Andrew Clavin and Selena Zito expose Obama’s legacy as systemic corruption, from James Comey’s Justice Department politicization to the $5.8B Iran deal loophole ignored by media. They contrast this with press obsession over Trump’s flaws while dismissing populist realignment—like Pennsylvania’s 2006-2016 shift—as an elite blind spot. Zito’s Great Revolt argues voters prioritized results over values, uniting "King Cyrus Christians" and blue-collar skeptics of big institutions, proving media bubbles miss the bigger picture. [Automatically generated summary]
More women are running for office in the midterms this year than ever before, and the boys in Congress are super excited.
As one congressman put it, quote, hot diggity dog, fresh meat, crack me a beer and bring them on, unquote.
Men in Congress say the pickings have been slim in the Capitol these days, and they're looking forward to getting in some new talent after the next election.
Women who won't complain about every little thing like being chased around a desk now and then or livening up an otherwise boring trip in an elevator with a little massage.
As Senator Woke T. Grotesque from New York put it, quote, it's about time more women held federal office, especially the young ones with those spiky heels they wear.
The women in Congress now make a federal case out of everything.
If you so much as compliment them on their hair, they start screaming at you to take your hands off their breasts.
But what kind of man would grab a woman's breasts without complimenting her hair first?
Unquote.
In a hyper-divided political atmosphere, the large number of women running for office is creating a refreshingly bipartisan stir.
Republican and Democrat men alike agree that this could change the way elections are run in America, hopefully by adding a bikini competition.
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, also singing hunky-dunkity.
Shipshape, tipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
All right, what a terrible thing that was to say.
The Clavenless weekend is a pop.
I have to say, I had a slight cold this week, and this week just went by in a complete blur.
I mean, I can't believe it's already over.
Today, in the second half of the show, we have a terrific interview with Selena Zito, who wrote this book, The Great Revolt Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.
I urge you to hang around and listen.
We won't go off Facebook and YouTube so you can watch it or listen to it.
It really, really was interesting.
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You know, they say that truth is the first casualty of war, but it is also the first casualty of politics.
And the way we talk to each other and the way television encourages us to talk to each other obscures the very simple truth that's sometimes right in front of our face.
You know, I talked about, I've talked about this before, the way the left especially loves to put everything in extreme terms.
I mean, if I said to you, you know, there are male traits and female traits.
Men usually have more male traits.
Women usually have more female traits.
And it's uncomfortable if you're a man with more female traits.
That makes it maybe you get bullied.
It's not very comfortable.
If I say that to you, everybody, everybody, left and right, would go, well, yeah, that's true.
That is something maybe we could think about a little more.
But if I say to you, some women have penises, get used to it, and that means that the guy in Washington has a right to tell you in Arkansas who's going to use the bathroom in your daughter's elementary school, suddenly you've got a fight on your hands, but also you get on TV.
Legacy's Political Fight00:08:43
That will get you on TV.
So this truth is simple.
We probably, most of us agree on it.
And the way they put it, it's the terms they put it in, that makes it almost impossible to understand that simple truth.
And the same thing is happening with the corruption that's coming out, this story of corruption that's coming out about the Obama administration.
I mean, you know, you talk about how Donald Trump is erasing Obama Orama's legacy.
What's his name?
I can't remember because his legacy is kind of on the ash heap of history.
But, you know, there's all this talk about Donald Trump is erasing his legacy, but his legacy is this massive corruption and twisting of our institutions for political reasons.
And that story is getting obscured by the political fight.
We're in a political fight, right?
The political fight is this.
Mueller has been appointed, I think, wrongly.
I said from the very beginning I thought it was wrong, but he's investigating this story about Russian collusion.
So as far as I'm concerned, if he finds that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were on the phone together and Donald was saying, Vlad, listen, could you do me a favor?
Could you knock off this Hillary gun?
He said, yes, Donald, I'll do this to 40.
Yes, I will.
If he comes up with that, fine.
Anything else, go away.
You know, that's what you were appointed to find out.
If that didn't happen, shut the thing down.
And it obviously didn't happen.
