Andrew Clavin mocks NATO’s Venn Diagram politician—who dismisses Trump’s defense demands as "toy truck" theatrics while defending Russian oil deals—then dismantles Democratic attacks on Kavanaugh, exposing their contradictions: calling him an extremist for following the Constitution, predicting Roe’s overturning despite Trump’s stated neutrality, and falsely tying his nomination to shielding Trump from Russia probes. He praises Trump’s Brussels rebuke of Germany’s $11B Nord Stream 2 pipeline, contrasting it with media outrage, before pivoting to parenting advice: bonding with a crying newborn isn’t about emotion but mission, and self-sabotage stems from treatable fears, not identity. Clavin also defends Christianity’s Messiah claim against Jewish objections, arguing Jesus’ divinity redefined humanity’s relationship with God, while dismissing the right’s abortion criminalization push as futile—narratives, not laws, must change. The episode ends teasing Eli Steele’s documentary on race-neutral school registration. [Automatically generated summary]
NATO is furious at President Trump for demanding that NATO nations live up to their promises and responsibilities.
NATO Representative Venn Diagram, an obscure politician from some snowy nowhere just north of Sunrise, says the president's irresponsible demands that NATO stop taking advantage of the U.S. threaten to bring an end to 75 years of peace and prosperity brought on by NATO taking advantage of the U.S.
In a statement translated from some incomprehensible language or other, Mr. Diagram told reporters, quote, President Trump's demands that we help pay for our own defense fly in the face of our normal practice of sticking America with our defense bill and then bragging about all the social spending we can afford because our army consists of a seven-year-old in a soldier's suit playing with a toy truck.
If we are forced to actually pay to defend ourselves, we would no longer be able to look down on our American allies for stinting on their social spending because they're wasting their money on us.
President Trump must remember that it is America's sacred duty to spend its money protecting the NATO countries from Russia so the NATO countries can use their money to buy oil from Russia.
Unquote.
Mr. Diagram then went on to invite reporters to visit the many tourist sites in his country, including Santa's workshop and the big old patch of ice.
He said, quote, sorry.
He said, quote, it is historic locations like these that NATO was built to defend.
So maybe Trump's right, and who cares?
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety boom.
And birds are wingy, also singing hunky-dunkity.
Shipsy, 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, hurrah.
It's like I write these things and then I get to the line and it takes me by surprise.
I crack myself up.
All right, the mailbag today, great questions in the mailbag.
Very, very interesting stuff.
That's how great it is.
Lindsay is screaming all the way from Texas.
Also, on Tuesday, July 17th at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 p.m. Pacific, the conversation returns.
And this time, your questions will be answered by me so you know the answers are correct.
I will be violating the court order and getting close to our lovely host, Alicia Krauss.
The Q ⁇ A will stream live on YouTube and Facebook for everyone to watch, but only subscribers can ask me questions over at dailywire.com.
Alicia is like the original Me Too, you know, just sit next to me.
Check out the pinned comments on this video for more information.
Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by me on Tuesday, July 17th at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 p.m. Pacific, and join the conversation.
And if you can't get enough of me, and who can, really, when it comes down to it, go on over to yaf.org because they are booking speeches for the fall.
You can have me come to your campus or I'll come to your living room if you can afford it and give a speech, yaf.org, me and Knowles.
You can get either one of us.
That's an easy choice.
Also, finally, finally, because there's just so much me, there is so much me.
Go on City Journal.
I gave them a long-form interview.
Really, I thought it came out really well about finding Christ in a secular world.
They have both the transcript and the audio, so you can get it all on CityJournal.
I think it's city-journal.org, but just Google CityJournal and you'll find it.
Plus, see this beautiful watch?
You think that's got to cost a lot, but it doesn't because it's a movement watch and movement makes incredibly nice watches for a low price.
They start as low as $95.
How do they do it?
They leave out the vowels.
It's spelled M-V-M-T.
So you don't have to pay for all those expensive vowels.
If you were paying for the vowels, the thing would be a fortune.
This company has grown like crazy.
It's almost sold 2 million watches in 160 countries.
They continue to revolutionize fashion on the belief that style shouldn't break the bank.
You can get 15% off today with free shipping and free returns by going to.com.
That's how you pronounce it without the vowels.
It's mvmt.com slash Andrew.
CY Movement keeps growing.
Check out their expanding collection of beautiful watches.
They got sunglasses too.
Go to movement.com/slash Andrew, MVMT.
One thing I love is I love a beautiful watch, but I'm just too cheap to really pay the big prices.
So movement solves the problem.
Join the movement.
All right.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in life, and we all do it, everybody does it, is explaining away the opinions of your opposition, right?
People do this to each other all the time.
They say, well, you're just saying that because X, Y, and Z. You're just saying that because you're black.
The left is always saying because you're white, because you're racist, because of this and that.
My favorite has been that David Brooks one where he says, we don't have terrorism because of Muhammad, because of Muhammad's philosophy.
It's because these are young men out of jobs.
But the thing is, you got to listen to what people are saying.
I remember during the election, people said, well, you've decided to vote for Donald Trump because older people, older people have decided that this is the last election.
