Daniel Silva joins Andrew Klavan to dissect how "Trump Derangement" is pushing Democrats toward socialism, citing AOC and Sanders’ ties to Ortega’s Nicaragua—where paramilitaries target churches—and Venezuela’s collapse under Castro’s model. Meanwhile, Silva’s Gabriel Alon series portrays an Israeli spy battling Putin’s "neo-tsar" tactics: cyberwarfare, disinformation, and NATO-splitting moves like Trump’s Helsinki summit. The episode ties socialism’s 70-year erosion of Europe (Berlin’s weak security, Germany’s Euro struggles) to Russia’s exploitation of Western divisions, warning that forced equality and hybrid warfare threaten both economies and democracies. [Automatically generated summary]
President Trump and the President of Iran are in a Twitter war, and U.S. intelligence officials have become very concerned that Iranian scientists may be working in secret to develop a caps lock.
The hostilities began after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned President Trump that his moves to restore sanctions against the terrorist nation could lead to, quote, the mother of all wars.
Trump was apparently unimpressed with the threat after he recalled that we already thought the mother of all wars against Saddam Hussein, after which Hussein was hanged.
In any case, Trump responded with a blistering all-caps tweet in which he said, quote, and I'm not making this quote up, in fact, I probably couldn't make this quote up, never ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before.
Reeling from the all-caps tweet, Iranians began a program to develop their own caps lock, and intelligence surveillance satellites captured pictures of the regime's preliminary keyboard tests during which they successfully managed to get a quick brown fox to jump over a lazy yellow dog.
Later, however, the regime launched a series of exclamation points that crashed harmlessly into the Persian Gulf, leading President Trump to brag that his exclamation marks were bigger and more powerful and actually worked by lending a frightening added emphasis to his Twitter threats.
Nonetheless, observers are concerned the Twitter war between the two nations might continue to escalate, especially after it was revealed that former President Orama, or Bahama, whatever the hell his name is, it's hard to remember now that his legacy has imploded like a light bulb smashed into the pavement.
But in any case, it was revealed that the former president secretly delivered an entire case of capital letters to Iran, which is just one more of the many reasons we're glad President Banana is gone.
All caps exclamation point.
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We have got a terrific interview with Daniel Silva, a wonderful, wonderful thriller writer.
He's got a new book out called The Other Woman.
But we talked about much more than just thrillers.
We talked about the political scene, Russia, which he knows a lot about.
We've also got the new lefties dictionary.
E is for equality.
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So much of what is happening now and so much of the way you see things now depends on Europe.
I've said this before, but I have to really drive it home.
It's really important to understand what's happening with Europe and to understand what other people think is happening in Europe and Scandinavia as well.
Is this a semi-socialist paradise where everything is going great?
Is this the wave of the future?
Or is it the end of a society collapsing into ruins?
Steven Pinker has this book, Enlightenment Now, which I read, where he says everything is tickety-boo in the world.
You know, capitalism, modified capitalism, has solved all our economic problems.
Technology is getting better and better.
We live longer.
We're happier.
We're richer.
Everything is great.
And I think to myself, yeah, everything is great.
But where he points to the greatness is always Norway.
They're so happy in Norway.
And social spending in Europe is so much better than the U.S. They've gotten rid of capital punishment.
It's just this recalcitrant U.S. that won't get rid of capital punishment because he says we have too much democracy.
That's what he says.
Or he's pointing at countries that are essentially dying.
You have these other books by people like Mark Stein, obviously.
Douglas Murray's Strange Death of Europe, which if you haven't read, you really should.
A great novel, Submission by Michelle Welbeck, where he imagines the Muslim takeover of France.
And it's not like a disaster movie.
It's not like an action movie.
It's just done very, very plausibly.
And he sort of points out that the spirit of Europe, and Douglas Murray points this out too, the spirit of Europe is dead.
And this is the way I see it.
What I think is no matter what is going on right now, and that, you know, Europe has all kinds of problems.
Walter Russell Mead, the guy I've been touting in the Wall Street Journal's the new Charles Krauthammer, because I really think he's a terrific observer of both the Trump administration's foreign policy and foreign policy.
