Larry Elder reveals how his abusive father’s brutal honesty—after decades of silence—exposed a hidden legacy of trauma, from Jim Crow-era abandonment to WWII discrimination, reshaping their fractured relationship. Elder ties this to Trump’s presidency, arguing it forces the left into defensive chaos by weaponizing cultural battles like free speech hypocrisy (e.g., Colorado baker cases) while exposing media double standards, like Al Sharpton’s unchecked influence. His book A Lot Like Me frames reconciliation as a rejection of "victimhood culture," using data—73% fatherless Black children face higher poverty risks—to demand accountability over systemic excuses, mirroring Trump’s confrontational approach to dismantling institutional bias. [Automatically generated summary]
In a recent interview with Sean Hannity, President Trump revealed that he and Kim Jong-un had a discussion during their Singapore summit in which they compared the Trump administration to the previous administration of President Lama Bahama or whatever the hell his name was.
It's hard to remember now that his legacy is a barely remembered wisp of ash blown into nothingness on the hurricane winds of history.
But in fact, we do have a video of the summit discussion in which Kim can be heard discussing President O'Hara.
Here it is, and I'll provide the translation.
I well remember Mr. Osama or Obrama as an anti-American panty waste whom I planned to eat for lunch before he ran away in fear and terror of my mighty power.
And I laughed and laughed.
And laughed.
When Kim was told that the previous president's name was actually Obama, he apologized and said it was hard to remember now that President Banana's legacy had vanished like a childhood crush with the coming of true love.
This remark drew applause from his admirers, after which the first person to stop applauding was put to death.
Tricker warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky donkey.
Life is tickety boo.
And birds are wingy, also singing hunky-dunky.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, happy birthday to President Trump.
Did you realize it's his birthday today?
It is.
It's President Trump's birthday.
And happy Clavenless Father's Day to the rest of you.
As a Father's Day gift, we have the sage of South Central Larry Elder with us in the studio to discuss his incredibly, really powerful book called A Lot Like Me, A Father and Son's Journey to Reconciliation.
But we will discuss the book at length, but we will also get some political wisdom out of the guy because he is one of the great political commentators.
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All right.
You know, the IG report is coming out today.
It may already, it's been leaked a lot of it, but so we're going to wait and talk about that on Monday because I hate talking about stuff off the top of my head.
What we are going to talk about.
Oh, I also have to remind you, so much stuff going on here.
So much stuff I have to talk about before I get to talk about the politics.
It's almost time for the next episode of the conversation.
That's Tuesday, June 19th at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 p.m. Pacific.
It's Ben Shapiro this time, so you know he will answer all your questions with absolute certainty that the questions will be asked by the lovely and talented Alicia Alicia Kraus.
The Q ⁇ A will stream live on YouTube and Facebook for everyone to watch, but only Daily Wire subscribers can ask Ben questions.
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Trump's Interview Debate00:14:17
We've got to do a kind of final wrap-up of the reaction to this summit and what we're seeing because Trump gave an interview to Brett Baer the other day and it's driving people crazy and I'm seeing it very differently than everybody else has seen it.
There's some people saying, oh, everything Trump does is great and some people saying, oh, this is the worst disaster ever.
And I'm seeing it very differently.
You know, I've been in a lot of negotiations in Hollywood.
When I first came out to Hollywood, when I first started writing movies, a lot of Hollywood guys were Harvey Weinstein types.
I mean, Harvey Weinstein is a type.
He may have been the worst of that type, but I worked with more than a couple guys who were Harvey Weinstein types, very, very big producers who were known to throw chairs at people, to kick people out of cars, seriously, kick their, you know, it's like when they would fire their assistant, they just kick them out of a moving car.
And I was in negotiations with these guys for a lot of money.
But here's the thing.
I didn't do the negotiating.
My agent or my lawyer, and sometimes both, did the negotiating.
Why?
Because they could be nasty.
They could say all the stuff that I wasn't going to say.
They could be nice.
They could flatter the guy when I might not do that.
They did it, and I didn't have anything.
I didn't have to.
I had so much at risk.
It was my livelihood, my property that was being negotiated that I might have gotten nervous.
I might have given the game away and done something wrong.
The negotiators are very, very different kinds of people than the creators.
Creators are kind of thinking people.
They're out there working and they're in their own heads.
The negotiators are very active.
While they're negotiating, and I saw this a million times, they are absolutely convinced that they are in the right.
I have had people who are actually friends say to me, like, why do you have to go to your union?
Why do you have to have a union?
And I say, to protect me from you, because you're after my blood.
I would never come after your blood.
Just give me everything you've got and it'll be fine.
You know, I mean, they do not understand.
They have complete self-certainty.
They do not understand your position.