So they're sacrificing everything for this election.
I thought, well, maybe I've decided to vote for Donald Trump because older people are wiser than younger people.
Maybe that's it, you know?
But the point is, you got to listen to what people are saying.
If the terrorist says, I'm killing you because of Allah, it is probably true that he is killing you because of his interpretation of Allah.
And you should listen to what he's saying.
And that is how you learn stuff and really find out what's going on.
And this comes up both in understanding Trump, who's constantly being dismissed either as an idiot or as a guy who's playing 10-dimensional chess.
And nobody just listens to what he's saying and thinking, oh, well, that may be right, that may be wrong.
And of course, it comes into play with us when we listen to the Democrats, what the Democrats are saying in their opposition to Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's Supreme Court pick.
The show was so crowded yesterday that we didn't have time to really go into this.
So I want to just take a look at this because I want to look at what they're saying and what I feel about what they're saying, what my arguments are about what they're saying.
The Democrats, like I said yesterday, Trump has put them in a genuine political bind.
They are all out hysterical.
If they become completely hysterical and demonize Brett Kavanaugh, they shoot their wad.
They waste their gunpowder because either Breyer or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, they're getting up there.
If Trump wins re-election, they could easily die in that period or retire.
And then when he says, okay, now I'll pick Amy Barrett, they've already done their literally Hitler routine and they can't do it again.
On the other hand, if they don't get hysterical, they lose the base because their base is absolutely nuts.
So they're making basically three arguments.
And the three arguments they have, the first one, here's a summary of their general arguments.
I'm having hysterics.
I'm hysterical.
I can't stop when I get like this.
I can't stop.
I'm hysterical.
I'm a dynamite.
All right.
More specifically, their first argument is that Kavanaugh is an extremist.
Here is the lovely and talented Chuck Schumer putting that forward.
Do you believe Judge Kavanaugh is an extremist?
I believe he is far, far right on so many issues.
The ones I've mentioned and particularly alarming is, of course, the one about presidential power at a time when we have a president who just routinely overreaches and doesn't respect rule of law.
But I also, on gun rights, on environmental rights, on LGBTQ rights, he is way, way, way to the right of the American people.
He is not a mainstream judge.
And that's why the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, groups that are not in the mainstream, have chosen him, have pre-selected him.
Had Donald Trump chosen someone from off the list, which I urged him to do when he called me, we might be in a different situation.
But the fact that the president campaigned on these things and created his own litmus tests, and then the fact that he let two groups that vehemently, strongly, fervently believe in these two things makes it pretty clear that this is an extreme nominee.
See, this is really important, and this is a bind that the Democrats have gotten themselves in through their ownership of the media and Hollywood, is they don't know where the American public is.
Okay, the American public, I mean, most people are not extreme right-wingers or extreme left-wingers.
They are nuanced.
They have thoughts about things.
They figure out, yes, on this issue, I'm here, on this issue, I'm there.
The polls don't always even reflect that, because when you go and talk to people and don't just ask them a pre-packaged question that they have to say yes or no to, they will explain their thinking.
And a lot of times they have a lot of nuanced thoughts.
Like when you read that book, The Great Revolt by Selena Zito, we had her on the show.
She went out and interviewed the Trump voters.
And they had a lot of things to say.
I don't like Trump here and I don't like him there, but ultimately he was the best test.
Chuck Schumer doesn't know what an extremist is.
He has no idea what an extremist is.
Brett Kavanaugh wants to follow the Constitution.
He does not want to make law in the Supreme Court.
And this is really important.
How do most people feel about that?
Do most people feel that, yes, the Supreme Court should just follow the law as written?
I would believe they probably do.
I mean, the press can get people ginned up and excited over things, but I don't think Chuck Schumer knows what an extremist is.
And I think this is a big problem for Democrats.
If they think they're making themselves beautiful by screaming at people and harassing people, I think they're really mistaken about this.
That's my guess.
So this extremist argument is one of the weakest parts of the Democrat Party is because they are surrounded by people who agree with them in Washington, on the press, and in Hollywood, they think the culture is on their side.
I think they are way, way, way wrong, especially on Roe v. Wade.
On Roe v. Wade, remember, if Roe v. Wade is repealed, the issue just goes back to the states.
Liberal states will have abortion law, pro-abortion laws.
Other states may not have abortion laws.
It is not like we're suddenly going to be living in the handmade tail.
It's just that people are going to have to convince you of what you want in your state, which is the way a federalist society is supposed to work.
So you had Dana Bash talking to Mensch, the vice president, Mike Pence.
We always shorten it to Mensch because we like him.
He's a Mensch.
So Dana Bash is talking to him.
And Pence is great on this.
He's great in this interview.
Dana Bash, I actually pay respect here.
She's just doing her job.
She's trying to get him to say that this judge will repeal Roe v. Wade.
This is cut number four.
Are you worried that he's not going to follow what you want to do?
Well, Dana, as you know, I'm pro-life.
I don't apologize for it.
And I'm proud to be part of a pro-life administration that's advanced pro-life policies.
