Ben Shapiro dissects the Mueller investigation’s targeting of Paul Manafort—tax and banking fraud charges unrelated to Russia or Trump—as politically motivated, with Jenna Ellis arguing selective prosecution stems from anti-Trump bias. He contrasts CNN’s Jim Acosta’s biased reporting at a Tampa rally with perceived media double standards, framing modern journalism as divisive. The episode pivots to moral responsibility, citing human brokenness and self-doubt, while dismissing societal validation (e.g., LGBTQ+ acceptance) as insufficient for inner peace. A listener’s opioid recovery credits Shapiro’s focus on joy and gratitude, while another’s miscarriage grief is framed as a path to compassion. Writing advice emphasizes discipline over excuses, and Shapiro condemns The Nation’s controversial poem as leftist censorship, positioning the Daily Wire as a conservative cultural counterforce ahead of his YAF conference appearance. [Automatically generated summary]
Many of you care very deeply about Paul Manafort's trial, and neither do I.
But I do think we should understand what's at stake here before turning to admittedly more exciting issues like what's for dinner and whether or not there'll be a director's commentary on the Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom DVD when it comes out in the fall.
That'd be cool.
Anyway, Manafort was caught in the net of Robert Mueller, who was appointed special counsel in order to investigate collusion between the Russians and the campaign of Donald Trump.
The charges against Mueller have nothing to do with Russia or Donald Trump, but they do give journalists the chance to say the words Russia and Donald Trump over and over in the hopes that someone will think there's a connection between Russia and Donald Trump.
Manafort is charged with violating tax and banking laws and faces a maximum sentence of 305 years in prison.
That means he would be released in the year 2323 or just in time to see the Mueller investigation come to a close without proving any collusion between the Russians and Donald Trump.
At that point, we should also be able to read the disappointment in the mind of CNN's Chris Cuomo, whose brain will have been kept alive in a jar as part of a scientific experiment to find out what Chris Cuomo would have been like if his brain had been alive before they put it in the jar.
Manafort's alleged fraud took place while he was lobbying for the Ukrainians in association with Tony Podesta, the brother of John Podesta, who headed the Hillary Clinton campaign, which hired Christopher Steele to get information from the Kremlin, which was misused by the feds in order to spy on the Trump campaign and meddle with the election, which Robert Mueller is not investigating because he's only investigating the Russian collusion with Trump instead of, you know, the Russian collusion.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm for hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing hunky-dunky.
Shipshape, dipsy-topsy, go run to zippity-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, it's mailbag day.
My gosh, you know, you've been carrying...
Ah, my...
You've been carrying...
You've been carrying your problems around like a weight of lead, an anvil, and a sack, and they will all be relieved.
We're also going to bring on Jenna Ellis to talk about the Manafort trial and what's going on with Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's Supreme Court pick.
And then, the minute the show is over, I am off to Washington, D.C. to talk to YAF.
The YAF, I think Knowles was there today, so things can only get better for them.
And nothing better than following Knowles on stage.
But no, I'm looking forward to that.
And of course, the first thing I packed this morning was my Quip toothbrush because an electric toothbrush cleans your teeth better than doing it by hand.
It keeps your teeth clean and bright.
And a quip is, the problem with those electric toothbrushes is they're the size of cannons.
You can't carry them around with you.
You've got to plug them in all the time with a quip.
None of that is true.
This thing is a new electric toothbrush, packs just the right amount of vibrations into a slimmer design at a fraction of the cost of bulkier traditional electric brushes.
Quip also comes with a mount that suctions right to your mirror or in my case to my forehead and it unsticks to use as a cover for hygienic travel anywhere, whether it's going in your gym bag or carry-on.
It is going in my carry-on.
And because the thing that cleans your mouth should also be clean, Quip subscription plan refreshes your brush on a dentist recommended schedule, delivering new brush heads every three months for just five bucks.
Very important.
Quip starts at just $25, and if you go to getquip.com slash Clavin right now, you'll get your first refill pack free with a Quip electric toothbrush.
That's your first refill pack free at getquip.com slash Clavin.
GetQip, G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash Clavin.
Yes, but we know how to spell get quip, but how do you spell Clavin?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N, no ease in Clavin.
I just make it look like it's easy.
That's it.
Jury Selection's Role00:15:09
So, you know, we went to Dodger Stadium last night and we saw the ball game from this beautiful suite they all took out.
It was to celebrate the three-year anniversary of the Daily Wire.
It's the three years since they signed the contracts, and then it was another, I don't know, another month or so before we actually started recording podcasts in Jeremy Boring, the God King of the Daily Wire, where he recorded podcasts in the pool house in his backyard.
I remember, it's like 15 minutes long, and I'd just gotten off a flight to England, and I was like, basically dazed, completely dazed, but what a ride, what a ride this thing has been.
This is now, I mean, Ben is now a superstar.
The place, the Daily Wire, is like just one of the most powerful conservative sites.
And that's three years.
This is why we call Jeremy the God King, right?
I mean, this is not for nothing that we call him that, because it really is, really, he really has been a genius in manufacturing this thing.
And the other thing is it's really, everything comes down from the top, right?