He says, you know, he talks about the fact that Russia, all the panic about Russia, it's really not as important as what's happening in Europe.
He says the West is in crisis because Europe is weak.
Some of the continent's difficulties are well known.
France foolishly imagined the Euro would contain the rise of the newly united Germany after a Cold War.
In fact, it has propelled Germany's unprecedented economic rise while driving a wedge between Europe's indebted South and creditor North.
That's the thing.
You know, they're supporting all this socialism in Italy with all the money that's being made in Germany.
The continent's so-called migration policy is a humanitarian and a political disaster.
Berlin's feckless approach to security has left Europe's most important power a geopolitical midget.
And he goes on to say that they have not, they have failed to incorporate the newly freed Eastern Europe, countries freed from the Soviet tyranny into the West.
But all those things, they'll be solved.
There'll be new problems.
Problems will come and go.
My point about Europe is this.
Europe as it was, the great Europe, the thing we think about when we think about Europe, it's dead.
It's gone.
The Europe of Michelangelo, the Europe of Mozart, the Europe of Shakespeare, the Europe of John Locke, the Europe that created, that changed the world, that Europe is gone.
It may have another new birth like Greece did after the Greek Empire fell.
It became sort of a client state of Rome, but it still was feeding Roman intellect.
The great doctors came from Greece.
That may happen to Europe in a new imperial age, which I actually do foresee coming, though not for a while.
You know, that may happen to Europe.
But right now, Europe is dead.
And the reason it's dead and the way it died is socialism.
Socialism kills countries.
It takes God out of the equation and without God, countries die.
It takes 70 years.
For 70 years, everybody's happy because decadence is great, especially for the elite.
Decadence really works well for the elite.
But finally, finally, after 70 years, about a generation, you have a country that is bled of its spirit, bled of its history, estranged from its history, estranged from its patriotism, and nothing important is coming out of Europe anymore.
And like I said, it may reinvent itself, but socialism is what does it.
While this is happening, right?
I mean, this is the crazy thing.
The Democrats are now moving to the left.
They are becoming socialists.
Now, some people are warning against it.
Joe Lieberman had a piece, I think, in the Wall Street Journal, where he said, don't vote for Alexandria Casio-Cortez.
You know, they're trying to stop the slide, but that's where the action is.
That's where the power is.
And the thing is, you know, what's really interesting to me about this is that the people who are screaming about Russia collusion, Mary O'Grady had a piece about this yesterday, I think.
The people who are screaming about Russia collusion, the Democrats, are the same people who have supported the place where Russia is really harming us.
Russia isn't harming us with hacking and all this stuff.
I mean, they do some damage, but come on, that's not what really affects our elections.
They're not really very powerful.
Russia is not really very powerful in Europe.
But the one place where you can still see a lot of Russian influence is in Central and South America.
And that, there, they have been very destructive.
Usually they work through Cuba.
And remember, remember how the left was cheering when Obama went to Cuba?
Oh, how wonderful.
Barbara Walters went over and said, Fidel Castro, what a lovely.
You know, one of the reporters, the lefty reporters was sleeping with Castro.
I mean, this guy has a worse, a worse record of locking up journalists and locking up dissonants than even Putin has.
And Putin's record is bad, but Putin is supporting Castro's efforts in South America and Central America.
We know what's happening with Venezuela.
They're basically on the verge of absolute collapse.
The inflation rate is a gazillion percent, whatever it is.
Their money is becoming worthless.
The people are eating, you know, catching animals to eat in the street.
They're eating garbage.
And this is a country where lunch grows on the trees, pal.
You know, this is a country that should be thriving, had oil, it had everything.
And while everybody was applauding, it fell apart.
But now, Nicaragua is also.
And these governments, these socialist governments have been implanted by, supported by Cuba, which is in turn supported by Russia.
If you want to talk about Russian meddling, if you want to talk about Russian collusion, that's where it's going on.
In Nicaragua right now, Daniel Ortega.
And let's remember, Daniel Ortega was the sweetheart of the left.
Do not forget this.
Bernie Sanders loved him some Daniel Ortega.