But now we're getting into all these arguments.
Was there a spy?
And, you know, and they sent this professor to get information.
And then Trey Gowdy, who has been a really good warrior for the truth, he always seems to be like a really honest guy.
He came out and said, no, you know, I've had briefings, these classified briefings, and there was no spy.
So Donald Trump is wrong.
And that's the headline in the New York Times today.
The New York Times is Donald Trump is wrong.
There was no spy.
Because now Paul Ryan said it too.
But listen to what, let's listen to what Paul Ryan actually said about this.
Now, remember, these guys, the Justice Department has been stonewalling on turning over their documents.
They keep getting subpoenaed.
They won't hand over the documents.
But they gave him a classified briefing.
So neither Ryan nor Gowdy have seen the documents that would tell us whether there was spying going on or what happened.
But Ryan has this careful thing that he says after meeting with the feds.
I think Chairman Gowdy's initial assessment is accurate.
I think, but we have some more digging to do.
We're waiting for some more document requests.
We have some more documents to review.
We still have someone answering questions.
It would have been helpful if we got this information earlier.
As Chairman Nudis said just the other day, if we got all the information we were looking for, we could wrap this up faster.
But I have seen no evidence to the contrary of the initial assessment that Chairman Gowdy has made.
But I want to make sure that we run every lead down and make sure we get final answers to these questions.
So the New York Times, a former newspaper, has this essentially propaganda on its front page that the Republicans are abandoning Donald Trump.
The question isn't whether we can call these guys spies or not.
That's not the question.
The question is, did Obama run a morally compromised Justice Department that overreacted to Trump's election because it was going to be exposed?
And I think it is obvious that this is true.
I mean, I think that that is now obvious.
All the superheated rhetoric, which is Donald Trump in a political fight with his political opponents, all of that, that has nothing to do with it.
has to do with it is that Obama's legacy, it's now clear, is a twisting of at least the Justice Department in such a way that they panicked when somebody else got elected who might expose it.
James Comey himself, this is the thing.
Almost everything James Comey did, he excused by saying he couldn't trust Loretta Lynch.
She was meeting with Bill Clinton, so he had to come out and go public about his investigation.
And now we've got the second in command, who later became for a brief period the head of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, and he's trying to cut an immunity deal.
Or he says he's going to have to plead the Fifth Amendment, okay?
So this is like, this is like we've now got the FBI and the Justice Department holed up in a log cabin in the woods with the police surrounding going, come out now, or we'll never come out, coppers.
We're going to kill you.
We're going to shoot our way out.
You know, it's like we've got the guys who were supposed to uphold the law are looking for an immunity deal so they don't have to plead the fifth.
Here's what's happening.
We've got this Inspector General report coming out.
And all the Inspector General report is about is about the Clinton email investigation and how it was run.
So it's not going to come out and expose everything about everything, but the stuff that's leaking out really does seem to be pretty damning.
And one thing it is already said, it's already come out, that McCabe lied about under oath to Congress about whether he leaked material to the Wall Street Journal.
Okay, so now this has been a criminal referral.
So McCabe is up for criminal, is up to be criminally charged.
He could be criminally charged.
So what McCabe is saying is, I think it's Chuck Grassley who wants to hold a hearing on these, on the Clinton investigation.
And McCabe is saying, I will testify at this hearing, but you have to give me what's called use immunity, which means nothing I say in this testimony can be used if any criminal charges come up against me for lying to Congress before.
And the thing about use immunity is that, you know, once you say these things, any evidence they get, you can say, well, I trace that back to what I said, so you can't use it.
So it's really, in effect, it could be real immunity.
But anyway, this is what he's asking for, which just shows you, I mean, it shows you that these guys knew they did wrong.
They knew that they were over.
And this, remember, you know, McCabe is the guy that Comey said he was a stand-up guy because he stood up during Comey's firing.
Comey is apparently also mentioned in the IG report as having acted insubordinately, which is a big, big charge, by the way.
That is a serious, serious business in this law business.
So he's the other one who's being charged.
So we see an FBI, a Justice Department, that had been twisted.