And the people in this place, with the exception of Rob, you know, we just, we just, yeah, we endure him.
But the people in this place are so nice.
I mean, isn't this true?
I'm not just making this up.
Yeah, no, but I mean, this is like the happiest place on earth.
It's like Disneyland.
And that also comes from the top.
That also comes from Jeremy's ability to hire people and to spot not just people who do a good job, but also who are nice, who are just nice people.
Really important.
And you know, the other thing, by the way, I noticed at the Dodgers.
Did you notice the people at Dodger Stadium who run the place, who work there, they are so nice, you know, which always, whenever I am actually talking to real human beings, whether they're on the left or whether they're on the right, I'm always struck with the fact that people in this country, this is one of the nicest countries you will ever see.
In Europe, they make fun of us for being so nice.
They really do.
They talk about the fact that when they moved, built a Disney World in France, they said, well, what are we going to do without nice American people?
You know, we don't have any nice people in France, which was true.
And so really, the people in this country are so nice.
And that is why I really feel when people start talking about, oh, we're all divided and all this stuff, really the division is between a couple of people who work in the entertainment and television industry and everybody else.
Because I think everybody else, we could get along if we sat down and talked to each other.
We could find ways forward.
It's that lady in the New York Times writing about the fact that you're a racist if you make a joke about Obama.
I was talking about her yesterday.
You know, it's that kind of thing that really makes people suspicious of one another completely unnecessarily because I do believe there's a lot less hatred in this country than there are in most of the countries I've been in and I've been in a lot of them.
And I just think there's so much of this is in our imagination.
What was the, oh yes, the other thing I want to say, we have a video.
Recently on Twitter, some people have been picking on my theme songs.
And I've tried to explain to them that if you don't like my theme song, it is because you are wrong.
This is the reason.
If you don't like the theme song of this show, you are wrong because it is the greatest podcast theme song.
So yesterday there was a meeting to sort of celebrate the success of the Daily Wire and they played a video, the making of the Clavin theme song in which Candace now Bennett, Candace Bennett was doing the background.
Knowles, I think, had a part.
I think he did the ulating Muslim that we kill in the middle of it.
And I've actually lost a friend who wrote me a letter saying, I hate the fact you blow up a woman in this video.
We blow up everybody, you know?
Do you want me to leave the women out?
So, you know, in every moment, every moment of a successful story, like the story of the Daily Wire, there's one moment where everything comes together just right to set the tone for success.
And this was it.
I just want to show you this video, the making of the Clavin theme song.
Testing.
It's a wonderful day, the Lauren is bustling.
Oh, Roberer.
Oh, Ray Rob.
So, you know, this Paul Manafort case is really fascinating because of the way, by the way, I just wanted to put that up there.
If you hate the song, I wanted to play it twice to drive you insane.
That was why I played that again.
So the Paul Manafort case is really interesting because it is part of this imaginary world that the press has us living in or is trying to have us living in, where this vast conspiracy surrounds the Trump campaign.
The way I read Donald Trump is I read Donald Trump as I have said this many times.
Donald Trump is a guy who learns stuff, right?
He's a guy, he doesn't read a lot, I don't think, but he learns stuff when he is thrown into a situation.
He learns about it.
And this is what he said was going to happen.
And I think it has, and I think it is happening.
And when he started out, he was hiring people who could not do the job.
And one of them was Paul Manafort.
Paul Manafort is a guy that I don't really have a lot of good feeling about.
I think he, you know, the fact that they could get him on tax fraud and all this stuff probably means there's something there.
We don't know.
We'll see what happens at the trial.
I don't think they went after him for that.
I think they went after him for being associated with Donald Trump.
I think this investigation looks to me to have been very tainted by guys like John Brennan and James Clapper and James Comey, who seem to have organized an investigation that started way before they say it started.
But I think that it's interesting to watch how the imagination of the press is constructing this.
But before we do this, let's bring on Jenna Ellis because I want to talk to her about this.
She is, of course, she's on here a lot, almost as much as me.
She's the director of the Dobson Policy Center.
She's an accomplished constitutional law attorney and also has a background in criminal law, contracts, public policy, leadership, and ethics.
And she is the author of the legal basis for a moral constitution, a guide for Christians to understand America's current constitutional crisis.
And I now actually have my own copy of this book, which has finally arrived.
And I've just started it.
And I'm not deep enough in it to talk about it.
Jenna, are you there?
I am.
Nice to see you again, Andrew.
And I'm so glad that you got the copy of the book.
You failed to mention I signed it for you, which I hope is helpful.
I did.
I was very touched.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
So explain what did they get Manafort on?
They put a special counsel out and his brief is to go after Russian collusion and the Trump campaign.
And this has nothing to do with them.
It has nothing to do with this whatsoever.
And in both on the state and federal level, I mean, there are always prosecutions daily for actual crimes that don't ever get in front of the news.
And so the fact that they're going after him for something like tax fraud and other types of fraud, conspiracy, all this, those aren't specifically unique charges in the sense that, you know, this happens daily.
But I think you're totally right, Andrew, that if it but for his connection very, very briefly to the Trump campaign, we wouldn't be hearing about this in the news at all.