Bill de Blasio in New York loved him some Daniel Ortega.
John Kerry loved Daniel Ortega.
And listen, on the right in South and Central America, there have been tyrants.
So sometimes the United States has found itself supporting tyrants to keep the communists out.
And that was especially important during the Cold War, right?
Because Russia was trying to take the place over, take the world over.
That was the point of the Soviet Union's slave empire, was to enslave the entire world.
So even when we had to support bad guys like we did with the Contras, we were supporting them to keep the communists out.
You know, if you go back, you know, some people don't remember Ronald Reagan.
We think of him as this terrific president, which he was, but his worst scandal was this thing, the Iran-Contra scandal.
It's still unclear whether Reagan himself had anything to do with it, but people in his administration were trying to funnel arms to the Contras in Nicaragua to keep Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas out.
And the reason they had to break the law to do it was the Democrats had passed a law saying you cannot support this government.
We want Daniel Ortega in there, okay?
And again, both sides were bad, but the communists were worse because the communists were the long arm of the Soviet Union.
That's why we were doing it.
The Democrats were supporting it.
They still support Ortega.
Three months ago, Nicaragua exploded.
Is this being covered?
No, of course not.
And Ortega has set loose his forces.
They call them the paramilitaries.
When you hear the paramilitary, these are his guys.
There was a tax increase.
But you know what it is.
It's Ortega is constructing a regime that will last past his death.
He's going to hand it on to his wife.
He's basically becoming king.
When I talk about socialism being slavery, that's not hyperbole, because I understand you think, well, it works in some countries.
It's always slavery, and all ideas eventually expand to fulfill their own logic.
When you say that the money you save, the time you spent working belongs to the state, ultimately the state becomes everything.
So it always comes, like I said, it usually takes about 70 years, but usually it becomes a tyranny.
And that's what's happening in Nicaragua.
The people are rebelling.
Snipers are picking them off, the protesters off.
This is what happened in Venezuela, by the way, with Cuba's help, with Cuba's help.
They went out and crushed the student riots.
You know, the students in our country go out and say, oh, I had a microaggression.
I'm going to protest.
And everybody says, oh, my, a microaggression.
We must do something about that.
Here, a sniper kills you, picks you off the roof.
Here in Nicaragua, when you say, oh, I want to be free, it picks you off the roof.
Now, the left has a way of doing this.
They ignore it.
They pretend it's not happening.
Here is kudos to CBS News, which last night finally covered it.
One of the enemies, of course, of the socialist, the communist state is always the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church is always fighting to get these people out, or usually is, or should be.
And it is in Nicaragua.
So Ortega is going after the Catholic churches and riddling them with bullets.
So here, just listen to CBS.
Here's the guy reporting from the street.
You can tell that he's lost his objectivity.
He's gotten very passionate in support of the protesters.
Here's CBS.
The Ortega regime accuses the protesters of inciting violence that has taken the lives of national police who claim they were simply trying to restore the peace.
It's believed paramilitary forces loyal to Ortega fired into a Catholic church earlier this month as 100 university students sought shelter.
Two were killed.
Father Eric Arvarado was there during the 15-hour siege.
Tell us, if you can, what happened that day.
The worst day of your life.
He showed us where the bullets pierced the church's icons.
Jesus is with you, no matter how bad it gets.
Church Riddled With Bullets00:10:56
Unbelievable report.
They see the church.
If you're just listening, you see the church riddled with bullets.
Jesus Christ riddled with bullets with Sandinista.
That's CBS reports, and good for them for finally putting it up there.
Here's ABC and NBC reporting on it last night.
Yeah, nothing, nothing.
And you know where the best report came from?
Evil, evil Fox News.
You know, God bless Brett Baer.
No kidding.
The sight, when you look at Brett Baer, the sight of a journalist actually doing his job is so shocking that you sit there and go like, oh, I remember now.
I remember what journalism is supposed to be.
And Brett Baer and his team, obviously guided by him, really, they report the news every night, and it's the only place where you can actually get a real report on the news.
You know, you just compare it to Jim, look at me, I'm Jim Acosta, screaming questions that don't mean anything and sitting around with a stern face and lecturing Donald Trump about who he's supposed to be.