They never see it from your point of view.
And then, no matter what they say to you in negotiations, and they can call you terrible things, threaten you, tell you you'll never work in Hollywood again.
Once the contract is signed, you're their best friend.
It's fine.
It's all over.
All that stuff didn't mean anything.
Trump is the negotiator.
Trump is a negotiator.
And that is driving people crazy because the negotiator is not thinking about what he's saying right now.
He's not thinking about the fact that he's calling you names.
He's not thinking about the fact that he just insulted your mother.
He's just thinking about getting the property into his possession.
He's thinking about getting to the end of the negotiation.
And this is creating really a really different kind of presidency that is taking a lot of people a lot of time to adjust to.
And I don't blame them.
I'm not saying that everybody should just adjust to it.
But let's just take a look at a couple of cuts of this Brett Baer thing, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
I mean, when he talks about his negotiation with Kim, it's all about him.
It's all about what is happening in this room.
And that's not, I mean, it is narcissism, but it's the narcissism of negotiation.
Let's take a look.
Brett Baer asks him why, you know, the Kims have lied to us again and again.
They played Obama.
They played Clinton.
They played Bush.
Everybody, why is it going to be different with Trump?
And listen to his answers.
Cut one.
So North Korea, you know, they've agreed to things before.
They've agreed to several things.
Yeah, but that's with a different president, and nobody's taken it this far.
And presidents have never met with anybody from North Korea.
It's been, you know, delegated to other people.
And even if they did meet, they wouldn't have been able to pull it off.
But this is something that should have been done years ago.
I mean, you've heard me say it many times.
This should have been done 10 years, 15, 20 years ago.
This shouldn't be done now where they have an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
This should have never allowed to get to this point.
With that being said, Chairman Kim wants to resolve the problem because he knew that we weren't playing around.
I wasn't playing around.
He's not playing around.
It's all about this relationship.
And he is thinking about that every minute.
He's always thinking when he's talking into the camera to Brett Baer, he's talking to Kim.
That is the thing you've got to understand.
Everything is negotiation.
You know, when I was in negotiations, they would sometimes take me out and they wanted a piece of property from me.
This is an old joke in Hollywood that, you know, it's like you don't realize you're in hell until the contract is signed because they treat you so well.
Sometimes during negotiation, they take you out to these beautiful restaurants.
You know, they whine you and dine you.
And then you sign the contract, you never see them again.
You know, that's the thing.
So everything he's saying and everything they're doing in the negotiation is about that negotiation.
So here's the next thing that he said.
And this is what appalled Trump, not only Trump's critics, but people who actually want to like him.
This is the thing.
Let us make no mistake, Kim Jong-un is a monster.
He is a guy, I think he once had people executed with like an anti-aircraft guy like Bloom.
He's a monster from a movie.
He's that bad a guy.
So Baer asks him about that.
And Trump's response has caused an absolute firestorm.
Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, tough people, and you take it over from your father, I don't care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have.
If you can do that at 27 years old, I mean, that's one in 10,000 that could do that.
So he's a very smart guy.
He's a great negotiator.
But I think we understand each other.
But he's still done some really bad things.
Yeah, but so have a lot of other people done some really bad things.
I mean, I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done.
So that wasn't as bad as when he was talking about Putin and they said Putin killed people and said, we've killed people too.
Like at least he wasn't comparing Kim to us, which I, so that's actually a step up for Trump in understanding.
But it is, you know, it's appalling to have the American president say, basically, what a talented fellow he killed all his competitors.
I mean, that's what he's saying.
It's like, you know, he's admiring him for something genuinely, genuinely bad.
So there are two approaches to this that I think are, you know, we're all so ready to jump down each other's throats nowadays.
We're also ready to yell at each other and scream at each other that we don't always listen to one another.
And these two approaches can both be right at the same time.
And I'll show them to you.
I will not just tell you about them.
I'll actually show you the two approaches at work.
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Okay, so last night on special report, Molly Hemingway is debating this with Eli Lake from Bloomberg, okay?
And Molly has been a fierce defender of Trump, but I think an honest defender of Trump.
She will go to his flaws, she will talk about it, but she is ferocious.
And sometimes, at first, when I would see her, I used to say, it's nice that like a young lady can stand up to all these guys.
Now I fear for the guys' lives.
Pull it back, Molly, don't kill them.
We need them tomorrow.
But she is saying, she said, you know, she did say, I wish Trump would talk more about the human rights abuses, but he's trying to accomplish something.
And Eli Lake, who had previously in the same show, said, you know, I do not want the American president praising this monster.
Here's the interchange between them.
You have this thing with neoconservatism, militarism, fused with moral idealism that seeks to achieve everything but ends up accomplishing nothing and doing so at a huge cost of blood and money.