And he probably would not even be charged.
And that's what's incredibly significant here is that for Mueller especially to be the one leading this type of investigation for something that has absolutely nothing to do with his special prosecution well outside the scope, this just shows that he's trying to justify his existence right now.
Rather than just saying, I'm closing the investigation because I didn't find any leads.
There's no collusion with Russia at all.
And that's what a prosecutor is actually supposed to do with an investigation is investigate.
And it's fully okay to say we didn't find anything.
We're closing it.
Do you think he'll do that?
How do you feel?
How do you feel when you see this?
It does make me feel, you know, you set a dog after on a trail.
He's going to find a trail.
You set a prosecutor after criminals.
He's going to find criminals.
Does this tell you anything about the investigation this Manafort charges?
It does.
And I think that when prosecutors have that mindset and that orientation of there's always a crime somewhere, that's a really dangerous ground for a prosecutor.
I used to be a prosecutor and then I was a criminal defense attorney for a while.
I still occasionally practice in that area.
And when you have the philosophy of prosecution that we're going to charge something, that becomes really dangerous and frankly outside the scope of the higher ethical responsibility of a prosecutor.
So Mueller's under a lot of pressure to find something and again to justify his existence.
And so this really, to me, is a trial that is testing whether or not the jury there in Arlington, Virginia, likes Trump or not.
That's really the issue here.
And that shouldn't be the issue.
It should have nothing to do in the media with the Trump campaign at all.
I mean, the charges are completely, absolutely irrelevant to anything related to Russia or Trump.
But we're seeing this in the news and this has dominated the headlines literally just because of his very brief connection to Trump.
And that's frankly not, that's irresponsible to Manafort himself.
Because if you're being prosecuted, Andrew, for example, just because you have, you know, a brief connection with a friend that is now in the political context.
And so now they're going after you for something years and years ago, that's more of a political hit job than it is actually a prosecutor doing their ethical job.
So I think what the president tweeted this morning in terms of just saying, you know, close the investigation.
And it was not a call on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to do that.
He said sessions should close the investigation.
That's not a command.
That's just saying he should close that.
And I think that's absolutely fair and accurate.
Because they're not coming up with anything that they were assigned to do.
You think this is just evidence of that?
I have to go back for a minute.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Well, I was going to say, I mean, we don't even know the full scope of his investigation.
We don't know any of the evidence.
But if there was something after there's so much pressure on him to actually do something and have these types of indictments, if this is the only thing he can come up with and this Manafort trial is the big win for him out of his full investigation, then that just shows there's absolutely no evidence.
You know, the judge said, I was surprised to hear you say that you think the jury is going to decide this to some degree on their feelings about Trump.
The judge has said basically, I don't want to hear about Trump in this trial because he's not involved.
And he really did smack Mueller once for saying, you know, this basically what you're saying now, but for saying you only came up with this because you're after Trump.
Do you actually think a jury might just say, look, we're not going to, yes, he may have hidden the money, may have committed bank fraud, but we're not going to do anything about it because it's not fair?
Do you think that's a possibility?
They may.
That's absolutely a possibility.
I mean, juries are sacrosanct in the sense that they go back into their deliberation room and how they weigh and interpret the evidence is up to them.
They are the fact finders.
And so they are given all of the evidence, they are given the jury instructions, and then they decide based on the facts and the law that they're given.
And so no one really would know: is there that potential bias?
That's what jury selection is supposed to elicit.
The fact that jury selection in this case only took one day was actually surprising to me as a defense attorney.
I have had felony cases that are nowhere close to being in the news.
That jury selection has taken two to three days or even longer than that just because of the nature of the case.
So to find six men and six women who have said, clearly to the court and the court is accepting that they can be fair and impartial in this, I hope that they will.
And I hope that Judge Ellis, who by the way, I don't know that there's any relation to me, but it's a good last name, that the judge has been very, very clear to say, stay on the relevant topic as it relates to the charges.
That's a good thing.
But we don't know at this point, and I don't know, I wasn't there in jury selection, to know whether or not the jurors have heard about this in the news, whether they're taking that and their life experience in with them and whether or not they'll decide it based on it.
Interesting, interesting.
I have to ask you before I let you go about Brett Kavanaugh.
To my surprise, this process where he goes around meeting the senators, this is obviously Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, has been kind of quiet.
I mean, it's not that the Democrats have been quiet about it.
It's that the press has not been overcovering it.
It's a slow news summer pretty much since Helsinki, anyway.
That's a week of slow news now constitutes an entire summer in the Trump administration.
But it's been quiet.
How do you feel this is going?
Are you tracking this?
Yeah, I think it's going really well.
And that's probably why we haven't heard CNN and some of the other outlets kind of squawking about it.
Because Kavanaugh represents himself incredibly well.
He is extremely qualified in looking at a confirmation that will happen likely right before the midterms.
President Trump made a really great selection because nobody can say anything about it.
I mean, the mainstream media tried, and the best they could come up with was that in college he liked ketchup on Cafta and his name sounds like a frat boy.