Brett Baer just reports the news, their old slogan, we report, you decide.
He actually sticks to that, and it is really an amazing show.
So, God bless him, Brett Baer has Daniel Ortega on, and he goes after him on everything.
And it's just, it's wonderful.
The questions were even better than the answers, because you just know these communist dictators, they sit there with a bland line.
Putin does the same thing.
But play cut number three as Baer asks him about the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church believes they're under attack by pro-government forces.
We've seen the images.
We've seen the video.
You have the auxiliary bishop in Managua tweeting out, the government of Nicaragua crosses the limit of inhuman and immoral.
The international community cannot be indifferent.
This is a bishop in Managua.
Obviously, the Catholic Church believes they're under attack from you.
Well, that responds to a certain way of thinking ever since the bishop came to Nicaragua.
Why he's been saying the same thing.
Why wasn't he here during the war?
He wasn't here in the country during the war.
He was in Rome.
There's not a single priest that we're persecuting.
There's not a single priest who can claim that he's been attacked by the government, by the government officials.
The church is provided with all kinds of facilities at the Episcopal Conference.
We have no problems with the Catholic Church.
Yeah, we've got no problems with the Catholic Church.
All right, a couple of priests riddled with bullets, the occasional killing.
It's not a big thing.
All these guys are exactly the same.
But this is what gets me.
A while back, we don't have it racked up right now, but a while back, we played an old clip of Bernie Sanders in 1985 where he said, some people say it's bad when they have food, breadlines.
In communist countries, they say it's bad, but it's good because other places they're starving.
They're starving, and only the rich people eat.
So that was after his trip to Nicaragua.
That was in praise of Daniel Ortega, this clown who is now murdering his own people as they protest his communist tyranny.
So when I see Bernie Sanders now, I'm sorry, you know, at no point did Bernie Sanders, who, as I keep saying, honeymooned in the Soviet Union, which is a gesture of support for a country that murdered tens of millions of its own people, starved its own people in the street in order to bring about the perfect socialist utopia.
When I see him, at no point, at no point has he ever said, something is wrong with my philosophy.
He sounds exactly, you know, when communism first came around, when it first rose up, there was good reason for intellectuals to say maybe this is a good idea.
There really was.
I mean, you can't always think into the future, obviously.
World War I is essentially in the midst of destroying European society.
It's followed up by a terrible flu.
It's followed up by a depression in the 30s where it looks like capitalism has failed utterly.
And people start looking into the Soviet Union and thinking, hey, you know, this is the future before they realized where the logic leads.
And it's that 70-year lag.
It's that lag as the logic of socialism leads to slavery.
where these guys live.
That's where these socialists live.
And what happens now is because Europe has collapsed so quietly and young people don't remember the Soviet Union, that's when Bernie Sanders rises again and rises again with Mini Me, this Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has got the brain of a potato.
I mean, it's, you know what, you know what?
I don't want to call her stupid.
She's young.
Young people have these, you know, people are always, old people are always saying, oh, isn't it wonderful young people have ideals?
No, they have ideals because they don't know anything.
They don't know how the world works and they think some perfect solution is going to come along.
If we can just fix the system, if we can just fix the system, everything's going to be great.
Then you get a little older and you say, oh, I get it.
It's people.
It's a mess.
We have to do the best we can.
The best we can do is freedom because it preserves human dignity.
It moves people to creativity.
It gives them their best life, their best economy.
That's the best we can do, even though freedom is filled with dangers and problems and troubles and inequality.
It's the best we can do because it is the best thing for humankind.
So this is, when I look at Bernie and Alexandria, am I getting your name right?
Alexandria, right?
When I look at the two of them, I just see people rising.
I see the tools of ignorance.
I see people rising up when people don't remember what socialism does.
And here they are being interviewed as they go about trying to turn Kansas, red Kansas, as Alexandria said, they're trying to turn it red.
But she was right.
Everybody laughed at her because red means Republican, but she's right.
She's trying to turn it red.
I happen to believe passionately that there really is not a blue state, red state division in this country.
I think there's a lot of mythology attached to that.