But what I can assure you is that what the president was looking for here was a nominee who will respect the Constitution as written, who will faithfully uphold the Constitution and all of his interpretations of the law.
Do you still want Roe v. Wade to be overturned?
Well, I do, but I haven't been nominated to the Supreme Court.
Right, but you're part of the administration that campaigned, you and the president campaigned, saying you will find nominees to overturn Roe versus Wade.
Will you be disappointed if he is given that opportunity and he doesn't?
Will you be disappointed?
Well, let me say, as I said, I stand for the sanctity of life.
This administration, this president are pro-life.
But, you know, what the American people ought to know is that, as the president said today, this is not an issue that he discussed with Judge Kavanaugh.
I didn't discuss it with him either.
See, Dana Bash thinks that if she can get the confession out of Mike Bence that this guy is anti-Roe, which is not really clear and kind of doubtful that he would be that radical to repeal it, but he might.
I don't know.
You know, she thinks if she does that, the whole country is going to go up and smoke.
That's not true.
It's not that people don't have nuanced views on abortion rights and abortion laws.
They do.
But Roe v. Wade is different, remember, than abortion.
Roe v. Wade takes away from the states the power to make law on an issue that's not mentioned in the Constitution.
Hey, you know, here in LA, we depend on our cars.
We live for our cars and we live in our cars.
And we got to know.
You know, I used to be able to fix cars, but now that they're computerized, it's impossible.
So your car breaks down and you go to the mechanic and the mechanic says to you, well, the Griebistrad is rubbing up against the Phobos dude.
And you have no idea what he's talking about.
Get one of these little things.
They're called Fixed FIXD.
I think it costs about $39.
And you plug it into your car.
New cars all come with these plugs that you put it in.
And it constantly scans your car for problems and tells the app that you get, a free app you get on your phone.
It tells you in plain English what is wrong with your car.
This was created by three Georgia Tech grads.
They wanted a simple, easy-to-use product that would eliminate shady mechanics' ability to rip people off.
It's selling like crazy.
Fixed alerts you to over 7,000 potential issues in real time.
It's very cool, too.
It's really fun.
You get it right on your phone.
Right now, you can get FIX.
It's F-I-X-D for as low as $39 each.
Plus, my listeners will get an additional 10% off when you enter the promo code Clavin.
And I know what you're thinking.
How do you spell that?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
Go to www.listentomycar.com, www.listentomycar.com, and enter promo code Clavin for an additional 10% off the already discounted price of fixed FIXD.
Really simple to use, really useful.
All right.
By the way, speaking of the fact that the Democrats are lost in their own world, I just have, this is off the topic a little bit.
We're going through the arguments against Kavanaugh, but I just got to play my favorite cut of the reactions Kavanaugh.
Jeffrey Toobin has just been covering himself in disgrace.
Ongoing Investigation Implications00:10:14
The guy's, he's the legal analyst at CNN.
And he had this comment.
This was his comment on hearing about Brett Kavanaugh.
This should be cut 10.
Can I just make, we're talking about personal points?
Think about two people who watched tonight.
Brett Kavanaugh is a judge on the DC Circuit.
You know who the chief judge of the DC Circuit is?
It's Merrick Garland.
How do you think he feels today?
I mean, Merrick Garland is a class act.
He's moved on with his life.
But the idea that he never got the moment that Kavanaugh is going to get him, and he got the moment of being announced, but he never got the other person is Trump's sister whose advice was not taken.
But Hillary Clinton.
I mean, Brett Kavanaugh made his name by investigating not just the star, you know, not just Whitewater, but the Monica Lewinsky part.
Right.
The sexual details.
Teuddry, sordid, and deep and dark stuff.
His, you know, making his name for himself got him on the trajectory that he is today, and Hillary Clinton has to watch yet another Supreme Court nomination that she thought she was going to.
This is what Toobin thinks moves the hearts of the American people, what Merrick Garland and Hillary Clinton are feeling.
Oh my God, what are they?
The king and queen?
Who cares what they're feeling?
We're all feeling things.
This is what bothers Jeffrey too, and he thinks we're all, people are probably, he probably thinks people are sitting at home dabbing at their eyes, you know, with Kleenex.
Oh my gosh, poor Hillary Clinton.
Anyway, the third argument is my favorite.
It is a butte.
It is the argument that Trump is appointing Kavanaugh to get him off the hook for his collusion with Russia.
This is wonderful because now they have ginned themselves up.
I don't know if you saw this in New York Magazine, to the fact they're actually making the argument that Trump is a Russian spy.
So help me, this is true.
I am not making this up.
They have this whole, do we have that chart?
Do you have the chart?
If you can see this, this chart that they put out.
It's like something out of conspiracy theory with Mel Gibson.
He's got all the strings attached and everybody, and Trump is a Russian spy.
Corey Booker delivers, this is this thing.
I love this.
Corey Booker delivers the whole conspiracy theory of why he's appointing Brett Kavanaugh.
Well, first and foremost, we need to understand that this was the only pick amongst his entire list that has explicitly said that a president should not be a subject of a criminal investigation.