I mean, if that's all that they can come up with, then you know that he's doing incredibly well meeting on the Hill with senators, even some of the Democrats.
And for them to push back just on a political partisan issue, that's not their job.
They have to look at whether he's fundamentally competent.
And once the confirmation hearings actually start, and of course, those will be live streamed.
We'll all get to see that.
I think that'll be in the news.
But all that Kavanaugh has to do is just stay very straight on target.
He has to just show why he is absolutely qualified for this.
And if they make a fit about it, then that's really trying to score cheap political points instead of looking at him for the qualified person that he is.
Do you think he'll have any trouble with the liberal Republicans?
I don't think so.
Yeah, no, I don't think so because he's had a very clear record since 2006 that he has stayed in an originalist lane.
And to me, as a constitutional law attorney myself, that's actually a really, really great thing because we're not trying and we shouldn't be trying, neither side, to get activists on the court.
We want to have fair umpires, to use a baseball analogy, someone that isn't wearing the hat of either team.
They're fairly calling balls and stripes.
And so we don't want an outcome-based court like it has been for the past, you know, 40, even 60 years on the court.
We want someone who will fairly stay in the constitutional lane, analyze the issues, and apply facts to the law and uphold the Constitution.
And so I think that the GOP, even those that are maybe a little bit more liberal Republicans, will recognize that.
And they would have a very difficult time justifying a no vote.
Jenna Ellis, thank you so much for coming on.
It's always great to see you, director of the Dobson Policy Center.
I started your book, and when I read it, I will ask you to come back and we can talk about it.
Sounds good.
Look forward to it.
Thanks a lot, Jenna.
So I have to play how CNN is reporting.
You know, like I said, they're fighting for your imagination all the time.
That's what they're fighting.
They want you to think about it as it's in your imagination.
And Jim Acosta went to Tampa for the Trump rally in Tampa, Florida.
Russia Investigation Drama00:15:29
And he starts talking about the Russia investigation and off the Manafort trial.
And just play the first minute of this.
This is cut six.
With the Mueller investigation's first trial now underway, President Trump and his lawyers seem to be cooking up a new defense slogan of their own.
The president will hold, by the way, a campaign rally shortly down in Tampa, Florida.
Let's go there.
Our chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta is already on the scene for us.
So, Jim, what's the latest?
Well, President Trump is in Florida tonight to do some campaigning ahead of the midterm elections, but the president and his team are still busy trying to get their story straight on the Russia investigation.
Mr. Trump is now echoing his lawyers who have gone from saying there was no collusion during the 2016 election to insisting that collusion is not a crime after all.
Freezing past the cameras on his way to Florida, President Trump appears to have a new strategy for the Russia investigation.
Ignore questions from reporters while spinning up a new defense where he's shielded from outside scrutiny.
Tweeting, collusion is not a crime.
It's a notable leap from the president who has repeatedly claimed there was no collusion with the Russians during the 2016 campaign.
If you couldn't see that, they put the tweet up on the camera and the camera says there was no collusion, but the tweet says, collusion is not a crime, but that doesn't matter because there was no collusion.
And there's Acosta lying to you.
the saying he's changed, he's not saying this anymore, while it's right there on camera.
I mean, the guy can't even, and then he talks about Trump getting his story straight.
Acosta can't get his story straight.
And the other thing, of course, is the whole report starts off with the Paul Manafort trial starting.
You know, the Russia investigation is, you know, the Paul Manafort trial, it may be an out, he may have been caught up in this.
And as Jenna said, he wouldn't probably have been caught up in it if he hadn't worked for Trump.
But it has nothing, it happened before he worked for Trump.
It was about the Ukrainians.
The people who were involved were the Podestas.
It was Tony and John Podesta who were part of the Clinton campaign.
It is amazing to me.
Now, that has been passed on to, that has been referred to the New York federal attorney.
So maybe we'll see something on that.
I don't know.
Tucker Carlson was saying that they'd been offered immunity, but that hasn't been proved yet.
I have to play what happened next with this Acosta thing is the group of Trump supporters saw Acosta and they accosted him because accosting Acosta is what you want to be doing in a Trump rally.
It's pretty funny.
The White House closed out the month of July without holding a briefing from reporters today.
That means the White House has held only three briefings for the press this month and eight total since the end of May.
There is no other way to describe what the White House is doing these days.
Wolf, top officials, including the president, are hiding from the press.
And Wolf, just to give you a sense as to what's happening right now, you can hear there is a chorus of booze and other chants from this Trump crowd here in Tampa, Florida.
They're saying things like CNN sucks, go home, and fake news.
Wolf, obviously, all of those things are false.
We're staying right here.
We're going to do our job and report on this rally to all of our viewers here tonight.
Just as a fact check, when he said all those things are false, CNN sucks actually is true.
That part is 100% true.
So Acosta just got that wrong.
Now Acosta tweets after this.
He's whining about this.
This is the guy who's, I mean, his reporting is so unfair.
It is so biased, so one-sided.
And that's beside the shouting questions.
I'll give him the shouting questions.
He wants attention.
He wants to be Sam Donaldson.
Okay, fine.
Shout your questions.
Be a rude little man.