People believe that health care is a right.
People believe we should raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
People do not think, as Trump does, that we should give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1%.
But in fact, we have got to demand that the rich start paying their fair share of taxes.
So whether you're in Kansas or the Bronx or in Vermont, we have common interests and common aspirations, and we have got to fight for an America that works for all of us, not just the 1%.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, does that populist message bring out new voters?
It absolutely does bring up new voters.
And in fact, we found this here in New York.
Back home, we expanded the electorate 68% over the last off-year midterm primary.
So for us, this is about inspiring people to the polls, giving them something to vote for, creating hope for this nation, and knowing that so long as there are working class Americans who believe in a prosperous and just future, we will have hope no matter how red the district.
Everything they say in that is incorrect or wrong.
You know, people, of course, people want free this and free that, but who pays for it?
You know, the socialists never talk about that.
They never talk about where the money comes from.
Whenever you hear Bernie Sanders say, I happen to believe, it's a rhetorical quirk he has, which is supposed to communicate that he's speaking from the depths of deep morality.
But in fact, everything he says after that makes no sense whatsoever.
So the communists, the right-wing goal is freedom.
The communist goal is equality.
And that brings us to the lefties, the latest entry in the lefties dictionary, E, is for equality.
E is for equality.
In lefties, no word is more important than equality because equality sounds fair.
Equality is that state in which everyone gets the same treatment, receives the same rewards, and has the same amount of money, no matter how they behave, how much they work, or how much their work is worth to other people.
So to achieve equality, some people must be stripped of what they've earned, and other people must be given things they don't deserve, which of course is unfair.
But it's equality, which sounds fair.
Let me give you an example of how equality actually works.
Let's say LeBron James is a superstar basketball player, and I'm not.
This example is actually taken from real life.
LeBron James will be able to score many baskets for his basketball team, whereas I will not be able to score any baskets.
Therefore, LeBron James will make millions of dollars, and I will be stuck here making this video, hoping to pick up a little extra cash.
This is inequality, and it sounds unfair.
What really is unfair is that LeBron James was born with talent, size, and strength I don't have.
And no matter how hard I practice, no matter how much I work, I will never be able to score as many baskets as LeBron James.
Therefore, in order for me to have equality with LeBron James, LeBron James will have to score fewer baskets, or those baskets he does score will have to be taken away from him and given to me.
Then we'd have equality.
And instead of there being great players like LeBron James and good everyday sort of players and bad players like myself, there would only be bad players like myself because I can't be better than bad.
So better players will have to be made as bad as me in order to have equality because equality sounds fair.
The same rules apply to other spheres of endeavor.
For instance, men consistently score higher on complex math tests than women.
Thus, if you want gender equality in mathematical fields, the achievements of men, their places at good schools and their jobs and scientific industries have to be taken away from them and given to women.
Then our schools will have weaker math departments and our industries won't do science as well as they used to and men will not get what they've earned and women will be given what they don't deserve.
And that's equality, which sounds fair.
So you see, in order to achieve equality, people's earned achievements must be taken away from them.
Others must be given rewards they don't deserve.
The freedom to excel and to support excellence must be revoked and everything will eventually begin to suck.
But it sounds fair.
And when you're speaking lefties, that's what matters.
Sounding fair while you make everything suck.
E is for equality.
I'm Andrew Clavin with the Left Ease Dictionary.
Those pictures of me playing basketball were frighteningly realistic.
Gabriel Alon's Divergent Character00:14:57
If you're not watching, check it out on YouTube.
Rebecca Shapiro is doing the fantastic artwork.
And like I said, that was, that could have been photographs of me playing, actual movies of me playing basketball.
All right, we've got Daniel Silva coming up.
A terrific interview, but we got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Come on over to thedailywire.com.
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Daniel Silva, I got Daniel Silva's middle book for my birthday because I started late, so I'm not up to his latest book now.
But he is, of course, the award-winning, number one New York Times bestselling author of a million thrillers, including The Unlikely Spy, The Mark of the Assassin.
Marching Season, The Kill Artist, many more.
He's been called his generation's finest writer of international intrigue and one of the greatest American spy novelists ever.