It had been twisted for political purposes.
And it sounds like this IG report, which keeps getting delayed and delayed and delayed, sounds like a big old train coming down the track that's going to expose a lot of this.
And it just, you know, I think we should all be able to agree.
I think the press should be honest and agree that this is bringing out stuff about the Obama administration that they did not have the intellectual curiosity to report on.
And that's the simple truth.
It's not spy versus spy.
It's not Trump said this, but oh, it's this.
It's you guys.
You guys did not report on what was happening in this administration.
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That is from listener Dave Ali, and it is hilarious.
It's really well written.
I got to say, it's genuinely funny.
Thank you, Dave.
That was a definite addition to the show.
I love it.
Speculation Surrounding Melania00:10:23
Now, that was just what I was talking about in terms of the corruption in the Obama administration that is Obama's legacy.
This is his legacy, is what he did to our institutions.
That's just the Justice Department.
We've also got state and treasury, okay?
When they were trying, and this, anything to get this Iran deal into place, man, when they were trying to sell the Iran deal to Congress, the Obama administration assured lawmakers that Iran would not have access to the U.S. financial system, all right?
Because everybody wants to trade in dollars.
Everybody wants to trade with us because we have a relatively honest financial system and a powerful one, one that everybody accepts our currency.
Here are Treasury officials, including the head of the Treasury Department, testifying before Congress, telling Congress that Iran could not access our financial system.
Exceptions, Iran will continue to be denied access to the world's largest market, and we will maintain powerful sanctions targeting Iran's support for terrorist groups.
Iran will be denied access to the world's most important market and unable to deal in the world's most important currency.
That's a compilation from Fox News.
The two major Treasury guys basically saying that Iran is locked out, so we don't have to worry about this.
Meanwhile, a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations run by Senator Rob Portman revealed that under President Obama, the Treasury Department issued a license in 2016.
This has never been disclosed before.
They did it behind the scenes that would have allowed Iran to convert money in our banking system.
Portman describes it.
You have to listen closely.
It's a complicated deal, but listen to what he says.
They had $5.8 billion.
It was in a bank in Oman called the Bank of Muscat.
And they wanted to convert that into Euros ultimately through dollars.
Since they had a dollar-denominated currency, it was better to do it through dollars.
And so they asked the Treasury Department if they could get the ability to do that.
And sure enough, the Treasury Department granted them a license to do it.
Now, what's interesting is they went to the two big U.S. banks that would be the appropriate banks to do this.
Both banks said, no, we want nothing to do with this.
This is wrong.
In other words, the reputational risk and the legal risk was too high.
So ultimately, the dollars were not provided to be able to convert that currency.
And over time, they converted it to Euros, as we understand it, in small amounts in Europe, much less efficiently.
But the point is, at that time, the administration was saying, we're not allowing the U.S. financial system to be used.
We're not allowing the dollar to be used.
We're keeping all of our sanctions in place.
Only the secondary sanctions on others are we allowing the Iranians to have access to, when in fact they were granting this license.
So it's just wrong.
The amazing thing about this, I mean, the amazing part of the story.
So Iran wanted to trade its money, wanted to trade its money in for American dollars that it could use.
And what's amazing is the Obama administration secretly, while lying to Congress about it, said, yeah, go ahead and do that.
You can go ahead.
We give you a license to do that.
The banks looked at this.
The banks, right?
The most practical people in America looked at this and said, that's wrong.
We're not going to do that.
So they didn't do it.
They didn't do it, but the Obama administration lied about it.
I mean, this is, meanwhile, by the way, John Kerry, Secretary of State, was traveling around Europe saying to people, hey, you know, you can trade with Iran.
It's okay.
He was basically telling them to bust the sanctions.
I mean, and this is, remember, to the chief funder of terrorism throughout the world, certainly throughout the region.
This is a rogue state that they thought they had this theory, another one of Obama's academic theories, that if they were nice to Iran, they would join the community of nations.
Well, baloney.
I mean, they've already restarted their nuclear program, showing that it was already underway.
I mean, all they're doing is publicizing it.