But that's not the point.
You know, I have, look, I would like Trump to be treated like any politician, roughly, if it hadn't been for the eight years of Obama being, you know, ascending into heaven and being worshipped and the reporters chanting Obama, Obama.
It wouldn't bother me so much if they were attacking Trump, but it just bothers me the difference.
It's just that it only applies to one person.
So, you know, it is one thing.
Acosta's reporting is lousy.
It is lousy.
It is biased.
It is one-sided.
He makes no attempt to see the world from the position of the people who support Trump.
And then he goes out after they shout at him as he so richly deserves.
I don't like to see reporters being harassed.
I do not.
I do not like to see the press being harassed, calling Acosta a reporter.
Borderline misuse of the English language, but even so.
But now Acosta says, he tweets out just a sample of the sad scene we faced at the Trump rally in Tampa.
I'm very worried that the hostility whipped up by Trump and some in conservative media will result in somebody getting hurt.
We should not treat our fellow Americans this way.
The press is not the enemy.
I mean, like I said, like I said the other day, the only real violence that's been committed has been against Trump supporters and against Republicans and against Trump administration people who've been hounded out of restaurants.
And all of that is keyed off to the rhetoric coming out of places like CNN.
So I do not understand.
I am perfectly happy to see Trump stop calling the press the enemy of the people.
I'd like to see Nazi reporters get harassed.
But, you know, it goes both ways.
When he tweeted this, when Acosta tweeted this scene, Mark Caputo of Politico tweeted back about the people who are shouting at him.
If you put everyone's mouths together in this video, you'd get a full set of teeth.
And then when somebody said, you know, that's not really that funny a joke, he said, well, they're garbage people.
They're garbage people.
So that's the way the press feels about the people.
I'm sorry, but why exactly are the people supposed to say, oh, you're the press, you know, we respect you?
I do not get it.
I do not get it.
It is all happening in their imaginations.
If they would stop and ask themselves, what has Trump done that is corrupt?
What has he done that is authoritarian?
What has he done that is violating the norms of the Constitution?
They would find they really have a hard time coming up with anything.
Anyway, a lot more to talk about, but first, now we're going to go to the mailbag.
We've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
But if you come on over to thedailywire.com and subscribe, you can watch this entire show.
It just streams right on the site, isn't that right?
I've got that right.
Yeah, it streams right on the show.
And you can ask questions in the mailbag.
All your problems solved, answers guaranteed correct, and will change your life now and then for the better.
Come on over to thedailywire.com.
All right, the mailbag.
Yeah!
Yeah.
We should have a video of how that was created.
From Brett, he says, good day, Mr. Clavin.
I guess this is coming from Australia.
Oldest and wisest drinker of leftist tears among the people.
First, I would like to say thank you for the work you do.
Just listening to your advice has made me a better person and more importantly, a better husband, even if you haven't completely convinced me of religion from my agnostic perspective yet.
Thank you for that.
That's really nice to hear.
My question is about resolving some of the mentally heavy situations I find myself dealing with.
I do security, and some of the things I've dealt with are beginning to shake me.
I have found four suicides, the last of which was a 19-year-old girl, and I can't wrap my head around what would push someone so young to that extreme and sad end.
It is wearing on me to the point where I'm actually taking some of my stress to other jobs.
For example, this weekend, I'm looking after a drag queen reading books to young children, and it's making me unreasonably angry.
Not just because it's specifically designed to introduce children to the LGBT community at such a young age, the target age is around four to seven, but because if they want to go to the diversity route, why wouldn't they feature an actual transgender person instead of just a man under dress?
Hey, you know, the world is a tragic place, and if you're going to be happy, I've talked to Dennis Prager about this as well.
If you're going to live a joyful life, you can't live a happy life because you're happy according to whether happy things happen, but you can live a joyful life, a life full of gratitude and appreciation and vitality.
You know, you can say, like, even in this moment of struggle, I am alive and that this struggle is making me, bringing me to a new plane.
In order to live that life, you have to understand that the world is a tragic, broken place.
It is a tragic, broken place.
And when I say that, those words don't convey the appalling nature.
You know, it's appalling when old people die, when somebody you've known for 50, 60, 70, 80 years lives a great life, lies down and passes on.
Even that's appalling that we disappear from this earthly plane so completely.
But when, of course, when a 19-year-old takes his life, and you know, the thing is that teenagers in a lot of ways are more in danger of suicide because they don't have perspective.
So you're in a place of darkness.
If you or I enter a place of darkness, we know, hey, you know, life stretches out.
I'm in this part of the tunnel, but there's light at the end of the tunnel.
A young person has never seen the tunnel.
I remember the time that I contemplated suicide when I want to go back in time and just slap that kid because I was weeks away from having a lot of breakthroughs in my life and turning my life around, and yet I thought I was in hell.
I was at the very edge of the tunnel.
I was right there, and I didn't know it, and I was sitting there thinking about ending my life.
It is tragic.
It is tragic, and it is also evil and corrupt.
You know, people who are corrupt have to corrupt other people.
They have to do it because otherwise they look in the mirror and they will see themselves if they look in our eyes and we disapprove of them.