And so I think it's important that we understand we have our national interest here.
We want to keep from getting into a nuclear war and we will hopefully substantively deal with human rights abuses, which are serious and need to be dealt with.
But that's not our first concern.
Well, if I may respond, an old neocon militarist by the name of Ronald Reagan managed to negotiate arms control agreements and have a relationship with Soviet premiers and still keep a laser-like focus on the dissidents who were rotting in their gulags.
And when the Soviet Union fell, that was something that many of those former dissidents, when they were free, remember they said it was something that gave them hope.
I'm sorry, but I hold out that kind of expectation.
I'm not expecting a negotiation where Kim Jong-un suddenly becomes a Jeffersonian Democrat.
I understand that's not going to happen.
But at the same time, there's a difference between that and having an American president basically become, in some ways, sort of, you know, part of the dictator's lie about his popularity with his own people.
Now, we didn't want to show the part where afterwards Molly ripped out his throat with her bare hands, but that's...
No, I'm joking.
But, you know, Roth is making a fair point that Reagan was able to go in and negotiate with Gorbachev in a very tough way at Reykjavik, but at the same time, was always focused on what was wrong with the Soviet Union and all this.
Big differences, first of all, I hate this thing of comparing Gorbachev to Kim.
Gorbachev was a rational leader of a failing slave state, but he was a rational reformist in a failing slave state, and Reagan pushed him to the brink and got him to do what we needed done.
Kim is Looney Toons.
I mean, Kim is Looney Tunes.
Reagan also was not the negotiator.
The negotiation was done by his guys, and then he went in and he did do some really good negotiating in the room, but it wasn't all based on him and their relationship.
It was also based on the work that had been done.
Everything for Trump is relationship, and everything is being done with this guy who is out of his mind.
You know, he's a monster.
He's not Gorbachev.
And he's much more like Mao.
It's much more like Nixon with Mao, much more of just a guy who will do anything.
And the whole thing is, is Trump is negotiating.
We have to understand every word he says as part of a negotiation.
But the justification for negotiation is winning, as Trump himself would say.
So we've got to see if he won.
We just don't know yet.
And all these people telling you it's over, it's over.
Even Trump telling you it's over and we've won is wrong.
We just don't know yet.
We'll have to see what happens next.
However, where Trump is winning is politically just amazing.
And you have got to hear the left is beginning to stink of fear.
They see this thing coming, these midterms coming, and they thought this blue wave was a sure and certain thing.
And suddenly Vox is writing, well, maybe not.
I don't know.
You got to listen.
This is an amazing column from Knucklehead Row.
journey to knucklehead row knucklehead row is the op-ed page of the new york times named that because each one of their writers is more of a knucklehead than the last Frank Bruni, one of their top knuckleheads.
You know, if all you knew about gay people or black people was the op-ed page in the New York Times, you would be a homophobic bigot.
You know, it's like all the gay people I know are great people.
You know, the black guys aren't great people, but if you read the people in the New York Times, you think, oh my goodness, this is terrible.
Frank Bruni writes this amazing column.
It's called Dear Robert De Niro, Samantha B, and Other Trump haters.
He says, I get that you're angry.
I'm angry too, but anger isn't a strategy.
Sometimes it's a trap.
When you find yourself spewing four-letter words, you've fallen into it.
You've chosen cheap theatrics over the long game, catharsis over cunning.
You think you're raising your fist when you're really raising the white flag.
You're right that Donald Trump is a dangerous and deeply offensive man and that restraining and containing him are urgent business.
You're wrong about how to go about doing that.
At least you're letting your emotions get the better of you.
When you answer name-calling with name-calling and tantrums with transforms, you're not resisting him.
You're mirroring him.
You're not diminishing him.
You're demeaning yourselves.
Many voters don't hear yourself.
And he goes on to say, he says, here's his strategy, right?
Enough with idiot and moron.
They're schoolyard and splenetic.
Enough with Hitler.
Has Trump shown fascistic tendencies?
Yes.
But is he the second coming of the Third Reich?
No.
Nor are the spineless Republicans who have enabled him Nazi collaborators, not on the evidence of what has and hasn't happened so far.
He says, and when you make the direst predictions, you needlessly put your credibility on the line.
The stock market didn't go into free fall after Trump's election.
We're not at war with North Korea.
I'm not ignoring the grave flaws and galling giveaways in his tax overhaul, and I'm not minimizing his disregard for diplomatic norms.
I'm noting that when you extrapolate too wildly into the future, you sometimes wind up distracting people from what's happening in the here and now.
What I want you to notice about this is he never says your predictions were wrong, so maybe you should stop before you make another prediction.
He doesn't say that.
He says this is bad strategy.