So this is an image of a lawless administration, and we can argue, oh, Trump said spy.
Was it really a spy?
We can argue when the investigation started.
We can argue where the violations were.
But the Obama administration clearly acted dishonestly throughout its entire upper echelon in all its major departments was corrupt and was acting behind the scenes and lying to us about what they were doing.
And the press failed to report it.
And it's the fact that they have not made that good.
They have not taken responsibility.
I mean, now they're saying, oh, we're being really hard on Bill Clinton about his sexual escapades.
Now, when no power is on the line, but with Obama, they still have not looked in the mirror and said for eight years, we let this happen.
We let it happen because he was a black guy.
We let it happen because he was a leftist guy.
We let it happen because we loved him and we didn't want to tell the truth about him.
And now, when Trump says fake news, we argue, well, this isn't fake news or that's not fake news, but it's all fake news because they let us down.
And if you want to see how bad, how bad the press is at taking responsibility for itself, you've got to look at this thing about Melania.
I mean, this is one, it's almost, I mean, it is hilarious.
It would be a lot funnier if it weren't so ugly.
But it is, it's funny anyway.
Melania Trump has a kidney operation, right?
And for three weeks, she's probably resting up.
She doesn't appear on TV.
So yesterday, she shows up at a meeting.
And here's a little snippet.
Trump says hello to her.
I'd like to sort of maybe say and pay some respects to some of the people here today.
I have a list.
Of course, we have to start with our great first lady, Melania.
Thank you, Melania.
She's doing great.
She went through a little rough batch, but she's doing great.
And we're very proud of her.
She's done a fantastic job as First Lady.
The people love you.
People of our country love you.
So thank you, Hania.
And she looks great.
And, you know, there was some speculation that she'd had some kind of secret plastic surgery or something.
They were talking about that on NPR, I think.
And she obviously didn't.
After three weeks, she would not look like that.
Now, in her absence, right, three weeks go by, CNN had 24 stories, 24 stories speculating on this.
I'm going to play you a montage from our friends at Newsbusters.
Love that site.
Love Newsbusters and the media research guys.
But I want you to listen to the language.
I talk about this a lot, this passive language.
It fuels speculation.
There's been a lot of speculation.
Sentences without subjects.
Speculation is sparked.
It sparks speculation.
Instead of saying, we have been speculating, we are speculating.
We haven't seen her.
So we are speculating.
Here they are.
It seems like all she really needs to do is just step outside of the White House, just show her face to prove that she's fine, to prove that everything's as she says it is.
She addressed this.
She kind of blamed the media a bit.
She said that the media was working overtime, speculating about where I am and what I'm doing.
Rest deserves that I'm here at the White House with my family, feeling great and working hard on behalf of the American people.
Did that tweet from the First Lady put an end to the mystery for you, or did it spark more speculation?
No, it didn't.
It sparked a lot more speculation because if she's feeling great, a lot of people are saying, well, then why aren't you accompanying your husband to Camp David?
Instead, she gives off this tweet, which doesn't sound like Melania at all.
It actually sounds more like her husband.
She jabbed at the media a little bit.
That's not something Melania usually does.
And so instead of ending the speculation and putting out the fire, it just kind of fanned the flames.
First Lady Melania Trump has not been seen in public for weeks, not since she had a kidney procedure.
We're told she will be at a White House event tonight, but we won't see her.
The event is closed to the press.
It sparks speculation, not I'm speculating about this.
And that was relatively responsible.
Listen to this.
Here is a tweet from a Rolling Stone senior writer, Jamil Smith.
I wish that I didn't suspect that the prolonged, poorly explained public absence of Melania Trump could be about concealing abuse.
I wish that it was a ludicrous prospect.
I wish that the POTUS wasn't a man with a history of abusing women, including those to whom he is married, which, by the way, is rumor and hearsay came up one time in a divorce.
It was later taken by salon writer Bob Sesca.
This guy writes for Salon, right?
Given Biff's behavior, referencing the bully from Back to the Future, right?
Given Biff's behavior, past and present, it's not out of line to imagine the worst about Melania's disappearance.
