proposed earlier.
So Muslim ban is a stupid idea.
But the idea that Islam may be a problem in the West is a philosophical point.
It has nothing to do with race.
Islam is not a race.
There are Islamic people in Africa.
There are Islamic people in the Middle East.
There are Islamic people in America.
It's not a race.
It's a philosophy.
And there's every reasonable cause to ask ourselves in the midst of a religion that is at war everywhere.
It has borders with people who are not Islamic and also at war against its own people.
It's perfectly rational to ask, is there something about this philosophy that is inherently violent?
Is there something about this philosophy that is inherently at odds with Western civilization?
Not racist.
Honk, Don, you're out of here.
All right, the third one.
And this is the big one, okay?
Because this is where he says there are good people on both sides.
And they do this again and again.
And it has become a trope, right, that he was talking about the Nazis.
You remember Charlottesville, a woman was killed by some kook, right-winger, alt-right-winger, whatever they call him, a bad guy.
And they just wanted him to come out and condemn them.
And he kept saying, no, wait, some of these leftists showed up to fight as well.
Let's listen to this full quote so you hear what he's really talking about as they're shouting him down and not letting him get a word in edgewise.
You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.
You had people in that group.
Excuse me, excuse me.
I saw the same pictures as you did.
You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
He is clearly, when he says this, it really bugs me because this is the one they seized on.
I admit it was a little tone-deaf when somebody's just been murdered.
You want to address that first and foremost.
But they seized on this.
He's obviously talking about the people who were protesting the taking down of statues.
When he says there are fine people on both sides, what he means is on the side of the, in the argument of whether you take these statues down of Robert E. Lee because he was defending the Confederacy or you keep it up because he's a historical person.
He acted in his time.
He didn't see things from our point of view.
It's ridiculous to go back and judge him from our point of view.
He's saying on those arguments and protests and marches, there are fine people on both sides, which no doubt is exactly literally true.
It is taken out of context.
It is absolutely unfair.
By the way, I'm only dealing with things that he has said while he's president because, again, that's when he works for me.
If Lennon had actually wanted to go after him for something that was morally wrong, he should have gone after him in that campaign when they asked him to disavow the Ku Klux Klan and it took him a day to do it.
That was morally wrong, but not racist.
He wasn't adopting the philosophy of the Ku Klux Klan.
It was just cynical politics.
He didn't want to lose those voters.
He knew there were some voters who were sympathetic with that and he didn't want to alienate them.
That's a moment when you have to speak up and he didn't do it.
That was a moral error, but the moral error was political cynicism, not racism.
And finally, this thing with the NFL, he's talking about people disrespecting the flag.
And when he says, just the way Lemons did that, he said, it's pure racism.
He says, this is a winning issue for me.
This is a big winning, as if he meant attacking black people or being racist.
He's talking about people not saluting the flag.
And he was right.
It is a winning issue for him because we want people, especially people who have done so well in our country, to pay attention and be just a little bit grateful.
That's all we ask.
If they're going to ask us for our money and our adulation and for fame, just a little bit gracious about the country that has given them so much.
It's mythology, and they sell it and then they just assume it has been proven and sold.
And it truly is not fair.
As I started out by saying this, I have plenty of problems with Trump, but racism and authoritarianism are not the problems I have.
I've been watching him.
I was worried about authoritarianism when he took office, but he has in no way violated any of the norms of American governance.
It really is just a narrative.
Enable The Andrew Clavin Show Skill00:03:16
They're peddling.
It has nothing to do with the news.
They ought to get down to that.
Let's talk about movement, or as I like to pronounce it, because they leave out all the vowels.
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Oh, also, I've got more great news for our podcast listeners.
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With a simple voice command, you can play the melodious tones of my voice, providing answers to all the big questions of the universe while you fold the laundry or scoop the litter box, which is kind of redundant because listening to the show is kind of like scooping out the litter box.
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And while you're doing that, you can get ready for a special treat for our audience in honor of Father's Day.
On Tuesday, June 12th at 7 p.m. Eastern, the God-King of the Daily Wire himself, Jeremy Boring, will float down on hard-to-see wires.
Well, we tell him they're hard to see.
And he will host a roundtable discussion because he's the God King.