He doesn't say you've revealed your hatefulness and maybe you should check to stop being so hateful.
Maybe you should think about what philosophy, leftism, has made you so hateful.
He doesn't say that.
He says when you're hateful, when you show people that you're hateful, you give the game away.
You give the game away.
So I prefer myself Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders, socialist guy who honeymooned in the slave state of the Soviet Union, while they're taking dissonance off to the gulags, Bernie was singing sweet love songs to his wife in the Soviet Union.
Bernie makes a speech in which he just openly tells you what the left is doing.
The Fight for Freedom00:05:49
We are obviously in a pivotal and unprecedented moment in American history.
And the fights that we are waging are not just for ourselves.
More importantly, they are for our kids, our grandchildren, and the future of this planet.
And if anybody in this room, and I know it's not the case here, but anybody in this country who thinks that now is the time to throw your hands up and give up, you are dead wrong.
Now is the time more than ever to stand up, fight back.
And I want to thank all of the groups here because whether you know it or not, you have helped transform this country in so many ways.
A few years ago, just a few years ago, and I want you to think about it, many of the ideas that we talked about were thought to be fringe ideas, radical ideas, extremist ideas.
Well, you know what?
Because of your efforts, those ideas are now mainstream American ideas.
His purpose, he just said it, we took extreme radical ideas and turned them into mainstream ideas.
And in a lot of ways, he's right.
Even the fact that we have to argue about whether men are men and women are women, even the fact that we have to argue about socialism is an amazing thing.
I mean, socialism has destroyed everything it touches.
It's like a miasma.
It's like a poison gas that leaves everything dead in its wake.
And yet we have to have this argument again because they have managed to disinform our young people about the truth of history and the ideas of the founding.
And so, you know, when these guys smell fear, what they smell is exposure.
When they are afraid, they're afraid of being exposed.
They're afraid that Trump is actually selling us something that we need, which is Americanism.
It is an amazing thing that Trump, who is not the most well-briefed person on our founding principles, is yet opening the way for those who do know about our founding principles to bring them back into the mainstream of American thought and do the opposite of what Bernie is talking about.
You can see they're scared.
They're scared of them now, and good.
You know, you want to see why I say that?
Take a look at there's this organization we love, Campus Reform, and they go on the campuses and they interview people.
So in the wake of this kind of amazing Colorado cake baking case, where two justices actually basically said that a man should be forced to express his celebration of gay marriage when he doesn't believe in that, Campus Reform went out and interviewed some students.
Listen to these results.
It's a long cut, but it's worth listening to because he then wrong foots them.
So just listen to the whole thing.
The fact that our Supreme Court found that this was an okay thing, I find appalling.
But if his job is to bake a cake for a wedding, even if he doesn't agree with it, he should still have to bake a cake for that wedding.
Do you think that he should be forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding?
I definitely think so.
People have a right to eat the cake that they want to eat.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like he should have to.
He should have to bake the cake because it's his job.
Like, he's a baker.
I think that he should definitely make the cake for them.
If there were an African-American baker and someone came in and asked them to make a cake for a KKK rally, should they be forced to do it?
I'm going to say no.
But they're a baker.
It's their job, right?
Well, yeah, no.
I mean, like, they shouldn't, but, like, I guess that kind of just like contradicts what I just said.
But yeah, I'm not sure on that subject.
What would be the difference?
No, because the KKK is directly hating them as a person.
Meanwhile, gay people aren't hating the baker for being a baker.
Mixing it up, how about should a Jewish baker have to make a cake for a Palestinian wedding?
It gets more complicated like that, I guess.
But I'm unsure, I would say.
I don't know.
I think he should.
I mean, once again, we are in America, and if you're going to open a shop, you have to be willing to accept all customers that are going to walk into that shop.
As for his religion, I think that his ability to exercise his freedom of religion ends when that encroaches on another person's ability to be who they are.
Yeah, it's like morally wrong not to bake the cake, but like it's honestly like his say since it is his business.
While I think it's wrong for him to discriminate, I do think it's within his rights to deny service.
So finally, the last two guys get it right.
A couple of kids get it right that they don't like that he's denying them the birthday cake, but he has the right to do it.
But what's so interesting is that no teacher has ever challenged them.
No one has ever taught them what this guy comes out and does when he wrong foots them.
Well, why does he have to bake for a gay guy if he doesn't have to bake for the KKK?
In other words, what you're saying is he has to bake for people whose opinions I agree with, but not for those whose opinions you don't agree with.
And once you have that in place, we've lost our freedom of speech.
But the fact that no one is, maybe Frank Bruni should be telling people, hey, you know what?
Not only don't be hateful, not only don't make stupid predictions, but also change your opinions.
Change your opinions.