It's almost as if the president said, let me find the person that's most going to protect me under an investigation that's already led to over 70 charges, over 20 individuals, corporations have been charged, five guilty pleas, one sentencing.
So we have an ongoing investigation that's a bipartisan supported investigation as we saw throughout the Senate committee and a president who's saying, I have a chance to now make sure the Supreme Court gives me a get out of jail free card or gives me indemnifies me against many issues that might come my direction.
And so this is a time in American history where we literally could have the Supreme Court deciding, can a president in any way pardon himself?
Can a president stop a criminal investigation?
Can a president fire keep people who are doing this investigation?
All those things can end up before the Supreme Court.
And he now has just put somebody there who has writing that basically said very clearly the president should be free of such investigations.
And that to me is a massive conflict of interest.
That's utter, the whole thing is utter nonsense.
First of all, the idea that there have been all these charges from the Russian investigation and that House somehow implicates Trump.
Virtually none of these charges had anything to do with Trump.
Most of them took place before people, before the campaign was going on.
Some of them are charges against entities in Russia that we know not of, that will never come to trial.
I mean, it's just, that part is nonsense.
What did he say?
What did Brett Kavanaugh say?
He wrote a piece for the Minnesota Law Review in which he remember Kavanaugh started out, he was in the Star investigation against Hillary Clinton.
And he pointed out in this article, which is true, that because Clinton was wrapped up in the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Starr investigation, he did not pay full attention to bin Laden.
And several times he let bin Laden get away when he could have been killed because he was afraid of his standing.
He felt his standing had been weakened because of this investigation.
And so Kavanaugh wrote a piece saying, you know, it might be a good idea for Congress to pass a law saying that a president would be protected from criminal investigation and indictment while he was in the White House.
He didn't say that the Supreme Court should pass a law.
He said Congress might want to pass a law to do this.
Now, that is really important because it speaks to Kavanaugh's commitment to the separation of powers.
They keep saying, oh, he respects the executive.
No, he respects the separation of powers, which we learned yesterday protects your freedom so that judge, jury, and executioner are not all in the same place.
Lawmaker, judiciary, and executive are not all in the same place.
That protects your freedom.
And that is what they're really worried about because they picture the Supreme Court as a legislative body.
They want all the power.
They have wanted all the power solidified completely in the Supreme Court.
They wanted to make law.
Bernie Sanders said this.
He was asked about, he was asked about why he approved of one of these judges on Trump's list for a lower court, but wouldn't approve of him for the higher court.
Listen to what Sanders says.
There is a difference between voting for somebody in a lower court and somebody voting, voting for somebody in the highest court of the land.
There's a fundamental difference.
And if he is the nominee...
Which is what?
I mean, principles would matter in either case, right?
Well, the principle is that the Supreme Court makes the law of the land and determines what happens in our country in virtually every area.
So yes, there is a fundamental difference.
No, they don't.
They don't make the law of the land.
They decide whether the law is constitutional.
Not whether it's right, not whether it's good, not whether it would help gay people have dignity or help women get abortions.
They're just supposed to decide whether it's constitutional.
That's their only job.
And because this is every argument they're making, he's an extremist because he believes that.
The argument against the extremism, he'll overturn Roe because Roe is clearly not a constitutional decision, and he's going to set the president free, which is just nonsense.
But they fear it because they fear that the Supreme, they feel that the Supreme Court should be the lawmaker and the executive and the judiciary, where we feel it should be what it was meant to be in the Constitution.
That is what all their arguments boil down to, that the Supreme Court, they feel the Supreme Court is something it is not supposed to be.
You know, when you listen to their arguments, you learn stuff.
And the same thing is true of our president, Donald Trump.
You know, he has been so demonized on the one hand and so much, it's all about how stupid he is.
He's too stupid to know what he's doing.
He's blundering through everything.
He's all operating on instinct.
That's the idea.
Everything he does is on instinct.
That's one side.
And on the other side, he's playing six-dimensional chess upside down in a sealed water tank, which is also nonsense.
He has a certain set of views that he is implementing in his foreign policy, which is where the president is most powerful.
So he's in Brussels.
This is great.
I love this.
He's in Brussels.
He's sitting at a dinner with the NATO guys, with the NATO representatives, and it's just supposed to be a photo op.
You know, they're snapping pictures.
And he just goes off on NATO.
He first, he starts on complaining about the fact that they don't pay their fair share of their defense thing, which he's absolutely right about.
But then he goes off on this rant against Germany paying the Russians to build, essentially to build another oil pipeline to bring oil into their country.
He's sitting at this table.
Listen to this.
It's very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia where you're supposed to be guarding against Russia and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia.
So we're protecting Germany, we're protecting France, we're protecting all of these countries.
And then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia where they're paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia.
So we're supposed to protect you against Russia, but they're paying billions of dollars to Russia.
And I think that's very inappropriate.
And the former Chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company that's supplying the gas.
Ultimately, Germany will have almost 70% of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas.
So you tell me, is that appropriate?
I mean, I've been complaining about this from the time I got it, and it should have never been allowed to have happened.
But Germany is totally controlled by Russia.