His latest book is The Other Woman.
It's Out Now, and it continues the story of Gabriel Alain, the legendary art restorer and assassin who serves as the chief of Israel's vaunted secret intelligence service.
Very bright guy, really interesting interview.
Listen in.
Daniel Silva, thank you so much for coming on.
My pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
You know, I don't read a lot of series.
After the first two episodes, I usually find that I've figured it out and I don't want to go on.
I am very deep into the Gabriel Alon series, and one of us is going to have to die before I stop, either you or me.
And I think part of it is just my fascination with this character.
Can you tell my audience exactly who Gabriel Alon is?
Well, he is an Israeli intelligence officer, assassin.
He now serves as actually the head of Israeli intelligence.
I never use the word Mossad in the series.
I refer to it as the office.
And once upon a time, he worked undercover.
His cover job was that he was an art restorer.
He was and is one of the world's finest art restorers.
So he has two very different sides to his character.
The series has a very strong art component to it that's been there from the beginning.
And I have now written, believe it or not, The Other Woman is the 18th in the series.
I never imagined it would.
Well, first of all, I mean, he was never supposed to appear in more than one book.
So let's get that right out there.
He was supposed to appear in one book and one book only.
So obviously, no one is more surprised by the longevity of this character than the person who created him.
You know, I want to talk about some of the themes that I think the character brings up.
But let's talk about the new book, The Other Woman, first.
What is he dealing with this time?
Well, he's dealing with the Russians.
And, you know, within those 18 books is a subset of novels of Gabriel Alon's conflict with the Russian intelligence services and a Russian leader who looks and acts a great deal like Vladimir Putin.
And in this novel, he is searching for a Russian mole that the Russian intelligence has inserted somewhere into the upper reaches of Western intelligence.
And that search actually takes him backward in time to the worst case of treason and treachery in the 20th century.
And that's the case of Kim Philby, the British double agent.
You know, it's really interesting.
I sometimes joke that, you know, because Gabriel Alon is going after the enemies of the Jews, which is just about everybody.
I sometimes joke that he would kill an innocent Dutchman just to avenge Anne Frank, which are one of the things I really enjoy about him.
But a lot of times he's taking on ISIS and he's taking on the Islamists.
Why did you go for it?
I mean, obviously Russia's in the news right now a lot.
Why did you go for Russia this time?
Oh, it was I just felt that this year that Russia was going to be so timely and topical.
I felt that the second year of the Trump administration that it was going to be very important as the Mueller investigation started to near its conclusion.
And frankly, as I thought that world events would unfold in such a way that Russia was going to be very important.
And you know what?
I turned out to be correct about that.
In fact, the day I published my book, the day I published my book was the day that Putin and President Trump met in Helsinki.
So my timing could not have been better.
Yeah, it's exquisite.
Give me your take on Putin.
You always call him, I think you call him the president all the time.
You never call him by name.
Yeah, no, I call him the czar, actually.
Because I do think of him as a neo-tsar.
He's very imperial in the way he conducts himself, particularly inside Russia, the way he struts around the Kremlin and those gold-plated imperial rooms.
He's very much casting himself as a neo-tsar.
And what I think about Putin is that he's a cold-blooded, stone-cold killer who leads a kleptomaniacal regime that is very dangerous.
And he's made no secret of his ambition.
He wants to restore the territorial integrity of the old Soviet Union.
He wants to push NATO and the West away from Russia's borders.
He wants Russia to be the dominant power in Eastern Europe, which is the Russians call the near abroad.
He wants to compete with the United States for global power.
And I must say, without getting bogged down in the politics and what happened and why, I thought that Vladimir Putin looked like the most powerful man in the world in Helsinki last week.
He is incredibly good at maneuvering what is essentially a weak state into a position of strength.
It's really interesting.
You know what?
People say that all the time about Russia, a weak state.
And fair enough.
The economy is about one-tenth the size of the United States.
It's got demographic problems.
It's got its technology is lagging.
But when you have cyber, cyber is a great equalizer.
And Vladimir Putin uses his intelligence services very skillfully.