And then maybe you'll be able to sell something to the American public besides your resistance and your hatred.
Why Baking Rules00:15:23
All right.
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So listen, this is the place where we usually break away from Facebook and YouTube, but we do not want you to miss the great Larry Elder talking about his powerful new book, A Lot Like Me, about his reconciliation with his father.
So we're going to stay on, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't subscribe.
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We got Larry Elder coming right up.
Larry Elder is and has been for a long time one of the best political commentators out there.
That is why his show, The Larry Elder Show, is syndicated in over 300 markets, but he is also the best-selling author of such books as The 10 Things You Can't Say in America, which I loved, by the way.
Showdown, Confronting Biased Lies, and the Special Interests That Divide America.
But this is a very personal book, a lot like me, A Father and Son's Journey to Reconciliation.
Larry, it's good to see you.
Thanks so much for having me, Drew.
I appreciate it.
It's a real pleasure.
So, you know, you have been, I mean, you're the guy.
You know, first of all, it's always strange to see you when we bump into each other.
You know, you live in the little radio in my car.
I'm always strange that you actually are a real human being.
I really am.
I have arms, legs.
Be shocked.
It's amazing.
I'm 75 pounds.
I'm a two juicy fruit.
Why did you get off the political topics to write something so personal?
He's a lot like me.
One day at the end of my radio show, I spent about five minutes talking about my father.
That next day I gave a speech before a bunch of veterans.
I did Q ⁇ A. Every single question had to do with the five minutes I did about my dad.
And it struck me that maybe, just maybe, what I said on the air had struck a chord with people.
What I talked about briefly was the fact that my dad and I did not get along when I was growing up.
I hated the SOB.
But I thought it was him, not me.
I have two brothers.
We all felt the same way.
Whenever we talked about him, dad's an SLB, dad's an SOB.
I couldn't wait until I got big enough and strong enough, Drew, to grow up enough to kick his butt.
That's how much I dislike this man.
He seemed ill-tempered and not ill-tempered about the same thing.
It's one thing if you get mad about A and then you don't do A, but he'd get mad about A and then you would do A and he's not mad about it.
So you didn't even know what was wrong.
I mean, he just seemed, I wondered why he even had kids.
If you're going to be this angry and treat them like this, why even have them?
That was my attitude towards my father growing up.
Unfortunately, he starts a cafe when I'm around 12 years old, so now I have to work for him.
Hated working for my dad.
He would blow up at the smallest thing.
When I was 15 years old, I said to myself, the next time my dad blows up at me, and Drew, we're talking about a little diner now, 18, 19 seats.
The grill's right in the middle, so when he yells at me, everybody can see it.
And I'm 15 years old.
It's embarrassing.
S-words sometimes.
I forgot to do this.
I forgot to do that.
And in my opinion, I was very efficient.
My dad, in my opinion, was just out of control.
I would love to tell you that I said to my father, let's sit down.
Let's see here, pal.
We're going to have it out.
I was afraid of him.
So I told myself, the next time he yells at me, I'm going to leave.
That is rebellion.
My dad yelled at me.
In fact, the waitress called in sick that day.
It was just my dad and me.
The little cafe was full of people.
My dad yelled at me.
I walked out.
Wow, so you're 15, 16?
15 years old.
You just don't do that to my father.
He came home.
He was furious.
He said to me as I lay on my bed, why did you leave?
And I said, Dad, I got tired of the way you spoke to me.
My dad paid me $10 a day plus tips.
He bought up the $10, he threw it at me as I lay on the bed.
He walked out of my bedroom.
We did not speak to each other for 10 years.
And when I say don't speak, I mean nothing.
My dad came home late, and I was about ready to graduate from high school, so I was able to avoid him.
And then I went to college in the East Coast, law school in the Midwest.
I got a job with a big law firm in Ohio.
So for 25 years, basically, I avoided the guy.
When I would come home to visit my parents, I'd just make sure he was never around.
And we just didn't speak for 10 years.
Now I'm 25 years old.
I should be living large.
I just passed a California bar, the Ohio bar.
I got a job with a major law firm right now.
The salary for somebody at a firm like that at 25 years old is about $150,000.
I should be living large and living big.
I can't sleep.
I'm having difficulty.
And it's about my father.
I know it's about my father.
Not that I ever thought we'd be friends, but I thought we should at least clear the air.
So I called my secretary.
I said, cancel all my appointments.
I'm going to L.A.
I didn't want my dad to know I was coming.
I didn't want him to prepare for this confrontation, which I thought would last five or 10 minutes.
I walked into the cafe.
I had two big bags.
My dad was shocked to see me.
And he said, shall I put your bags in the back?
I said, no, dad, I'm only going to be here for five or ten minutes.
I want to tell you something.
