Andrew Clavin critiques Jill Filipovic’s defense of Stormy Daniels as a feminist icon, mocking her lack of moral accountability, then pivots to John McCain’s death, praising his POW honor while condemning partisan politicization. He slams media exploitation of tragedies like the Florida shooting and warns of cultural fractures over capitalism and free speech, citing AOC’s socialist push and tech censorship. The episode also dissects Pope Francis’ abuse cover-up scandal, Cardinal Viganò’s whistleblowing, and DSA’s "strategic" education takeover, exposing how institutions—from media (CNN’s Cohen retraction) to schools—have been hijacked by ideological agendas, leaving America’s future in question. [Automatically generated summary]
All right, let's begin the week with the New York Times, a former newspaper, and that rambunctious collection of clowns and blackguards they call their op-ed page.
But we like to call it Knucklehead Row.
This weekend, the knuckleheads at Knucklehead Row outdid themselves in knuckleheadedness with an op-ed entitled, Stormy Daniels, Feminist Hero.
And yes, I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, oh, Clavin, you're such a funny guy.
How I love your hilarious satire.
And you're good looking too.
But no, so help me.
This is a real op-ed by Jill Filipovic.
Ms. Filipovic says Stormy Daniels is a feminist hero because she is not ashamed of being a porn star who had an affair with a married man and then blackmailed him and then refused to honor the deal she agreed to when she was paid off because she saw an opportunity to get more money and attention.
And her lack of shame for doing these things makes her a feminist hero because now feminists can imitate her by doing immoral, degrading, self-destructive, and utterly humiliating things without being ashamed.
So, yay.
From now on, all across America, New York Times reading feminist moms and their absolutely miserable husbands will be teaching their daughters to be more like Stormy, maybe by showing them some of Stormy's films like Dripping Wet Sex 4, Young and Anal, and of course, the unforgettable Tormented, in which she plays Tormented Woman in sex scene number six.
And sure, watching movies like that may not turn you into a strong, independent woman, but at least they'll leave you weeping over the degradation of your gender by Stormy Daniels.
But you know, there is one way in which Stormy has exhibited feminist independence.
She has made her own choices.
She chose to sleep with Trump.
She chose to commit blackmail.
She chose to take hush money, then chose to break her contract and make a spectacle of herself.
In fact, everything that's happened to Stormy is because of something she chose.
So why is everyone trying to blame Trump?
Huh, that's strange.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped hipsy-topsy, the world to zip it easy zing.
It's a wonderful day.
John McCain's Legacy00:15:54
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, we got a lot to talk about.
And Michael Knowles is going to come on and talk about the church and college campuses and all the craziness going on in both places.
You know, there's sometimes I come in here after a long weekend and I see the machinery on fire and all our connections are down and, you know, the copy machine is just spitting out copies of somebody's naked backside over and over again.
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So we got a lot of things going on over this.
This truly was a clavenless weekend.
Senator John McCain died.
There was a shooting in Florida at a gaming place.
And even Neil Simon died.
We shouldn't let that go unmentioned.
Neil Simon, one of the kind of great comedy writers of the last generation, kind of became obsolete as Woody Allen and Irony came in on board.
But he created the odd couple.
He did a lot of, he was one of the writers on your show of shows back in the day.
So he was really a major force in comedy.
He died at 91.
But I want to talk about McCain's death.
You know, before I talk about McCain's death and the shooting a little bit, I just want to talk about the reaction to it because I'm sure you're listening to other shows.
I'm sure you've heard the news.
You know who John McCain is.
You know, he died.
You know, that is a sad thing.
A man was a patriot and a hero, no question about it.
It is sad when a man like that passes.
He was in his 80s.
He said he had been blessed with a life full of blessings, certainly a life of importance and fulfillment.
And so, you know, he said himself that this was, you know, death comes, nobody gets out of here alive, as he said.
And I think that we understand that.
So I don't think I have to talk that much about that.
But what I do want to talk about is the structure of our reaction.
You know, a lot of times when I go around talking to conservatives, trying to get them more interested in the culture, because I feel the culture affects attitudes over the course of 20 years down the line.