Something's definitely wrong.
Could be a marriage thing, could be a cosmetic surgery thing, could be an abuse thing.
You know, absent a valid explanation.
Speculation runs amok.
Oh, yeah, I saw, oh, there goes speculation.
It's not me speculating.
There goes speculation.
It's running amok.
Somebody get a hold of that speculation.
Here, this is the worst.
Atlantic senior editor David Fromm, okay?
This is a tweet.
Suppose President Trump punched the first lady in the White House, federal property under federal jurisdiction, then ordered the Secret Service to conceal the assault.
POTUS has Article II authority over Secret Service.
Is that obstruction under secloedow?
Apparently, no.
He's speculating.
This is all speculation.
Okay.
Okay.
So these guys have debased themselves.
It's not speculation running amok.
It's them running amok, speculating.
They've debased themselves.
They've debased the profession of journalism.
Now Trump shows up, and who can blame the guy?
He's furious, right?
And he tweets, the fake news media has been so unfair and vicious to my wife and our great First Lady Melania.
During her recovery from surgery, they reported everything from near death to facelift to she left the White House and me for New York or Virginia to abuse.
All fake.
She was doing really well.
So wait.
So how does the New York Times report that?
And they've since changed that because people were making fun of them.
Here's the New York Times, a former newspaper, how they reported Trump's tweet.
Trump defends Melania Trump and spreads conspiracies about her in the press.
In other words, by reporting on the press's conspiracy theories, it's Trump's fault.
Brian Stelter comes out and says Trump is conflating random Twitter commentators with the media.
It was him.
It was him.
It was like him doing it.
It is unbelievable.
It is a media without responsibility, a media that cannot see itself and will not take responsibility for itself.
And I just think, I also think it's wonderful we should report the miracle that Melania has come back to life after Trump killed her.
I mean, I think that is an amazing thing.
Software Advice Needed00:04:03
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How do we spell claim?
We got to play that thing again.
How do you spell clavin?
Play it again.
Go ahead.
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There is an E in Andrew, but there are no E's in Claven.
Are no E's in Claven.
K-L-A-V-A-N.
There are no E's in there.
I couldn't help it.
I'm sorry.
There's Dave Ali.
Thanks, Dave.
That was really funny.
More great news for our podcast listeners.
Hey, listen, before I go into this, we've got a great interview with Selena Zito coming up.
We're going to stay on Facebook and YouTube so you can listen to it, but you should subscribe anyway.
Don't be so cheap.
It's a lousy 10 bucks a month or 100 bucks for the entire year.
But listen to this interview.
It really is great.
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Can they also listen to the Father's Day special?
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I don't know, but you can listen to it here.
Get ready.
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The God-King of the Daily Wire himself, Jeremy Boring, will come down from the mountain, lightning bolts in hand, and will host a roundtable discussion with Ben Shapiro, me, and Michael Knowles.
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That's this Tuesday, June 12th at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific.
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All right, let us get to this terrific interview.
Voters' Archetypes Shift?00:14:59
Selena Zito is the co-author with Brad Todd of The Great Revolt Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics, which attempts to explain if Donald Trump's election was a fluke or whether it represented a fundamental shift in the electorate.
She's also a reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner, a CNN contributor, and an award-winning columnist for the New York Post.
She won the award the day before, the day we did this interview.
Listen up.
Great interview with Selena Zito.
Selena Zito, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you so much for having me.
And congratulations on winning the New York State Associated Press Award for your columns in the New York Post.
That's great.
That was quite an honor.
And for someone who lives in Pittsburgh, it was really even doubly an honor.
So let's talk about the great revolt inside the populist coalition reshaping American politics.
First, let's start with this.
Why did everybody get this so wrong?
Why did the press get Trump's victory so wrong?
Well, I think it happened for a couple of reasons.
First of all, I think what gave me the advantage in understanding why it could happen was because of my geography.
I don't live in New York.
I don't live in Washington.
And when I cover national politics, my base, my base camp is Pittsburgh.