Because you were going to tell him off.
I'm going to tell him off, and he'd tell me off, and I thought it would last about five or ten minutes.
At least we cleared the air.
I'd be able to sleep.
My dad came out, and I told myself before he sat down, Larry, don't tee off on him.
Just give him the highlights of the things he's done to you, said to you that's bothered you.
Don't tee off on him.
He sat down and I teed off on him.
I spoke almost 20 minutes nonstop.
You can see how I can go.
And my dad, Drew, just took it.
I talked about every whipping, every spanking, everything he ever did.
He just took it.
Every now and he'd lean over, pour some more coffee.
He just took it.
And finally, I was out of ammo.
Had nothing else to say.
I was spent.
And my dad looked up and said, is that it?
You didn't speak to me for 10 years because of that?
He said, let me tell you about my father.
And for the first time, I saw my dad cry.
I did not think he had the ability to summon tears.
My dad told me about his father, Elder.
Turns out Elder is not his biological father.
I didn't know that.
He was in his life about four years.
He was an alcoholic who was physically abusive to him and to his mom.
My dad came home at the age of 13 years old.
This time had a fight with his mom's then-boyfriend.
She had a series of boyfriends, each one more irresponsible than the one before.
She didn't really work.
They would skip rent all the time.
So they stayed in some room, and my dad was quarreling with his mom's then-boyfriend.
She sides with the boyfriend, throws my father out of the house, never to return.
13-year-old black boy, Jim Crow South, Athens, Georgia, at the beginning of the Great Depression.
I defy you to find somebody who had a hand dealt like that.
My father walks down the road, takes any job he can get.
Ultimately, he became a Pullman porter for the trains.
They were the largest private employer in those days.
And my dad, black boy from the South, was able to travel all around the country, which is eye-opening for him.
And he came to California once on a run, and the weather was nice, and people seemed less racist, more friendly.
My dad made a mental note, maybe someday I'll relocate to California.
Who knows?
Pearl Harbor.
My dad joins the Marines.
I said, why?
He said, two reasons.
They went where the action is, and I love the uniforms.
My dad was stationed in Guam.
He was a staff sergeant in charge of cooking.
Comes back to Chattanooga after the war where he had married my mom, to get him a job as a short order cook, which is what he always wanted to do.
He always wanted to cook.
He went to restaurant after restaurant after restaurant, and he was told, we don't hire N-words.
He went to an unemployment office.
The lady said, you went through the wrong door.
My dad goes out to the hall, sees colored only, goes to that door to the very same lady who sent him out.
Goes home to my mom, said, this is BS.
I'm going to California.
I'm going to get me a job as a short order cook.
Comes out to California, walks around for two days.
I'm sorry, you have no references.
I'm sorry, you have no references.
My dad said, I work for free.
Just give me a reference.
I'm sorry.
You can't do that.
You have no references.
They treated him the same way out here as they did in Tennessee.
A little more polite about it.
Polite, yeah.
Went to an unemployment office, one door this time.
A lady said, we have nothing.
My dad said, what time do you open?
She said, 8.30.
What time do you close?
5.
I'll be here at 8.30.
I'll be here at 5.
First thing you have, I'll take.
My dad sat in a chair for a day and a half.
Lady says, I have something.
I don't know that you want it.
My dad said, I'm sure I'll want it.
What is it?
She says, you'll be cleaning toilets for an abisco bread.
My dad took that job for 10 years, took a second job with a bread company called Barbara and Bread, also cleaning toilets.
Went to night school at night a couple of nights a week to get his GED and cook for our family on the weekends to make more money.
The man never slept, which was why Drew, he was so cranky and tired all the time.
You go day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year with virtually no sleep, and you come home and a house full of three rambunctious boys.
How are you going to feel?
Eight-hour conversation.
He's telling me about his life, and he's getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and I'm getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
At the end of it, I said, Dad, I am so sorry.
And my father said, don't be.
You just didn't know.
But please follow the advice I've always given you and your brothers.
Hard work wins.
You get out of life what you put into it.
You cannot control the outcome, but Larry, you are 100% in control of the effort.
Before you bitch, moan, and whine about what somebody did to you, go to the nearest mirror, look at it, and say, what could I have done to change the outcome?
And finally, he said, no matter how good you are, how hard you work, bad crap will happen.
How you respond to those bad things will tell your mom and me whether or not we raised a man.
So the book is called A Lot Like Me, because at the end of this eight-hour conversation, I realized this guy was a lot like me.
We talked about how we much don't really care to go to party.
We talked about personal habits, likes, dislikes, and they were almost identical.
And I wrote the book because 40% of kids are raised now without fathers.
40%.
In the black community, it's 73%.
25% of white kids are raised without fathers.