That's why there's such a push when they say, oh, transgender people are fine or homosexuality is fine.
Not preaching about whether this is good or bad, but if you feel bad about yourself, you cannot allow even one person to say, you know what, I think this is immoral what you're doing.
I think it's wrong because you already feel it so deeply.
And so you've gotten who try and spread this doctrine that will erase.
You think that if you can just erase all the bad feelings about you from the world, you'll feel good about yourself.
But of course, that's not true.
It's coming from within.
You have to feel good about yourself first, and then people will start to respond and start to ask you questions.
So listen, you're going to have to, you know, this is part of the world is coming to grips with this, coming to terms with it without letting it bug you.
When I was a kid, my hero was Philip Marlowe, the tough guy private detective from the Raymond Chandler books.
And he wrote a very famous passage.
You've all heard the expression mean streets.
It comes from a Raymond Chandler passage where he wrote about who this hero was.
And he said, down these mean streets, a man must go who is not himself mean.
And I remember this made a tremendous, tremendous impression on me when I was a kid, that that was what it meant to be a hero.
Down these mean streets, a man must go who is not himself mean.
And so you have to pass through corruption as a security guy.
You're going to see it, I know.
You're going to have to pass through corruption and tragedy without becoming yourself depressed or corrupt.
And that's your job.
And if you do that, if you do that, you will find that you draw to yourself people who want to see that.
You don't have to preach to them.
They'll just come to you.
And so that's actually the assignment you've been given by God.
I know you say you don't believe in him yet, but he's there.
He believes in you, and he's given you that assignment.
And so that's something you should work on in yourself because it will make your life more joyful.
But first, you're going to have to accept that this is real.
It's tragic and it's corrupt.
It really is.
And I'm sorry, it's tough to deal with.
From Stephen, Dr. Clavin, Lord of the Multiverse and Destroyer of Your Enemies.
That's also, that is my business card.
That is exactly what it says.
You answered a question a few months ago.
I asked about my opioid addiction stemming from an injury I received as a firefighter.
I've had a hard time getting and staying clean, but with the help of my wife, prayer, and the lessons I take from your podcast about joy and gratitude, I can say that I am now on the right path.
That's very touching.
That's great to hear.
I really appreciate that.
Hearing your response to my question, set things in motion, I honestly know in my heart has saved my life.
I owe you everything for that, and I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am to you.
Well, I'm really grateful for you letting me know.
I mean, there's very little in life that I take seriously.
I take that seriously.
It means a lot to me.
Thank you.
My question is, why do you think we do things that continue to hurt those around us and ourselves?
And why does it take so long, if ever, for many to get the help they need?
Thank you again for everything, Steve.
Yeah, it's, again, it's a broken world.
It really is.
And it is amazing.
It is amazing what people will do to themselves.
And it is amazing that when you speak to them as a friend, they will change everything except the one thing they're doing that is hurting the most.
You know, there's a passage, I won't read it to you, but there's a passage in my novel, Empire of Lies, where he talks about what he calls the road to disaster and how many times he's gone to a friend and they come to him and they say everything's going wrong.
And he says, well, stop going down the road to disaster.
And they say, no, I can't do that.
I can't do that, but I'll do anything else.
And he said, no, no, the one thing you have to do is stop going out.
Stop taking the drugs.
Stop drinking so much.
Stop cheating on your spouse.
You know, that's the one thing you got to, yeah, I can't do that.
What else can I do?
You know, it's always that one thing.
And that's because we're sinful.
We're broken.
And it's like you can explain that religiously as I do, that we have become separated from God and that this kind of piles up through history.
Or you can find some other way of saying it, but it's just true that what we want to do, we don't do.
What we know we need to do, we don't do.
And it is part of the why you need forgiveness and love in your life.
It is what you have to love and forgive in other people and in yourself and in yourself.
It is amazing.
It is amazing.
I cannot tell you how many times I pray to God and suddenly realize, oh my God, I'm doing it again.
I'm doing that stupid thing I do again.
You know, it happens to me all the time.
When you see it in other people, that's what should give you forgiveness and love for them because you know you're doing it too.
It is just part of being a broken human being.
Not to get that this depressing, I'm sorry, but from Haynes, Sir Andrew of Thoughtsville.
Sir Andrew of Thoughtsville, I like that.
What new or trendy music do you enjoy?
Not everyone can only listen to classical works of music like a nerd cough Ben.
I don't know who you're talking about.
You know, it's funny.
I really love the music that I really love is swing and kind of light jazz music, what is called the American Songbook.
I love the songs of Cole Porter.
I love the songs of Gershwin, of, you know, all those guys, Sinatra and Bing Crosby and all that music.
And that's what I love to listen to, as well as classical music, which I also love.
I don't like modern music.
I mean, I don't think it's very good, you know.
And so when I listen to it, what I listen to is light pop and light country.
I mean, that's what I listen to when I want something mindless to sort of, you know, play background as I'm driving in my car or something like that.
I will listen to rascal flats I like.
I mean, I like the guys from the 70s and 80s, the folk singers like James Taylor and Paul Simon.
I like them.