And the Russians have developed a new type of warfare that they refer to as hybrid warfare.
They're never going to take us on directly.
They're going to use this kind of hybrid warfare that is a combination of information warfare and black propaganda and provocation and instigation and meddling.
And they're going to do it slowly and skillfully.
And I must say, I mean, if you look at the situation right now, there's no other way to say it.
They have probably succeeded beyond their wildest imaginations.
I mean, our political system, as of this week, is a smoldering wreck.
I never thought I would live to see the day where the New York Times on the front page wrote an article wondering whether the President of the United States was a traitor or a Russian asset.
I mean, this is where we're at.
And this was brought about by Russia.
And they are absolutely trying to weaken our democracy, cripple us, make us ineffective, so that they can pursue their agenda unchallenged.
It's true.
They're amazingly skillful.
It really is.
It is a wonder what they've done to us just over the last two years.
That didn't get quite as much notice.
But right after that meeting, President Trump gave an interview to Fox News in which he openly questioned the entire doctrine of Article 5 and collective defense of NATO, saying, you know, why should we get into a war?
Words to that effect over some place like Montenegro.
Well, that's the entire doctrine.
That's the entire concept.
That's the entire reason why NATO exists.
And I've been asking this question for some time.
How would NATO respond to a true Article V crisis?
And I think we got a pretty clear answer this week in Brussels and in that interview that the president gave to Fox News that we might not rush to the defense of a power that came under Russian assault.
Yeah, it is always this terrible balance between defending the world and not going into a kind of World War I domino situation at the same time.
Correct.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I have to ask you.
I have to ask you about some of the things that the deeper themes that really appeal to me in these books.
And I know the themes are sometimes something a writer does intentionally, and sometimes they just kind of grow out of him naturally.
But by making Alain both an Israeli assassin, essentially, and making him an art restorer who is constantly working on beautiful Christian masterpieces, you put him in a position that I think many Jews are actually in emotionally, which is that he is in love with this wonderful culture of Christendom that has created all the science and wealth and freedom that we have.
And yet he is aware that the central other of that civilization is the Jew, and he is constantly fighting the very people who have produced this culture.
Did you mean that to be a theme, or is that just something that comes out of your own observation?
You know, it just came in naturally.
And this be careful, he's not fighting Western Christendom.
He is by no means.
And quite by accident, he formed a very powerful and important bond with the Vatican.
And as I have explored through numerous books, and I guess that it's maybe wishful thinking and hope and aspiration on my part that the Roman Catholic Church and Judaism could find some sense of reconciliation to this long divide.
And Gabriel Alande and his relationship with a character named Monsignor Luigi Donati and the Pope himself sort of represent that.
Yeah, that is, I was saying.
He does spend a lot of time in Catholic churches, restoring paintings and working on Christian imagery.
And in the same way that you're very honest about some of the things that Israel has done that have not always been as nice as we would like them to be, you're very honest about the church being both sometimes a friend to the Jews and oftentimes an enemy.
It really just puts him in this really, very realistic position.
You know, the very fact that you have a hero who's an assassin sort of speaks to a kind of attitude of real politic.
I mean, that you know that people like this are necessary.
Is that fair to say?
Sure.
And now that Batman is the head of the office or, you know, Israel's secret intelligence service.
And if you look at a previous head, a man named Mehr Daigon, his career started almost exactly the way Gabriel's did.
And so there are very obvious similarities between Mehr Daigon and Gabriel Alan.
Meridaigon could actually paint a little bit too.
Gabriel's a much better patron than Mer.
But, you know, look, Israel exists in a very rough neighborhood.
This is not bingo.
This is life or death.
And for those who question whether the threat to Israel is real, look no further than what has taken place in Syria and what the Assad regime did to its own people in order to stay in power.
Imagine what would happen if the enemy ever breached Israel's borders.
Imagine the slaughter, the Holocaust.
This is serious business.
And Israel's intelligence services and security services are on guard 24-7.
This is life or death when it comes to Israel.
And that's what makes them so compelling to write about.
You know, you wouldn't think what you just said would be political, but it has become that way.
Do you get the same thing?
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
You wouldn't think that it would be political.