Half of the Hispanic kids are raised without fathers.
It is the number one social problem in this country.
And I didn't say it.
Obama said a kid raised without a father is five times more likely to be poor, nine times more likely to drop out of school, 20 times more likely to end up in jail.
It is far and away our biggest social problem.
But it's not a death sentence.
My father's life shows you that.
And my father's attitude was, you have an obligation to pick up the cards and play them to the best of your ability.
That is your duty.
That is your obligation.
And if you do that, he says people will help you.
If anybody had a reason to be angry at the white man, pick up a gun and go after people, it's people like my dad, that whole generation, but they didn't.
They worked hard.
They progressed.
They recognized that things are a lot better right now.
My father, before he died, told me he cannot believe how profoundly different the country is.
And so I'm encouraging people to recognize we are blessed to be born in America.
And if you have a mom and a dad in your house, you are doubly blessed.
And if you don't, though, it's not a death sentence.
You still have an obligation to pick up the cards and play them to the best of your ability.
And in America, you can do that.
You know, that is an amazing story.
It is an amazing story.
And it's amazing that you had the inner fortitude, the manliness to accept what you were hearing.
When you went in there to take his head off, and then you heard that story and you thought, oh, I got it, my life wrong.
I got my whole life.
That is an amazing quality.
Now, all I hear is I hear people, you know, I hear the victimhood.
I go around and talk to colleges.
I'm sure you do too.
And I hear that they are very committed, all of them, to feeling oppressed.
As you say, your father could have felt oppressed.
I'm sure there are times in your life when you could have felt oppressed.
How do you deal with it?
You know, you know, Drew, it's a lie.
People talk about how Trump lies all the time.
Trump says this about crowd sizes and stuff like that.
The left lies profoundly about serious things that affect the course of this country.
It is the lie that women make less money than men make for doing exactly the same work.
Otherwise, any self-respecting employer, male or female, would fire all the men, hire women, and pocket the difference.
It's a lie.
It is the lie that racism remains a major problem in America.
And to foster that lie causes police officers to back up, become less passive for fear of being called racist.
And as a result, crime has gotten worse in places like Baltimore and St. Louis.
It's a lie to tell people these kinds of things.
It's damaging people.
It's hurting people.
The teachers' union does not want parents to have the option to take their kid out of an underperforming bad school.
That's the kind of stuff we ought to be talking about.
I went to Crenshaw High School.
That's the school around which that movie Boys in the Hood was made.
Only 3%, Drew, of kids at the school today can do math at grade level.
Now, it's also a Crip school, meaning the Crips have adopted the school, which is why Ice T told me he wanted to go there.
If you're across the street from that school, you are mandated to send your kid to a school that's a Crip school where only 3% of kids can do math at grade level.
Republicans want to give you an option.
Democrats don't.
And you pull the lever for the Democratic Party, beat me up, Scotty.
Listen, I cannot let you go.
First, again, the book, A Lot Like Me, Incredible Story, A Lot Like Me, A Father and Son's Journey to Reconciliation, great gift for Father's Day.
That's right.
I cannot let you go without asking you at least one political question because I'm already almost out of time.
Okay, but give me a take on Trump.
You know, all I hear, we played a clip the other day, a montage of people calling him racist.
What do you think?
I'm beyond pleased.
You're beyond pleased.
Beyond pleased.
Better than I ever thought he would do.
I'm not happy with some of the protectionist stuff that he's doing, but I think it's a negotiating ploy.
I don't think he's going to keep them up.
Hopefully, it'll cause our allies to drop their tariffs against us as well.
We have tariffs also that we use.
We protect milk and sugar.
Let's everybody who are allies drop all of our tariffs.
That's probably my only quarrel with him.
Outside of that, what the left has underestimated when they talk about him having a cult, a personality.
I hear that this morning.
I heard it on CNN.
Bob Corker said it's almost a cult.
What it is is finally a Republican is standing up against the media.
And I cannot tell you how much this is resonating with people.
You know, the New York Times hasn't endorsed a Republican president since 1956.
The Washington Post has never endorsed a Republican president.
Only 7% of people in the media, according to Pew Research, defines themselves as Republican.
93% call themselves something else.
We are overwhelmingly left-wing in the media, and every idea that Republicans have gets smashed.
Every Republican president in my lifetime has been called a bigot.
Ronald Reagan was called one.
Maxine Ward is called George Herbert Walker Bush, the good Bush a racist.
W was called a racist.
Of course, Trump is called a racist.
And the media allows people to get away with it.
Why is it that Al Sharpton is even viable?
Why does he have a show on MSNBC?
The guy who falsely accused a white man of raping a black teenager, never apologized.
They got him on tape, an FBI tape, talking about a cocaine deal.