So everybody's screaming about this.
How can he do this?
He's destroying NATO.
NATO protects us.
He's treating our friends like our enemies and then he's friends with Russia.
He's exactly right.
This is exactly right.
They are giving Russia $11 billion.
And the reason they need the Russian oil is because they shut down their nuclear plants.
Why did they shut down their nuclear plants?
Because they got scared by that, 2011, that Japanese failure of a nuclear plant after an earthquake.
The earthquake happened and the plant automatically shut down and then there was a tsunami and that destroyed the generators so that there was a meltdown.
Nobody died.
I mean, that's how secure nuclear, I mean, that's how secure nuclear power is.
People died from the tsunami and people died from the earthquake, but they didn't die from the nuclear meltdown.
That's how safe it is, but they all live in, they've shut down coal because of their environmental policies, their green policies.
They've shut down their nuclear power plants, and now they've got to buy oil from Russia.
And then they're saying to us, protect us from Russia.
Well, they're funneling $11 billion for this pipeline.
Oh, the pipeline hasn't passed yet, but he's yelling about it.
As well he should, as well he should.
Hey, you remember we had Brad Thor on the show the other day?
A great guy and a terrific, terrific thriller writer.
And he was talking about the fact that because he's a conservative, we don't know if this is why, but I'll tell you why.
They haven't made his films into movies.
But the second best thing, the next best thing to a movie of Brad Thor's great novels is listening to them on audiobook and Spy Master, his latest, is available now.
You can listen to Spy Master.
Get Your Wife Involved00:09:58
It's the latest audiobook by Brad.
He is a number one New York Times best-selling military thriller author, as well he should be.
His guy is Brad, what is his name?
Horvath, right?
Yeah.
And he's the guy.
What is it?
Scott Harvey?
Yeah, that's it.
Scott Harvard.
Sorry, he's a Navy SEAL turn covert counterterrorism operative, Scott Harvey.
There it is.
In the thing.
I've read a number of these.
Spy Master is his later one.
Brad is his latest one.
Brad says it's about how far would you go to avoid war?
You can get it on audiobook read by Armin Schultz, who's been reading his books forever.
They really have a very close relationship and understands it.
He is just at the top of his game, as he has been for a long, long time.
You can listen to the book.
The audiobook, you can get it anywhere.
Audiobooks are sold wherever you like it at Audible or on Amazon, wherever you get your audiobooks.
It is packed with action, great characters, electrifying intrigue, as always.
That's Brad Thor's Spy Master available from as an audiobook.
All right, it is now time for us to the mailbag, but we got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Come on over to thedailywire.com, subscribe for lousy 10 bucks a month or 100 bucks for the year.
You will get the leftist tears tumbler just in time for the hearings on Brett Kavanaugh, and it will be filling up automatically every time a every time a leftist cries, an angel gets his wings and your tumbler fills up automatically.
Subscribe.
Come on over and hear the mailbag now.
All right, the mailbag.
I love it.
All right, from Tristan.
Andrew, my wife and I recently had a baby girl.
She is just under a month old.
I was really looking forward to being a father, but feel I am falling short.
Recently, my wife left me with our baby so she could go on a much-deserved night out with her friends.
Almost immediately after she left, our daughter started crying non-stop.
I tried everything I could to get her to stop.
Nothing worked.
As she continued to cry, I felt myself getting more and more angry, and it took all my self-control not to shake her.
At one point, I had to set her down in her crib and walk away.
Eventually, I went numb towards her and the crying.
What is wrong with me?
I really want to love my daughter, but right now, since she cries, every time I hold her, I've grown cold and indifferent towards her.
I hate that I feel this way.
I want to avoid any sort of counseling because I'm worried it could affect some of my clearance for my job in the Marine Corps.
Please help me.
All right.
I'm going to take some time with this because it's an important question.
First of all, I'm going to assume, by the way, that there are no underlying issues here like alcohol or drugs.
So you don't mention it.
I'm going to assume that's not there.
First of all, great job, not shaking the baby.
This is a major, major thing.
In doing this, you are a successful dad.
For the rest of your time with this child, you are going to have moments when you get angry and lose your temper.
And your job as a dad, your first job, is to protect that child and to protect the child from the anger within you is one of the things you're going to have to do and all parents have to do.
So you did it successfully.
That's dad.
That is being dad.
Good job.
That is the right thing to do.
You know, we all feel stuff.
We all feel bad stuff.
Doesn't matter.
Does not matter.
What matters is what you did and what you do and what you do to that child.
You did not shake the baby, which was that's hard to come back from.
So that's a good thing.
All right, so second of all, now, what is your job here?
Step back a little bit.
This is like a mission.
You know, the mission is not about how you feel.
Don't think that your job is to love the baby.
I'll get back to that in a minute.
Your job is to take care of the baby and raise the baby.
So how do you do that?
First of all, you should see, I keep saying first of all, but now we're up to third of all.
You should see that you should know babies are annoying.
They are a total pain in the neck.
They cry, they keep you up, they're hard to deal with.
And sometimes you get angry at them, and sometimes you don't understand, you know, you just can't stand the noise anymore.