And when you get to that place and it's all a big emergency because people are voting for a president who says he's going to fundamentally transform the greatest country on earth, it's too late.
You know, it's too late to change things.
So you've got to get involved in the culture.
Now, one of the things I always tell people is that conservative culture doesn't look like conservative life.
In conservative life, you try to be true to your wife, you try to do the right thing.
But sometimes when you're watching the culture, a show about a gangster like the Sopranos can show those values in operation by showing the opposite of those values at work.
And one of the points I always make about the Sopranos is that David Chase, who created the Sopranos, had worked in TV all his life.
And I think that he understood that the structure of a TV story is different than the structure of all other stories, the classical Western story.
In the classical Western story, a man enters a situation or a woman enters a situation that is perfectly designed to touch at his personal tragic flaws or comic peccadillos.
And because of that, the situation goes through an arc in which the character is in some way transformed or simply killed by the situation that he's in in this unique way that somehow speaks into the heart of all people.
But what David Chase understood is that the television show actually has a different television series actually has a structure that's more like life.
In a television series, the person remains the same, but the events change.
So he keeps doing the same thing over and over again.
If he's a detective, he solves crimes.
If he's a dad in a situation comedy, he deals with hilarious family upsets.
But the thing goes on and on again, and it's just the same person, never changing, always doing the same thing.
I think it occurred to David Chase that this is hell.
This is what hell looks like.
You're always the same, and you're always doing the same things over and over again.
And that is why he put Tony Soprano, this evil gangster, into hell.
And I think it's a very moral show because of that.
But when I look at social media and when I look at the news media reacting to an event like Senator McCain's death, I feel like I'm in hell.
I feel like America has now entered a social media and news media hell where every event just repeats the same pattern again and again.
A man like McCain dies.
We all know that over and above our disagreements with him, over and above personal traits that we might have disliked, over and above the mistakes he made.
There was a man.
Here was an American man.
And to say somebody is an American man is high praise.
To say somebody is a man who operated as a man and as an American at the same time for all of his life, that to me is high praise because what America stands for and what McCain stands for.
So what's your immediate reaction?
He dies.
You didn't know him.
You're not grieving in your heart.
But you send out a tweet that says, R.I.P. Senator McCain, right?
And that message lasts for five minutes on Twitter or on Facebook, people saying respectful things and goodbye to this guy.
And then the politics start.
And they are all, it's always the same thing.
There are a couple of people who climb out from under the rocks and start saying, no, no, not R.I.K.A. He'll burn in hell.
Okay, those are the people who climb up from under the rocks.
Those are one thing.
But it's then the other people who say, start using their tribute to McCain as a way to show that other people are not paying tribute to McCain in quite the way they should be.
Or they want to show you how McCain was something that Donald Trump is not.
Now, that's mostly on the left.
What they do, you know, on the left, the only good Republican is a dead Republican.
They hate Ronald Reagan.
They hate George W. Bush.
He's a Nazi.
They hated John McCain.
They called him racist.
They called him old.
They always loved him when he wasn't running against one of theirs because then he was kind of a moderate Republican who would cross the aisle, who did do things that drove the right crazy.
He was not a big right-winger.
He was not a big conservative, except in very small ways.
But he was always annoying the base.
And so the left loved him for that.
But the minute he was running against Barack Obama, oh, how old he was.
He was so old.
And wasn't that a racist whistle?
And now suddenly he's dead if only, if only the Republicans were like John McCain, what a wonderful American he was.
And so they use the guy's death as immediately as a political attack.
And then of course the people on the other side start saying, you know, on our side, they start saying, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute.
You're praising him now because he's dead, but you didn't praise him when he was alive.
Here's, let me tweet your news story where you said this.
I mean, Don Lemon especially was like, you know, he was, you know, that thing Don Lemon does where he's so sincere.
And now he was one of the guys saying, you know, the question about John McCain is, wasn't he really a racist?
Wasn't he really, you know, starting this racist thing?
So the guy's death becomes a political battleground.
And personally, I personally feel that if I send out a tweet saying what I would normally say, which is, you know, an American man, a big loss, R.I.P. Senator McCain, I feel like I'm virtue signaling.