And so I have, you know, geography in my hand as a tool because, you know, I can, you know, be able to talk to the people in the areas where they live who were going to make the difference.
So we're talking about Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, you know, all of those sort of instrumental areas.
And when you live here, you understand the people better.
You know, and when you live outside the beltway, I know we don't like to say that things are different, but they are.
It's a different pace.
It's a different way of life.
It's having different values.
And so I was able to understand a change was coming probably because this is where I live.
And the other thing is how I approach reporting.
I don't fly somewhere.
I don't parachute in.
If I'm going to cover a town or a region or even a rally, I always take a back road.
I never take a turnpike either or an interstate.
And I usually stay in a town for a couple of days and stay in a bed and breakfast.
So the first person I meet is a small business person.
So that gives me a different sort of perspective than parachuting in.
Sometimes I think when you parachute in, it sort of dulls your instincts because you're on such a limited time.
You tend to go for the shiny object instead of what is the regular or what is the norm.
You know, I could do an entire interview with you about what you just said and what it says about our journalistic community, but I do want to move on because I think you're pointing to everything in a way that's wrong with our journalism in the country.
But what you saw, I mean, what basically everybody was looking at, they were looking at Trump.
They were looking at all his flaws and all his techniques and all this.
But what you saw was you saw a realignment, a political realignment on the ground.
Can you describe what that realignment was?
Yeah, so you hit the nail on the head.
This election was not about Donald Trump.
And that's what most journalists and most academics and most pundits were focusing on.
He was just sort of the result of it, but he wasn't the cause of it.
This has been going on since 2006.
I've been warning that the potential existed since those first midterm elections in 2006 when the Democrats won, because they won by running moderate Democrats, pro-life, pro-gun for the most part, who were really in touch with their community.
And I said, I remember writing at the time, if we do this back and forth, you know, we're going to have a populist election in 10 years.
That was off by a year.
So it wasn't bad.
And that's exactly what happened.
We swung in 2006 to the Democrats, but people thought it was because people like Democrats more.
No, they didn't like them more.
They just like Republicans less.
Same in 2010 in those midterms, where we swung back and we voted in the Republicans and then swung some more in 2014.
And in between those great big wave elections, two important things happened.
We had a huge recession, and we also had a technological sort of industrial revolution.
Those are all indicators that something is amiss.
Something is upending the electorate.
There is an instability.
And you just sort of counter that with seeing that the people that make all the decisions in our culture, I'm not just talking about government.
I'm also talking about sports and Hollywood and, you know, even the large political parties and government, they had sort of lost touch with the people that they serve and or who buy their goods.
And because of that, you know, this sort of populism against all things big, which that is the modern definition of populism, you know, a healthy skepticism against all things big.
And so all those forces were realigning these parties every couple of years, but nobody was really watching that because it was so incremental.
I mean, take Pennsylvania in particular.
Between 1996 and 2016, or 2012, I should say, Pennsylvania became 0.4 more Republican every four years in every four presidential races.
So Bill Clinton won 28 counties in 1996.
Barack Obama, he won 13.
You know, but nobody paid attention to this thing that was happening.
But I did because, well, because I live here and I listen to people.
And so that's kind of why I understood that the potential for this to happen has been right in front of our eyes.
We just haven't listened to it.
And I think part of the problem with journalism is that like big companies and like big Hollywood, their newsrooms aren't diverse.
And I'm not just talking about ethnically.
I'm also talking about you don't have a lot of people in a newsroom that came from a blue collar town or went to a state school or goes, sits in a church every Sunday or sits in a synagogue every Friday or owns a gun, you know, or is pro-life.
So that lack of diversity makes it hard for people to understand things that aren't the same as their values.
No, there's no question about this.
It's just it is absolutely.
And then they don't even understand that they're biased because there's nobody sitting at the desk next to them to say that you're biased.
So they're all just confirming what they think.
Right.
And that's the problem in everything in our society.
The other day, John Boehner was asked about the Republican Party, and he said something to the effect of the Republican Party is gone.
It's taking a nap.
What we've got is the Trump Party.
And I thought, well, is the Republican Party taking a nap or is it being transformed?