You know, that is part of babies.
And for fathers, it usually takes a little longer to connect with a baby.
When they start to smile, it gets a little bit easier.
You start to see the reaction.
Mothers generally connect faster, but not all the time.
So what you're going through is normal.
The fact that you don't love the baby, you feel cold to the baby, angry with the baby, don't worry about it.
That is normal.
Your job is not to love the baby.
Your job is to take care of the baby and raise the child, okay?
That's the first thing.
So, and babies are a pain in the neck.
They really are.
Also, you are part of a team.
You're not alone in this.
You're part of your team.
The biggest member of your team is your wife.
Do not hide this from your wife.
Do not not tell her what is going on in your heart and mind.
Don't be afraid of shocking her.
Don't be afraid, you know, just sit down, calmly explain that you're having a problem.
You know it's a problem.
You are not your problem.
You have a problem that you are not connecting with the baby yet.
That's okay.
Make sure it may not be a good idea for you to be left alone with the baby right now if you're getting that angry.
You know, discuss it with your wife.
If you've got parents in your life who you get along with who help you, discuss it with them.
You're a team.
You're there to take care of the baby all together.
You don't have to burden this.
You don't have to bear this burden by yourself.
Finally, you're going to love the baby.
It's going to happen.
Relax.
Relax.
Don't be afraid.
Don't worry about how you feel right now.
It really is not.
You know, we don't live on Facebook.
We don't live on TV.
We have all kinds of uncomfortable feelings that come into our minds and come into our hearts.
You see everybody else on Facebook.
They all look so happy.
You think you're supposed to be like that.
You see people having babies.
Oh, we're so blessed.
We're so, you know, don't worry about it.
Let your wife, if the baby cries every time you pick them up, which happens a lot, by the way, you know, think of it for a minute from the baby's point of view.
The baby was having a great time, was being fed automatically, was in the womb, everything was taken care of.
Suddenly, here she is.
She doesn't know what's going on, right?
She's helpless.
She can't feed herself.
She can't get anywhere.
She's in this world she's never seen before.
What the hell is going on?
Okay, so that's why she's crying.
She gets the mom.
Oh, good.
Mom is feeding me.
I get that.
Okay.
But the dad, that's another step.
Maybe she hasn't gotten that yet.
So don't, if the baby cries every time you pick him up, pick her up.
Don't pick her up.
Just look at the baby while your wife has them.
Take pictures of the baby so you can look at her when she's smiling and happy.
Relax.
You're going to get there.
You will love the baby.
Just follow your mission.
Your mission is to take care of the baby.
Not to love, not to feel anything.
Your mission is to take care of the baby.
You already succeeded when you put her in the crib instead of shaking her.
That was a big success.
Keep on that path.
You will get to the place where you love the baby.
All right.
So don't worry about how you feel.
Worry about what you're doing and take it and be part of the team.
Get your wife involved in this.
You understand you have a difficulty.
Don't have the difficulty by yourself.
All right.
And write it back and tell us how it's going because we want to know.
From Michael, Dear Andrew, I heard Ben say that one of the issues Judaism has with Jesus as the Messiah, as the God coming to earth as a man, is unprecedented, that this is something completely out of step with the Old Testament.
How does Christianity justify this?
Is there any plausibility to the claim that because Jesus is the second Adam, the Old Testament does in fact have a similar occurrence?
No, no.
Adam is made of dust, right?
So Adam is made in God's image.
That makes him special, but he's made of dust.
And dust in Hebrew language is basically nothing.
You know, you are dust, thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.
There is a big distance between God and man in the Old Testament, and that distance is breached.
And the idea that the unfathomable king of heaven and earth could appear in human form is, in fact, unfathomable to the Jews.
And the idea, their idea of the Messiah was of a king who would come back and reestablish the line of David and the Empire of David.
It was not of God coming to life in human form.
So there's a lot of misunderstanding about this.
I hear Christians say, why can't Jews just buy all the prophecies are there, but they don't read them as prophecies, so they're not there to the Jews, right?
And the Jews, I sometimes hear Jews say, well, all Jesus did is spread, because Jesus was a Jew from birth to death.
He was a Jew his whole life.
I sometimes hear Jews say, well, all he did is really spread Jewish ethics to all people, but that's not true either.
Jesus says at one point, you know, I used to be, we are now friends because you now understand what I'm doing.
That is a change in our, not just in ethics, it's a change in our relationship with God.
It means that we have a closer, companionable, brother-to-brother relationship with God that we did not have before that is not in the Old Testament.
There's a lot of cool stuff in the Old Testament about Abraham negotiating with God, but there's not that close-up, skin-to-skin, brother-to-brother relationship with God that I think really only becomes a fact of life after Christ is on earth.
So there are differences between the Jews and the Christians.
And instead of yelling at each other, we understand the differences and then at the end of time, the Jews find out we're right.
But Ben is absolutely right.
It is a big change and very hard for Jews to make that leap.
From Andrew, to my fellow Andrew, I am probably weeks away from proposing to my girlfriend of over five years, but I had one concern about our relationship that hasn't quite disappeared.