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He will host a roundtable discussion with Ben Shapiro, me, Andrew Clavin, and Michael Knowles.
And we'll discuss what fatherhood means.
By then, Knowles is on his honeymoon.
By then, she should be pregnant, right?
Jack's Commission Controversy00:13:46
Well, that's how that works, right?
We'll discuss what fatherhood means, why fathers matter, and how fatherhood will stand up to an increasingly anti-male culture.
Subscribers will even be able to write in live questions for us to answer on the air.
That's Tuesday, June 12th at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific.
You can find our special live stream on Facebook and YouTube, so don't miss it.
We're going to have Jenna Ellis come on and talk about the Supreme Court decision about the cake baker.
You got to come over to thedailywire.com or you can listen to it also on YouTube.
But if you want to just see the whole thing, you can come to TheDailyWire.com and subscribe for a lousy $10 a month or a lousy $100 for the full year.
All right, Jenna Ellis is the Director of Public Policy for the James Dobson Family Institute.
Jenna is an accomplished constitutional law attorney and also has a background in criminal law, contracts, public policy, leadership, and ethics.
She's appeared on Fox Business, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC.
And then, unfortunately, you've taken a wrong turn, Jenna, and you've come here, but you'll get over it.
She also has a book out, The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution, a guide for Christians to understand America's current constitutional crisis.
That sounds interesting.
I will have you back to talk about that book if you will come back.
But right now, I'd like to talk about this, the masterpiece cake thing.
How are you doing, Jenna?
Thank you for coming.
I'm great.
Thank you so much for having me, Andrew.
It's a privilege to be with you today.
So let's talk, just lay this case out.
This is a gay couple went to a Christian cake baker in Colorado, asked him for a cake for their wedding.
Did they search him out or did they just wander in off the street?
You know, the record is not clear on whether or not this was targeted.
As far as the record contains, the couple was recommended to go to Jack Phillips.
He's a well-known creative artisan.
And so while they did travel quite a distance, it was based on a recommendation.
And I don't think that either side stipulated that this was necessarily targeting Jack specifically.
Okay.
And Jack Phillips' name is now.
And what did Phillips, what was Phillips' response?
So when he found out that this was going to be for the ceremony of a so-called gay wedding, he said, listen, I make all kinds of cakes.
And you are welcome to purchase anything that's pre-bought in the store, but I cannot use my creative skills and talents to make a custom design.
And notably, Jack had also turned away other types of cakes, including Halloween cakes, divorce cakes, things that would be more adult-themed cakes.
So this wasn't specifically him either targeting the gay couple either.
He said, this is just something that, according to my sincerely held religious beliefs, I can't do this.
And so he declined them on that basis.
And I think it's also important to note that he didn't decline the individual based on their sexual orientation.
Had, for example, one of the two gentlemen's mothers come in, who is a heterosexual female.
Had she come in and asked for a custom cake to be served at a reception at a gay wedding, he would have said the same thing.
So it was about the product and the service, not the individual.
So that's kind of amazing.
He had also turned down cakes for Halloween and for adult themes thing.
He just said, you know, you can buy, if it had come in and there had been a wedding cake sitting there, he wouldn't have minded.
He just didn't want to create the thing for them because that was violating his conscience in terms of freedom of speech.
And he was willing to serve anything to anyone that was pre-bought and pre-made.
And that was very clearly articulated in oral argument from Alliance Defending Freedom that represented Masterpiece Cake Shop.
Wow, that's pretty amazing.
I had not realized that it was that narrow a thing.
So now there's a commission, right?
This is not a commission that studies violations of rights, and they come after the guy.
Is that fair?
Yeah, and this commission, I'm from Colorado, and I've been very involved in terms of testifying for the reauthorization of this particular commission, because what a lot of people don't realize is that this is just a quasi-judicial body that comes out of the Department of Regulatory Agencies in Colorado.
So this is part of the executive branch.
They're not part of the judicial branch.
None of these seven members are even, they don't even have to be attorneys, yet they're making findings of fact and conclusions of law based just on their affiliation with a potentially discriminated against class.