Is it being changed to meet this new coalition that you're talking about?
If you could describe philosophically for a moment, you're talking about cultural things, you're talking about a cultural sense of things, but is there a platform that this new coalition wants?
Well, it's pretty much all laid out in the Great Revolt.
And trust me, this new coalition, like any time parties realign, is messy, you know, because the Republican Party has become more of a populist party.
So things like entitlement reform aren't at the top of the sort of the wish list as it was when it was more Paul Ryan's party or Mitt Romney's party.
And they've inherited a lot of broadly different voters who are conservative, but aren't necessarily Republican.
So there's going to be some growing pains.
The voter that the Republican Party may shed would be the affluent suburban voter.
I'm not convinced of that because they're getting a lot of what they want anyways, despite not particularly caring for Trump.
But that's probably their sort of weakest voter out of all the archetypes that are outlined in the Great Revolt, which, by the way, those archetypes were also confirmed with doing a poll after I did all my reporting.
So it wasn't just, you know, oh, I find these voters and this is what I think.
It began with that, but Brad and I believed that it was important to back up our reporting with an extensive survey to make sure that what we found was indeed true across the board.
You know, you talk about these archetypes, you talk about the silent suburban mom and King Cyrus Christians and all this.
And what I want to ask is the press is repeatedly, continually making this all about race.
How much do you think it was about race?
I think race plays a part in both parties in a small percentage of a way.
I don't think it's a determining factor.
I mean, if you look at several of the archetypes in the Great Revolt, there are several families who have adopted minority children and are very insaulted by people referring them to as racist.
I rarely find that that is the case with a voter.
I would say maybe 2%.
And I would argue that it's about the same in the Democratic Party too.
But the problem is, is that that's sexy, right?
Or that stops a conversation.
When people don't want to address the fact that parties, both parties, have lost these voters, they just say, oh, it's because they're dumb and they're racist.
Because they don't want the conversation to go any further because they don't want to think about possibly their contribution into the failures of holding these voters.
Right, right.
What is a King Cyrus Christian?
I found all the archetypes fascinating, but the King Cyrus Christians are up on my top, my top, I guess, top three.
So King Cyrus Christians are evangelical and Catholic voters who for years and years and years, you know, Chamber of Commerce type, moderate fiscal Republicans have been complaining about after every primary and saying, you know, they throw out their hands and they say, oh, for goodness sakes, can't they just vote more pragmatically?
Why do they have to always go with the most religious candidate?
And then we won't win.
So this time they decided to be pragmatic.
As Tony Perkins said in the lead up to the election, it's not about shared values.
It's about shared priorities.
And these voters decided that religious liberty was more important to them than him having sharing the same values as they did.
And I saw this early on in Iowa, where, you know, we talked to voters and the electorate in Iowa Republican caucus is like 100% evangelical.
And they would say, well, you know, I like Ben Carson, you know, because he's just like me, or I like Ted Cruz because he shares our values.
But that Donald Trump, he's a fighter.
He would go to the mattresses for us.
He would take on the system.
He would take on Hillary Clinton.
And while they didn't pick him, he came in a darn close second.
And it was my moment where I said, oh, this is over.
He's going to win the nomination.
Wow.
You know, I have to tell you one of the things I've always noticed, having traveled a lot around the country, is how much more sensible and nuanced what you might call ordinary people are than pundits and politicians.
I mean, it is amazing how pundits and politicians make everything black and white, but go in and talk to a guy who works in a drugstore or a gas station and he will tell you things like that, which make perfect sense.
I understand he's not a Christian, but he supports and will defend my religious liberties makes perfect sense.
Let me ask you this.
You're looking ahead at the midterms and maybe 2020.
What do you see?
Well, I see that the Trump coalition is completely intact.
There's very few people that I have encountered that have fallen away from him.
They might look, probably 70% of them don't like his compartment, but they like the results.
And they were never voting for his compartment.
They were never voting for his tweets or his scandalous background.
Like they already knew who this guy was.
They had already made that assessment.