Her mother, God lover, is a twice divorced liberal feminist thinking woman.
And every man I talk to cannot be quicker to tell me all women become their mother.
I've had to learn over these five years that my girlfriend is not her feminist mom.
And he goes on to explain why.
She sounds like a wonderful girl, great girl.
And he says, P.S., I asked you for advice in the mailbag three years ago on novels, and you recommended Empire of Lies.
And amazingly, my girlfriend didn't leave me after reading it.
Grab her.
This thing about women becoming their mothers is nonsense.
I mean, you know, obviously there's genetics, obviously there's upbringing, but it's not like a curse.
It's not like she's magically going to transform.
She's telling you who she is.
You've been with her five years.
You see who she is.
Marry her.
I mean, my wife is nothing like her mother and nothing like my mother.
So Freud was wrong about that too.
You know, it is just ridiculous.
Don't even worry about it.
Changing The Narrative00:10:21
From Benjamin, I was browsing your IMDb page.
Everybody knows what that is, right?
That's the movie page.
And I noticed you were given writing credit for the 2008 American remake of One Miss Call.
That was one of the last movies I expected to see on your page.
My question is, if that is a mistake, or did you, in fact, write that film?
If so, did you simply write it and call it a day?
Or did you help out on set?
Also, what are your thoughts on the finished product?
I've heard of screenwriters not being happy with the end result of their film since they aren't always allowed to have input once filming begins.
It says, P.S., we need to upload a headshot to your IMTP profile.
I did write One Missed Call.
I've confessed to it.
I think it has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
And, you know, it was a scary Japanese film.
I felt I wrote a kind of funny, satirical script that really worked.
I felt the film really, the film was a hit, by the way.
I mean, I made really good money off that film because it was like a number one DVD forever.
And it was number five.
It opened number five on its weekend, which was big for it because it was a small film.
So it really did well.
But it got universally bad reviews.
I didn't think it was all that good.
You know, what happened was I wrote a kind of scream-like, almost parody of Japanese horror films because I realized we were at the end of that arc.
A French director, lovely guy, Eric Vallette, came on and he wanted to make a serious, hyper-dark French film about how ugly and horrible it was.
And he would say he wouldn't hire beautiful, beautiful actresses because they were too beautiful.
And I was like, dude, it's a horror movie.
And then he dressed all the girls.
He hired all these festival actors and they were very serious.
And I was on set for one week during rehearsals.
And at times I would have to actually sneak up to the actress.
And you don't want to get between the actors and the director.
But I would sneak up to the actors and say, that's supposed to be a joke.
Because Eric didn't quite get it because he didn't speak English that well.
And they were very serious.
So anyway, everybody ended up, the producers wanted a movie that kids would like, that they would just go, that would be a kind of scream fest for younger kids with a PJ 13 rating.
The director wanted an R rating.
I didn't care.
I just wanted it to be kind of witty and sophisticated.
Everybody was making a different movie and that's what happened.
They got pulled apart in all different directions, but it was a big success, despite its 0% rate.
Anyway, and it put my kid through private school for like two or three years.
Great from Iago, great culture king Clavinus Magnificus.
I have come to the conclusion that the one person who gets in the way of my success the most is me.
Now that I have admitted the problem, how do I go about solving it?
I've realized that I'm afraid of commitment and the failure and responsibility that comes with success.
Any advice on how to overcome these internal obstacles and gain the self-confidence I lack.
Yeah, you know, this kind of goes back to what I was saying to the father with the baby.
You know, if there's only one thing, this is really important.
You can either have problems or you can be your problems.
If you observe people closely, and I've had a lot of time now to observe people, decades of time to observe people, most people are their problems.
And those few people who really move forward have problems because we're all God's children.
We all have problems, right?
So let me see if I can give you an example of what I mean.
Let's say you hate somebody at work, okay?
And you're sitting around and you're, I hate that guy.
I hate that guy at work.
And you're miserable and you're angry and all this.
That's being your problem.
Your problem is you hate this guy at work.
Now step back and you see a guy who's angry and hates this co-worker.
What are the real problems that he has?
Does the co-worker have any power over him?
No.
Coworker doesn't have any problem.
He's just annoying.
He's annoying.
Maybe he bugs the girls and you don't know what to do about it.
Whatever it is, you know.
You have to then take, step back from that anger and start to deal with the anger you have and the hatred you have because that's the problem.
Unless this guy is doing something specifically to you, the problem is your anger and hatred.
If he's doing something specifically, that's part of the problem.
You've got to solve that problem.
Okay, so now you've taken the first step.
You realize the thing that is getting in the way of your success is you're afraid of the responsibility that comes with success.
And you're afraid that once you're a success, maybe you'll fail.
A lot of people are afraid of that.
So now you know, now you want to start to construct bit by bit a guy who has those emotions but is not acting on those emotions.
So start with something small.
You might even start with something that has nothing to do with your life, like something athletic, like jogging five miles, jog a mile, and then go up to jogging five miles so you learn what it is to succeed, what it is to beat each obstacle, what it is to overcome obstacles and go forward.