I like people like, you know, the early, I know she's kind of become a joke, but what's her name?
Taylor Swift, the early Taylor Swift.
I thought her early songs were really touching and good.
So that's the kind of, I just feel pop is kind of mindless.
And if I want to listen to something mindless, I want it to be, you know, tuneful, soft, and not offensive.
And that's what I'll put on in the background when I listen to modern stuff.
I do like, the guys that I do like, are guys who do something different like the Pentatonics.
I really like them.
I think they broke up.
Did they break up?
No, I heard that.
Separating Grief from Writing00:09:15
I'm not sure if they actually did or not.
Yeah, I'm not sure, but I really think that they're terrific.
And I like people with real musical chops like that who bring Jason Moraz, I think, is a really good jazz guy.
And so those guys I actually do like a little bit more than the rest.
From Matt, dear Leader Claven, for the past few years, I have suffered from depression.
I had steadily been getting better until a few months ago when my wife miscarried.
Conceiving is very difficult for us.
And we'd spent nearly a year in doctor's office trying to get pregnant.
The month-long roller coaster of joy from learning I would be a father to the utter devastation of learning I would be, I wouldn't be, destroyed me, and I broke my heart for my wife because being a mother is the only thing she's ever wanted to be.
And as hard as this may be to believe, drowning myself in whiskey every night isn't helping matters.
Any advice you may have to give on how to handle this tragedy and the reality that I may never be a father would be greatly appreciated.
I'm not particularly religious, but I'm willing to try anything at this point.
Matt, first of all, I'm really sorry.
It always gets me when people talk about abortion, that the baby isn't a real person.
Anybody who's ever had a miscarriage or been through or been close to someone who's had a miscarriage knows that when you lose your baby, you've lost your baby and it is a tragedy.
And a lot of times, a lot of times, because no one's seen the baby, no one's experienced the baby, they don't connect with you.
They don't realize how much grief you're in.
So first of all, you've got to separate two things.
You've suffered from depression, and I don't know what that's about.
I hope you're getting help for that and not just drugs.
I hope you're actually discussing where that comes from.
But you've got to separate that from what you're feeling now, which is grief.
Grief is a natural, normal reaction to something tragic happening.
That is what you feel when something tragic happens.
It is enormously painful.
I've been through it.
Most people have been through some version of it.
This is you are in grief.
And of course, your wife is in grief.
And of the two of you, she will get most of the sympathy, but you also are grieving.
First, you got to stop drinking.
You got to stop it.
Just like all of it.
I mean, I love booze, man.
I love me some booze.
And I love to drink.
And I keep it under tight control because I know I love it.
But when I'm in a situation like this, I just stop.
You just got to stop because as you say, it is not going to help.
It's going to make things worse.
I know it makes things, it's probably the most effective antidepressant on the planet.
It makes things better in the moment that you do it, but it makes everything worse.
So you just got to stop.
I have said this before, but I say it again.
Grief is a desert that has to be crossed on foot.
It takes time.
That is what gets you through grief.
And the important thing about while you're getting through grief is you are actually traveling across an expanse.
You have to picture it that way.
You're traveling across a barren, painful, ugly expanse, okay?
And the question is, where are you going?
Where are you going?
Because these are the things that will make you who you are tomorrow.
And you want to come out, obviously, with more love, more wisdom, more bitterness, more compassion for your fellow man, because that is going to give you more joy on the other side.
For me, in periods of grief, God is like my guiding star.
I just keep my eye on him and I keep moving toward him.
And slowly, you get across.
It sucks.
What happened to you sucks?
Things happen in life that suck.
This is one of them.
And I think that you have to just cross it.
You got to lay off the booze, cross it, get help if you need it.
Obviously, you shouldn't, you know, there's grief counseling, there's books on grief to get through it.
Then you've got to start dealing.
If you had, you said you were getting better on the depression, so I'm assuming that either it's something you're getting beyond or you're getting treatment for it.
But don't confuse these two things.
This is a normal, typical reaction, a correct reaction to something really sad that happened to you.
And you're going to be sad for a while.
And what you want to do is look at it as a journey.
And the question is, where are you going?
Where are you going?
Try to head toward compassion, forgiveness, love, and joy.
And I think you'll find that.
And then, if you don't believe in God before, when you get to that station, you will, because you'll see him face to face.
From Bob, to the good Lord Clavin, master of most things, mostly.
I have no idea what that means.
I have a question as a hopeful author of both a fiction series and some non-fiction books.
I have always been told if I want to write, I should have a steady job on the side.
That's, you know, whenever they ask me what your advice is for young writers, I say, you know, you become a lawyer like my mother wanted me to be.
You know, all right, so I have a steady job and I try, but I'm 28 with a part-time job, going back to school for another degree.
I'm hoping you won't waste my money.
And I have commitments almost weekly for both friends and family who I love dearly.
How can I organize all of this and still write?
It feels like every time I get started, I have to start over again, which not only breaks my concentration, but wreaks havoc on my motivation.
It frustrates me to the point of being angry with everyone but God.
Sometimes I have trouble even making time for him, which just makes me sad.
I've never been good at time management.