So currently they're appointed by the governor, confirmed by the Senate to their term, and at least a majority or four of them out of the seven have to be members of one of the potentially discriminated against classes, which sets up this ability to basically stack the commission with LGBT either members or associations or some type of affiliation and sympathy.
And that's exactly what happened in 2012 when Jack's case went to this commission.
And the due process thing about this is crazy because Jack didn't have the ability to opt out.
Colorado law allowed Craig and Mullins to file their claim in a regular court or take it in front of the commission.
Well, who are you going to pick when a commission is so clearly biased?
Yet the respondent, the person who's targeted by this, has no ability to opt out and say, wait a minute, I want a duly authorized judge.
So this is an appalling abuse of power.
This is incredible.
So as I understand it, he goes before the commission.
At least one of the guys on the commission compares, says this is the kind of thing that caused the Holocaust.
He says religion was used to rationalize the Holocaust, which I'm not even sure is true.
I can't think of anybody rationalizing.
I'm sure there were religious people who did.
So he's obviously biased against the guy.
Plus, is this right that the commission had previously allowed people to deny, to refuse to make cakes that were anti-gay?
Is that true?
Yes.
And so another Christian named Bill Jack, and he's part of, he heads up the Worldview Academy, who's also a Christian, heard about this case and said, wait a second, there's some inconsistencies going on.
So he went to three separate bakeries and asked those bakers to put, to make a cake with the verse in Leviticus, for example, that talks about how homosexuality is a sin.
And the commission said, no, no, no, those cake bakers don't have to participate in that kind of speech.
It goes against their conscience.
But yet, they said that Jack Phillips had to create a custom design.
So you see this hypocrisy and this very clear bias and animus from the commission against Christians specifically and pro-LGBT's agenda.
This is amazing.
So they're very clearly regulating speech.
Now they go before the Supreme Court and it's a 7-2 decision that lets Phillips off the hook, but it's really narrow.
I mean, what exactly did they say?
What's the decision?
Yes.
And although this was heavily litigated by Twitter yesterday to say, what does a narrow decision mean when it's 7-2?
Yeah.
The opinion was narrow.
The vote was not.
And so in LegalSpeak, what it means is basically the court punted.
The court said, we don't want to get into this because it was perfect facts to show this person, Jack Phillips, he had absolutely no bias or animus against his customers.
He had a track record of declining other types of cakes that he disagreed with their message.
I mean, his logo even has an artist's palette.
I mean, he clearly understands his cakes to be speech.
And yet the court said, we are going to very, very narrowly, meaning we're only going to take a fact-based opinion and say just because the commission treated Jack with such open hostility, comparing him to the Holocaust, which was terrible, but they said just based on the facts, we're going to overturn this, hand Jack the win by a 7-2 margin, but we're not going to give any guidance or any clarifying principle for future artists.
I mean, how do we know how the florists in Washington, how the videographers, how the t-shirt makers, how other creative professionals, what are they supposed to do now with this opinion?
This gave no guidance to other courts how to interpret other artistic professionals who may not want to participate in these types of religious ceremonies.
It's quite amazing.
In other words, if the committee, if the Colorado committee had managed to hide its anti-religious prejudice, if it had buried this and kept their mouths shut, they basically might have gotten away with this.
They may have.
And that was what I found so disappointing about Kennedy's opinion for the majority is that he is just inviting future litigants to hide their animus and basically just be sneakier about it and say, we're not going to go on the record comparing you to the Holocaust.
We are going to pretend to be very kind to you.
And we're still going to find that you've breached the anti-discrimination law for public accommodation.
We're just going to do it in a stealthier manner and then get up to the Supreme Court or whatever court in Colorado, of course, still has this clear bias.
And we just won't have it as openly.
So it's just inviting people to be sneakier about it, unfortunately.
I mean, it's pretty, you know, when I heard that it was 7-2, I kind of thought that's really great.
But then what bothers me that there are two judges, it's Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Soda Maiyer, I think, who there's two judges who basically felt he should have been nailed anyway.
It didn't matter.
Guy has got, he's not only got to, it's not enough that gay people have the right to get married.
Everybody has to agree that this is a wonderful thing.
Is that pretty fair, fairly what they said?
Yeah.