Or you might want to do it in your career, say, well, what's the next obstacle I'm facing?
What is the next obstacle I'm facing?
How did I make mistakes because of my fear last time?
You have the problem, but you don't have to be the problem.
Okay, you're not stopped by the fact that you have these things.
By the way, everybody who succeeds overcomes things like that in his life.
I mean, we all have these fears.
We all have things that work against us.
We're all kind of sabotaging ourselves in various ways.
You find the ways you're doing it and you put them aside.
Each step, remember, you only got to take one step each day.
You only have to live one day at a time.
Take one step each day and do it.
And this is the thing.
Everybody should be thinking about this all the time.
Do not be your problems.
Have problems.
You're going to have problems.
You're going to be angry at your mother-in-law.
Don't be that problem, right?
Don't start, don't pick on people.
Don't hurt people because of the way you feel about them.
Feel differently.
You know, back off, back off.
It's just an emotion.
Emotions are just things that go through you.
All right.
I'll do one more from Braddon.
Why doesn't the right stand for imprisoning those who have abortions?
An argument that the women have been indoctrinated to believe it's not murder doesn't make it so.
The brainwashed Manson family were put behind bars.
Why shouldn't the individuals who elect and go through with having their children slaughtered in the womb be charged for murder as well?
I'll tell you why I think so.
And I do think it's important.
It's a good question.
You know, I talk a lot about George Washington as a hero of liberty, and he was.
There's not a person, man or woman, walking the earth today who does not owe George Washington a debt for the liberty he created in this country when he could have been king, when he set aside a kingdom, an entire continent he could have ruled over.
I can't think of anybody else.
I compare him to Cincinnatus, who fought the battle and went home.
But I don't know if Cincinnatus was in the position that Washington was in to just take over an entire new country and become its king.
He was so dedicated to liberty that he gave that up.
And yet, and yet, George Washington could not understand why his slaves wouldn't work hard.
I've talked about this a lot.
I know I've used this example before, but it's important.
He couldn't understand it.
He couldn't understand why a slave he had treated well would escape.
Couldn't get it.
It took him his whole life.
He finally figured it out.
It finally got to him.
That's how powerful the narrative is.
If you wonder why I'm always picking on the press, why I'm always picking on Hollywood, it's because they help create the narrative.
And when you are in that narrative, it sweeps you away.
You don't even know you're in it.
George Washington, hero of liberty, could not understand why a slave would want his liberty.
That's how powerful the narrative is.
That is the state we are in with abortion.
Good people are having abortions, and good people are feeling that this is okay because they are so swept up in that narrative as Washington was swept up in the narrative that somehow it was okay to hold a brother individual as a slave.
Okay, they're swept up in that narrative.
That's how blind they are.
You cannot imprison people for that because it is essentially misunderstanding your time.
And the same reason I don't hate George Washington, the same reason I don't take away his heroism or take away his greatness and say, well, you say he was great, but he held slaves, because I understand the power of narrative.
That is the power.
If good people are doing things and lots of good people are doing things and having these abortions, you have to convince them.
You have to change the narrative.
You have to bring them back to their senses.
We saw yesterday with that woman, Michelle Wolfe, is that her last name, celebrating abortion, what a false narrative does to people.
It allows them to hold slaves and feel that they're good people.
It allows them to have abortions and feels it's all right.
It allows a comedian to go out and celebrate abortion.
If Michelle Wolfe, with that level of insight, had lived back in slavery days, she'd have been doing that dance for slavery.
Hooray for America, hooray for slavery.
She'd been doing the same thing because that's how deeply immersed in that narrative she is.
And that's why.
That is why we do not believe that the good people who are having abortions because they are blinded by the narrative should be punished like criminals.
That's why.
All right.
Tickety boo-noos.
Good mailbag.
So here's something.
This is, I can't remember.
I didn't write down where I took this out of.
I'm sorry.
Here's something you won't often hear from the environmental movement.
Under President Donald Trump, per capita carbon dioxide emissions are the lowest they've been in nearly seven decades.
The Energy Information Administration latest energy report shows U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are the lowest they've been since 1992, and that per capita emissions are the lowest since 1950.
What's really funny about this, okay, is that part of this is Obama, his war on coal helped, so I'm not, you know, I'm not saying this is all Trump.
But what is funny about it is that in Europe, the carbon emissions are going up and in America, they're going down.
And Europe has been complaining that we left the Paris Accords, but we are meeting the Paris Accord standard and Europe is not.
And that is just to show you, when we were talking about Germany and Angela Merkel closing down the nuclear power plants and going all green and everything like this, nuclear power is incredibly clean and incredibly efficient.
And if you live in these fantasies, it comes back to bite you.
Intellectual dishonesty comes back to bite you.
All right, good mailbag, good stuff.
We will be back tomorrow.
Who's our guest tomorrow?
Eli Steele.
Oh, Eli Steele, this is a really interesting interview about a guy who tried to register his children without telling the school what race they were and what he ran into.
And he's made a documentary about it.
We will have him on set, I believe.
And I will be there.
I hope you will be there too.
Executive Producer's Note00:00:35
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
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.