But I also, it's really interesting to me that I found people who didn't vote for him, but are suited by the way either he has been treated and or he has been covered that they're willing to throw in for him.
But in 2000, in terms of the midterms, I have been saying since the very beginning, I am not convinced that the Democrats are having a blue wave, mostly because I'm not quite convinced that they will make all the right decisions in primary races.
You know, their tendency to go, the grassroots level, which is what usually shows up in a primary, tends to be more left, just as Republicans tends to be more right.
And they've been picking the more liberal, more progressive candidates so far.
Now, California, the Driple C spent a ton of money and they got the candidates they wanted, making it harder for Republicans to hold those seats in California.
But again, I'm not convinced because we aren't really measuring Republicans and independence yet.
You know, their excitement level hasn't shown up because it's overshadowed by Democrats because of course they're more excited.
They lost.
Why Not Both Read and Listen?00:04:43
Yeah.
Yeah.
Selena, really interesting.
I just think it's, you know, you're a rebuke to the journalistic community.
And congratulations again on your award.
I hope you'll come back and talk again as the midterms come closer.
Oh, thank you so much.
Thanks for having me on.
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks a lot.
So basically, she says that she got things right because she actually went out and did some reporting.
There's so much in that interview that I'd like to talk about.
I'm out of time now, but really, really fascinating stuff and good for her for getting out of the house and just finding out what America thinks and not looking down on them and telling them what they should be thinking instead of asking them what they think.
Stuff I Like.
It's stuff I like.
It's just hoorah, hooray, boy, stuff I like.
Andrew Klavan likes hoorah, hooray, hooray, stuff I like.
That's great.
Norman Young and Anthony Leonardi.
The people who listen to the show are more talented than we are.
You know, like they should be here.
We should be listening.
Really great stuff.
You know, I know I've mentioned this, but I don't think I put it on stuff I like.
Red Sparrow is a novel by Jason Matthews, a spy novel that was made into a nude scene with Jennifer Lawrence with a movie wrapped around it.
And when I went to see the movie, I really went to see the movie because I wanted to see the nakedness stuff.
And it is an exploitative movie.
I mean, it is like just, they just thought they could push the sex and people would go and see it.
But as I was watching the movie, I thought, the plot is really good.
So I read the book.
And if you like spy novels, this is a top-notch spy novel.
I wouldn't put it at the very top where I put John LeCre, but anything that is below that that you read for entertainment and you, the guy, Jason Matthews, is a former CIA agent, and it is filled with incredibly realistic spy craft and the terminology.
It's so realistic.
And he writes the lead character who is kind of a supergirl, but he still writes her as a woman.
And she comes across as a very, very realistic woman.
It won the Edgar Award, which I have won a couple of times, and the ITW Thriller Award, which I've only been nominated for, but it won both of those.
And it's part of a trilogy, which I'll also read.
I really recommend it highly.
Also, before we go into the Clavenless weekend, before I desert you in this Clavenless weekend, we're going to play a little cut of Jesse Belvin.
You know, people don't know about Jesse Belvin.
He died at 27.
He was on his way.
He's a black guy.
He was on his way to the first concert in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1960 with an integrated audience.
And he was hit in a head-on collision.
And people thought, because there were a lot of protests and anger, and people thought maybe he was murdered.
But in fact, the guy just fell asleep.
His driver just fell asleep at the wheel, which he had done before.
But he was, he co-wrote the song Earth Angel.
I don't know if you're to sue to get credit on it.
And this is his biggest hit.
And I love this song.
I mean, this is such a sweet song.
The arrangement's a little old-fashioned.
But if you listen to his voice, he was really, really good.
The way he hits the notes just off the timing is really exciting and interesting.
I think he would have gone on to do great things.
Jesse Belvin, we will say goodbye with that.
The Clavenless Weekend is upon you.
Survivors gather here on Monday.
I'll be here.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Good night, my love.
Pleasant dreams and sleep tight, my love.
May tomorrow be sunny and bright and bring you closer to me.
Go.
There's just one thing I'd like to know.
Is your love still warm for me?
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring, senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Emily Jai.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and Makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.