And you know what's amazing about this is that Ginsburg and Sotomayor, I mean, for how just fact-based and clear this was, that there was such hostility against Jack by the commission.
It's amazing to me that Ginsburg and Sotomayor didn't just join this and make it a 9-0, because now they're clearly showing their animus and they're showing that they have a clear bias for the LGBT agenda by not joining in this opinion.
And I found that really surprising that they were willing to do that.
and not just say, you know what, we'll give him the win in this instance so we can come back later and say, hey, listen, we were fair to Jack Phillips.
So now we're going to stick it to the Christian community.
They can't say that now and we will always have that opinion for that reason.
You know, what's so disturbing to me about this is that, you know, I'm to the left of the Dobson Institute, dearly as I love them.
You know, it's OK.
Have me one more and look in.
No, I mean, I'm an artist.
I've worked with gay people all my life.
I want them to live and be happy.
I don't want to pass.
It's not for me to tell them how to live.
But this really does seem when institutes like the James Dobson Institute talk about the gay agenda, they're talking about what seems to be a target on religious people, a target on certain kinds of family life, traditional family life, and a target on free speech.
And this kind of justifies them that there is this element in the gay community.
Yeah, and Dr. Dobson has been speaking for 40 plus years about the prevalence through the rise of the sexual revolution for things like abortion that have led to even more cases like Planned Parenthood versus Casey, Roe versus Wade eventually getting into Obergefell.
Because remember, we didn't find some kind of constitutional right that emanates from the vast penumbra.
What the court did in Roe versus Wade is find a right to privacy that somehow is extended to cover other traditionally unlawful and criminal and definitely immoral activity.
And that's what we've seen throughout the past 50 or 60 years.
And that was really the foundation of the Obergefeld decision.
Because remember, Andrew, I mean, the law in all of the states, which by definition is a state sovereignty issue, the federal government cannot legislate on marriage or domestic relations, period, because of Article 1, Section 8.
So not only is this a state issue, but the states had spoken and said, we are only going to recognize marriage between one man and one woman.
That was equally applied different.
Everyone had the opportunity to marry someone of the opposite sex.
And so, and yet the LGBT agenda has not only said we want equality, but now they want celebration, they want participation.
They want Jack Phillips, they want you and me to be compelled to celebrate and to speak in support of their message.
And that's why it's so dangerous and why people like Dr. Dobson and also our policy center with the Dobson Family Institute are making sure that we are protecting and preserving the fundamental rights that are pre-political.
They don't come from the Constitution.
They come from our creator.
And our declaration recognizes that.
Our Constitution is just supposed to preserve and protect that.
It is really amazing because a lot of people have a right to do a lot of things, but to legislate that I have to agree with them or celebrate what they do is absurd.
I mean, it's just, it truly is an abrogation of my rights, just a free thought, let alone free speech.
What did the conservatives, guys like Gorsuch and Thomas say?
What was their opinion?
Yeah, I wish that Thomas's concurrence, which was joined by Gorsuch, there was only two members of the court, they actually went into the free speech issue and said that Jack should have won, not just on this procedural issue, but really on the merits.
And so they gave a very, very solid explanation of why this case should have been more broad and why the court should have commented on the protections that we find in the First Amendment.
And so I wish that Justice Thomas's opinion had spoken for the majority here.
But hopefully we'll see that in future cases.
It's amazing.
Brave New Contests00:05:59
I'm really glad you came on because I have to say it's worse than I thought.
It's a real violation.
I mean, I'm glad he didn't get nailed by the court, but it's still a terrible violation of our free speech rights.
Jenna Ellis, the author of The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution, a guide for Christians to understand America's current constitutional crisis.
I would really like to hear more about this, but I'd like to read it and I'd like to talk to you about it again.
I hope you'll come back.
Yes, please.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks a lot, John.
Bye.
Wow.
Yeah.
Like, what is wrong with these guys?
You know, they just, you know, it's like people are beginning to accept gay people.
I think that's getting to be a very broadly held opinion.
They're just making, they're just wrong-footing that.
They're just making themselves, you know, anathema.
It's just so ugly and bullying and un-American.
It really is, I'm embarrassed for them.
I really am.
Which brings us, by natural segue, to sexual follies.