And right now at all, it all seems like it's about to overwhelm me.
All I've ever wanted to do is pray and write.
How can I get myself on the right track?
All right, first of all, big red line that comes out of here, big red sentence that pops out of me is, I've never been good at time management.
It's like, what the hell does that mean?
Get good at it.
Teach yourself to be good at it.
What do you think that's a talent born from God?
You know, it's like that's something you learn how to do.
You learn how to do it one day at a time, one hour at a time.
Time management is everything.
Your life is made of time.
Every day is made of time.
You want to use every minute, fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distant run.
All right, so here are two pieces of writing advice.
First of all, you got to support yourself.
That's just it.
You got to support yourself.
Whatever you do, however you do it, you got to pay the rent and you got to eat.
You can't live off other people.
You got to do it yourself.
So that's something you're going to have to do while you become a writer.
Here are two pieces of advice that one was formative for me.
Raymond Chandler, I was talking about before, said for four hours every day, you should do nothing else but write.
You don't have to write, but you can't do anything else.
Sit at your, in his day it was a typewriter, but sit at your computer and don't write or do nothing.
That means turning off everything.
Now, four hours is a lot.
I used to do it.
It's how I built my discipline.
It's how I built my career.
But Elmore Leonard, another very famous crime writer, said, you know what?
Wake up one hour earlier, one hour, and before you do anything else.
He said, including coffee, but I'm not sure I could do that.
But I would have the coffee while you're writing for one hour, 60 minutes, write.
And in an hour, I'm a slow writer, but you should be able to write at least a page.
If you write a page a day after the end of 300 days, you got a book, right?
So make that time, and then once you've done it, go for the rest of your day.
You know, make that time in the morning, wake up earlier.
I always say there's almost no problem that can't be solved by waking up earlier.
Wake up earlier, do your hour of writing, and then go into your day and do the rest of the things you have to do because you're a human being with a life, right?
Elmore Leonard used to say he always knew who was going to succeed by the people who took that advice.
If they took that advice, if they started saying, oh, I can't do that, I can't, you know, I am bad at time management.
It's like, don't say stuff like that.
What does that mean?
I'm bad at time management.
It doesn't mean anything.
It just means you're not managing your time.
Manage your time and then you'll be good at time management.
If you get that hour in a day, you'll be shocked at how much you produce.
It won't be enough.
It'll feel like you want more.
When you start to make a living off it, then you can do it more.
All right, that's it.
I'm out of time.
I've got a lot of questions left, but it is time for tickety-boo news.
I would have kept going, but I've got to catch a plane.
You know, I was undecided whether to put this.
We have a segment on Monday called Our Crappy Culture and a segment on Wednesday called Tickety Boo News, which are supposed to kind of offset each other.
And I wasn't sure whether to put this in one or the other.
And I'll tell you why I did it and put it in Tickety Boo News.
You know, Owen Benjamin is, we did an interview.
He's got a new Prager video on the death of comedy and how the left is killing comedy.
But it's not just comedy.
The Nation, a left-leaning magazine, ran a poem called How-To, written by a guy named Anders Carlson Wee.
And it was written in either African-American vernacular, according to its detractors, or southern dialect, according to its supporters.
And it takes the voice of a homeless individual giving advice on how to receive help from unkind and hypocritical critical strangers.
And it goes like this.
If you got HIV, say AIDS.
If you a girl, say you're pregnant.
Nobody going to lower themselves to listen for the kick.
People passing fast.
Splay your legs.
Cock a knee funny.
It's the little shames they're likely to comprehend.
Don't say homeless.
They know you is.
What they don't know is what opens a wallet, what stops them from counting what they drop.
And it goes on and on.
So of course, the readers of the nation went insane.
And this was insulting and it was anti-black and it was offensive to homeless people.
And so many people are hurt.
They pull this thing and they apologize for it.
As poetry editors, we hold ourselves responsible for the ways in which the work we select is received.
We made a serious mistake by choosing to publish this poem.
And the poet himself says, to all who have voiced questions and concerns about my poem in the nation, I am listening closely and I am reflecting deeply.
I'm sorry for the pain I have caught.
So they're not just killing comedy, they're killing art altogether.
Why do I say this is tickety boo news?
Because you need art, pal, and if they're not going to do it, we can do it.
Another Kingdom Begins00:01:22
You know, we've been touting the fact that we're about to start another kingdom.
You know, I haven't got time because I got to catch this plane, but I can tell you stories about another kingdom where we had to fight to keep the stuff in another kingdom that is offensive to leftists.
And we will not take it out.
And we're doing it here at the Daily Wire.
It's going to protect it for the podcast.
The book is coming out from a company that has backed me to the hilt.
You know, when people tried to re-edit the book, they stood up for me and they will bring it out as it is.
That's the first season going to come out as a novel in March of next year.
And we're doing the second season, which will be broadcasting, start broadcasting in September.
And so there's an opening for us to take back the culture.
Will we do it?
Well, we're going to do it here.
We're going to start it here.
And it's up to the rest of you to keep it going.
I got to catch a plane and go to YAF.
I will see you tomorrow from Washington.
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.