He owes $5 million in taxes.
He referred to the black mayor of New York as an N-word whore.
I mean, it blows me away.
Where are the media on that?
Why is Farrakhan enjoying a good relationship with so many members of the Black Congressional Caucus?
There's a picture of Farrakhan with Obama.
Why aren't the media calling these Democrats out for embracing this bigot as they would if a white guy embraced David Duke?
I don't get it.
So Donald Trump is raising these double standards, calling them out for the first time.
A president really has done that in a gutsy way.
And he's using Twitter and Facebook.
Add up all of his Twitter Facebook fans.
He's got more following the New York Times, Washington Post put together.
And he's using that power.
And hallelujah.
Larry Elder, you can see why he's one of my favorite political commentators.
If you've never heard him, you should find the Larry Elder Show, but also get a lot like me, A Father and Son's Journey to Reconciliation.
Larry, it's great to see you.
A World Altered00:03:34
And thank you so much for coming on.
Hope you'll come back.
Anytime, Drew.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks a lot.
You got it.
See you, son.
You got it.
All right.
Stuff I Like.
Who did that one?
Tim, I don't know how to pronounce his last name, but we'll get it.
We'll get it tomorrow.
All right.
Or Monday.
I got to say, that was such a powerful interview that it's a little hard for me to transition, but I will.
I finished watching Altered Carbon.
I recommend it quite highly.
A lot of nudity, a lot of language and all that, so be aware of that.
It's funny, Jeremy Boring, the God King of the Daily Wire, said it's got a lot of, what's the word, exploitative nudity?
What's the word they always use?
Unnecessary nudity, but the unnecessary nudity is necessary.
And that's exactly right, because they're trying, it's about the body.
Altered Carbon is really fascinating to me because it is in a genre that was created by Blade Runner.
And the genre is this.
A tough guy detective is transplanted from the 40s, essentially, not really, but in the story, is transplanted from the 40s into a world in which the nature of humanity is under question.
And he starts to have to solve a mystery in a world where the real mystery is what does it mean to be a human being.
And that movie was made so long ago.
And I've talked about how great I think the original movie is, the one that the director, Ridley Scott, doesn't like.
That's the great one because it has the voiceover and it really works.
But it didn't become a genre until now.
Now it's suddenly become a genre as we move closer to what they call transhumanism and things like this.
In some ways, my piece, Another Kingdom, the podcast starring Michael Knowles, is part of this idea, a mystery being solved in a world where it's not quite clear what the reality of humanity is.
Altered Carbon is about a guy, it's about a world in which you get a sleeve, a new body, and they transport your connectome, I guess you'd call it, a little disc, from one body to another so you can stay alive for a long time.
And they bring this guy back, this essentially PI, this tough guy back, to solve a mystery.
Here's the trailer.
We'll play a little bit of the trailer.
Your body is not who you are.
You shed it like a snake sheds its skin.
You transfer the human consciousness between bodies to live fraternal life.
How long have I been down?
250 years.
You are the property of Bancroft Industries.
You've been provided with this body, which came equipped with military-grade neurochem and combat muscle memory.
Mr. Kovash, I didn't ask you to bring me back into this world.
What I ask of you is that you solve a murder.
Whose?
Mine.
That's really good stuff.
Joel Kinneman, who I first saw in the killing, playing the kind of shambling assistant to the lead detective, the minute I saw him, I thought, wow, this guy is sensational.
Now they've turned him into an actual leading man, and he's a real star in this.
And he really has a lot of charisma and a lot of screen presence.
Got a lot of good action scenes, a lot of good twists.
I recommend it as 10 episodes.
Great Performer: Joel Kinneman00:01:52
Maybe it'll have a sequel.
I guess if it makes money, it'll have a sequel.
That's the way America works, right?
If anything makes money, it gets a sequel.
But Altered Carbon is really good stuff.
Father's Day is coming.
So is the Clavinless weekend.
You're on your own for Father's Day.
And all I can tell you is, too bad.
You know, it's funny, before when I came in, before the show started, I asked all the guys if they'd ever heard of Jimmy Duranti, and they'd never heard of the man who was once called the Great Duranti in the era of Sinatra and those guys.
He was one of the top stars.
He had this enormous nose and he was called the Schnazzola.
That's what they called him.
The Great Durante, the Schnazzola.
And he had a voice like this, but the voice, which was kind of funny, was also a great jazz voice.
So we will go out with Jimmy Duranty.
If you've never heard him, listen to him.
He is terrific.
He had a wonderful sense of humor, really good, great performer, a great performer.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Clavenless Weekend is upon us.
Survivors gather here on Monday.
I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places that this heart of my embraces all day through.
Thank you.
The Andrew Clavin 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.