I feel like I'm saying, see, folks, this is how it's done.
And you stink.
I mean, so you cannot even say, you cannot even return, return to the normal ways we would approach death.
Here's the thing about death, okay?
Death is appalling.
If you don't know this, it's because you're young.
Young people don't have to know this, but because they don't know it, they should be reading great work.
They should read the newspaper, but they should also be reading Shakespeare.
They should also be reading the Greek tragedy.
You've got to learn that this is what life is about.
Life is, life, just like Donald Trump doesn't take place in a world that doesn't have Democrats in it.
He's part of a world that has other things.
Life takes place in the shadow of appalling death.
It completely erases people from the face of the earth.
And that's appalling.
And so when we see death and when we realize death is our common goal, we stop a minute.
You know, there's nothing wrong with stopping a minute and saying, ah, let us take the best look at this man's life because when we go, and guess what?
We will.
We want people to do that for us because we all make mistakes.
We all have people who hate us.
Just a minute, just a minute to pause.
And it's not, you know, here's a time.
You know what I think about the mainstream media.
You know how corrupt I think they are.
But here's a place where I feel that the people who attacked Senator McCain on political grounds and then praised him at his death were not doing anything wrong.
You know, I had a friend, a next-door neighbor, and we were good friends, and we would play tennis together.
And he was a liberal, and we would fight like cats and dogs.
In fact, cats and dogs had nothing on us.
I mean, we would scream.
He would come over at my house, and I would go over his house.
We would sit at the dinner table and we would scream at each other.
I remember once getting so angry, I actually slapped the table with my hand at a dinner.
You know, this is a dinner, this is over a civilized dinner.
And then, at some point in the conversation, every single time we would stop, we would calm down, we would raise a glass, and we would say, Praise God, we live in a country where you and I can sit and say these things to one another and still be friends, and nobody comes and tells us what to say.
And that was our big part of our relationship.
And it was good for both of us to hear the other side from somebody we respected and liked.
My friend got cancer, and it wasn't just cancer, it was a death sentence.
They told him, You got a year, that's it, it's over.
And I would, obviously, I would still see him, I'd still invite him over, and we'd bump into each other even as he got too weak to visit.
And he would still try to start political arguments with me, and I couldn't argue with him.
I couldn't do it because I just felt, you know, you're dying.
Don't think about this anymore.
You're leaving this behind.
And when he died, I realized I was wrong.
I should have argued with him.
Because as long as you're alive, you're in the fight.
As long as you're alive, you are in the fight.
It is right to fight.
I mean, it's dead people who stop fighting.
You know, living people have to fight for what they think is right, what they think is good.
So I have nothing against the left for saying that, oh, I hate McCain or I like McCain when he's not running against Obama and then praising him.
And I got nothing against people who said, you know, like me, who I disagreed with a lot of what John McCain did.
I thought he made life too personal, politics too personal.
I thought he was wrong to come and vote against the repeal of Obamacare when he ran on the repeal of Obamacare.
I thought McCain feingold was an atrocity and all this.
But I realized that when this guy dies, you stop for a minute and remember what he was.
You know, let's go back to his acceptance of the nomination when he was running for president.
And he talked about how he got caught in how he was captured in Vietnam.
And they came to him and they offered him his release because his father was an important admiral and they knew it would be good politics to offer him a release.
Here is John McCain.
You know, John McCain stood up and he talked about the fact that they came to him and they said, we'll let you go.
And he said, you know, the rule is that I will not go until you let the people who were captured before me go.
I mean, that's an amazing thing to have said.
And he stayed.
And after that, they started to just absolutely brutalize him.
I was in solitary confinement when my captors offered to release me.
I knew why.
If I went home, they would use it as propaganda to demoralize my fellow prisoners.
Our code said we could only go home in the order of our capture.
And there were men who had been shot down long before me.
I thought about it, though.
I wasn't in great shape.
And I missed everything about America.
But I turned it down.
A lot of prisoners had it a lot worse than I did.
I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as many others.
I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it.
But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before for a long time.
And they broke me.