I'm sorry, I still love watching that.
I'm easy to entertain, I think.
So this is got to, when I talk about follies, this has got to be right up there on the stupid ladder.
I mean, you go up the rung of the stupid ladder, you know, you get about halfway up, you get to like Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo.
This goes a couple of rungs above this.
Miss America, the pageant that we all know as the bikini, or as we call it, the bikini contest, right? Is scrapping its swimsuit competition and will no longer judge contestants based on physical appearance.
They announced Tuesday.
This is Gretchen Carlson.
We remember her because she was a news lady on Fox News who complained that Roger Ailes, I think, was chasing her around the desk, right?
And wasn't that the one?
Yeah.
But she is herself a former Miss America, and she is now heading the Miss American organization.
And she came on and explained what this contest is going to be like now.
This is Cut 10.
We will no longer judge our candidates on their outward physical appearance.
That's huge.
That's huge.
And that means that we will no longer have a swimsuit competition.
And that is official as of September 9th when we have our competition in Atlantic City.
We'll also be revamping our evening gown competition phase as well.
And so we're no longer judging women when they come out in their chosen attire, their evening wear, whatever they choose to do.
It's going to be what comes out of their mouth that we're interested in when they talk about their social impact initiatives.
Women of all shapes and sizes, because typically we see swimsuit-ready bodies up on that stage.
We want to be open, transparent, inclusive to women who may not have felt comfortable participating in our program before.
But look, we have always had talent and scholarship, and we need to message that part of the program better as well.
But now we're adding in this new caveat that we're not going to judge you on your outward appearance because we're interested in what makes you you.
God.
It's like, first of all, I don't know if you're not watching two beautiful women talking to each other with a big pan and pictures of women in bikinis behind to make sure that we're watching the thing because what do we care?
Let me tell you why this isn't huge.
I mean, first of all, it's the end of the Miss America pageant.
Nobody will care about it, but journalists, journalists will use it as a kind of big story, but it won't get any ratings.
Nobody's going to sit around and watch a bunch of women compete for intellectual prizes.
Nobody cares.
That's the first thing.
But secondly, it is so anti-life.
It is so anti-joy.
It is so stupid.
Female beauty is a human good.
It is a thing that gives people joy.
It is a thing that makes the world more joyful in the same way that male bravery is a good.
And you could say, well, isn't bravery good for women and attractiveness good for men?
Yes, but it's not the same thing.
Beauty is a feminine good and bravery is a masculine good.
That is the way it works.
And there are all kinds of reasons for that.
Namely, because you want to know that the race is going to continue.
You want to know that the woman can attract a man to father a child.
You want to know that the father can be brave enough to defend the child.
That is what it is all about.
That's why they're good.
Now, they are not virtues, right?
They are not virtues.
Beauty is a good, because it brings joy and it continues the race, but it's not a virtue.
You can be evil and be beautiful.
You can be evil and be brave.
You know, somebody with that horrible Louis Frachin once said that Hitler was a brave soldier.
He said it because he hates shoes, but in fact, it's a factual truth.
Hitler was indeed an Iron Cross brave soldier.
But he was also a satanic, evil man, right?
So you can be brave and you can be beautiful, but that makes it all the more impressive when a human good, like female beauty or male bravery, is also imbued with virtue, when a man is brave on behalf of a good cause or when a woman brings to her beauty kindness and modesty and virtue in her treating herself with respect.
And to appreciate this is to love life.
That is what it is like to love life.
When you walk down the street glad that women are beautiful and glad that beautiful women are good and glad that men can be brave and glad that some brave men are also good.
That is what it is to love life.
That is what loving life looks like.
And to try and suck that out for a false sense of envy and a false sense of virtue and a false sense of what matters in life is simply to suck the joy out of life.
That's all it is.
Look, the Miss America contest was always just a commercial enterprise.
It's always been a goofy little thing.
But to take away from it what made it at least fun in its stupid little way is just as stupid.
I mean, really, you would have to put Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo together to get that dumb.
I mean, that's how dumb it is.
Talk about sexual follies.
All right, remember, the mailbag is tomorrow, so this is the last day on which you have to have personal problems.
I will solve them all for you if you get that.
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