But you know what?
Everyone, as we like to say in our household, my wife is a journalist.
She worked for CNN.
Outrage is the coin of the realm.
Everyone right now is outraged about everything.
And that's the way you communicate online.
And that's the way you communicate on cable television.
You have to be outraged about things.
And frankly, outrage is the coin of the realm when it comes to politics.
Everyone is outraged at everyone else at the other side of the aisle all the time.
And look, Israel is controversial.
And I deal with it every day of my life, the writing about an Israeli character.
I bet you do.
Outrage As Currency00:04:20
I mean, I was talking to Brad Thor, and none of his books have been made into movies.
And I don't think your books, there's never been a movie of Gabriel Lawon, has there?
No, I've sold it to MGM, and we're working on a television series, actually.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
I mean, do you think that this- Well, wait, wait.
Get back.
What did Brad say about his movie ventures?
Well, he was speculating.
Brad is an open libertarian, and he can be very political, and he's been on Glenn Beck and all this.
And he was just saying, you know, it doesn't make you friends in Hollywood.
And I've worked out in Hollywood, and the attitude toward Israel is very, very, how can I say it?
Ambiguous.
Let's put it that way.
And I think it wouldn't surprise me if that hampered your movie ventures.
You know what?
I have lots of friends in Hollywood, and I just went through an auction a year ago where practically everyone in Hollywood wanted to buy Gabriel Lan and make either a movie or a television show about him.
So I think that, yes, there are, and I have examples of it.
I would never name names or be indiscreet, but there are many, many people in Hollywood who are made very, very uncomfortable by Israel and the subject matter.
And that's just the way things are.
And I don't really think about it at all.
If we can close the deal and get the pieces in place for a great television series about Gabriel Lan, that's going to be wonderful.
If we're unable to get it done, I'm not going to worry about it one bit.
But I do have a development deal right now.
It's in development.
We're working on it, and I hope it's going to happen.
Rest assured that I made sure that I have an incredible amount of control over what's going to be done.
And I kept that control for a reason.
Well, I will keep a good thought.
James M. Kaine was once asked what he thought about what Hollywood had done to his books.
And he said, They did nothing to my books.
They're right over there on the shelf.
So I think we still have the books no matter what happens.
They're terrific.
Daniel Silva, thank you very much for coming on.
It's been great talking to you.
Thank you.
My pleasure.
What a wonderful interview.
Thanks very much.
We'll talk again.
All right.
Really terrific author.
And just his book, I just eat them.
I just like, you know, all right.
Sexual follies.
All right.
I have to talk about this guy, Douglas phase sensor Martin, who announced he was going to split from his girlfriend, Janet Garcia, who is known as the sexiest weather girl on earth.
And here we have a picture of her and of him.
And yes, he is well out-chicked, I would say.
And he said, now, to be fair to this guy, the internet is ripping the guy to pieces, right?
Because he says he's going to leave her so he can play Call of Duty more.
Now, that's his game.
That's his job, right?
He's a professional video game player.
And he says, for me to manage being a professional Call of Duty player, being a YouTuber, making videos, playing Call of Duty full-time, taking care of two dogs, having a house and going through renovations, and then also managing a girlfriend, it's like I had to pick my poison of what I wanted to spend my time and focus on.
Like there's only 24 hours in a day, and he noticed he would be playing Black Ops for full time while she was doing that job over there.
So to be fair to him, she did take off from Mexico City.
So like he's not, he is probably kind of ticked off.
I mean, there's probably an underlying story here, but I gotta say, she does some exercise videos.
They are as close to pornography as you can possibly get.
They're just absurd.
But everybody's making fun of him because she's so beautiful and he's leaving her to play Call of Duty.
I'm making fun of her because he's leaving her to play Call of Duty and she's a real human being.
She's actually a person who is dealing with him and he's leaving him to look at a television set.
You know, bad idea, whether it's porn or Call of Duty, stick with real people.
They actually pay off in the long run.
They're harder to deal with, but they pay off in the long run.
Mailbag tomorrow, be there.
I will be there.
Jeremy Boring Leaves Her00:00:35
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
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