When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners.
The good man in the cell next door to me, my friend Bob Kraner, saved me.
Through taps on a wall, he told me I had fought as hard as I could.
No man can always stand alone.
And then he told me to get back up and fight again for my country and for the men I had the honor to serve with because every day they fought for me.
This is an act of insane courage and insane patriotism.
And he says that he learned to love America in another country's prison.
He learned, he said after that moment, after he had sacrificed himself, his life was no longer his own.
It belonged to America.
And that's an amazing thing.
You know, when somebody says that, when people got all upset at Donald Trump for saying, you know, I prefer my war heroes to have not been captured or whatever it was he said.
That's why.
That's why they said that.
You know, they said it because they said it because that was a small, mean thing to say.
But this is not the time.
You know, the New York Times op-ed, like all they had in that op-ed were just relentless attacks on Donald Trump.
This isn't even the time to remember what Donald Trump said.
It's not that time.
It is not that time.
Now is the time to sit and remember who McCain was and what he did.
And that's, you know, that's so simple.
It's so simple.
But we can't do it.
And the same is true.
The same is true in this shooting that took place.
They're playing video games in a contest in Florida.
They're playing Madden, so it's not a violent video game.
There's nothing like this going on.
And one of the kids who was playing, or he wasn't a kid, he was a young man, was playing.
He lost.
He went home, got a gun, and opened fire, killed two people, wounded 10 or 11, I think, still, you know, how the numbers haven't quite come in.
And immediately we do the same thing.
Thoughts and prayers.
Oh, thoughts and prayers aren't enough.
You need gun reform.
Well, guns aren't the point.
Well, we've got to do it right now while everybody's panicked and we'll make mistakes.
You know, this is not the time.
Yes, this is the time.
And of course, Dana Lash.
It's like everybody on earth has to call Dana Lash a word I can't even indicate on this program.
They just come out with this.
Dana Lash puts out a screenshot of people saying the only way these people learn, meaning NRA supporters learn, is if it affects them directly.
So if Dana Lash has to have her children murdered before she'll understand, I guess that's what needs to happen.
Dana Lash's children have to be murdered.
This is on Twitter.
So she writes to Twitter and says, you know, my children were threatened on Twitter.
And Twitter says, yeah, this doesn't violate our standards.
It doesn't violate our standards.
Agreeing on Basics00:07:07
You know, Alex Jones violates their standards because they did eventually start to delay him.
They didn't totally pull him down.
So it's like hell.
It's the same thing repeating over and over again.
It's every time there's a shooting.
It's every time a prominent person dies.
We have to watch this charade go on where we descend into like this rage and hatred.
I mean, it's not healthy.
It's not good.
You know, it's not a good thing for us to be doing.
Again, we should be fighting.
We should be fighting because we disagree.
But we should be able to stop just for a minute, just for a day, one day.
The world is not going to go away in a day.
All our troubles will still be here tomorrow if we take a minute and salute the guy.
I mean, all our troubles will still be here tomorrow if we take a minute and say thoughts and prayers for the people who were killed in Florida.
That's all it takes.
That's all it takes.
And this hell, so why, why are we in hell?
Why are we stuck in this round?
And I think the reason is actually pretty simple.
I think it's because we aren't talking about the thing we actually disagree about, which is the baseline, the baseline of our disagreement.
One side believes in what America was made to be, what it was made by the founders to be.
Very simple.
Very simple.
The founders said, we want people to be free.
We don't want them taxed without representation.
We don't want them told what to do by distant rulers who don't have their interests at heart.
How do we do that?
Knowing, knowing that men are not angels, knowing that they need a government, knowing that people in power want more power, knowing that government grows, how do we stop it from consuming this moment of freedom that is created as if by God on the planet, this moment when we can invent individual freedom.
And they did it by inventing this kind of Rube Goldberg.
Does anybody remember what a Rube Goldberg machine is?
Yeah, okay, it's like mousetrap, that game mousetrap, where one thing knocks over another.
They invented this Rube Goldberg machine to keep freedom alive, have the bases of power fighting with each other, have the judiciary ruling over them, you know, whether things are constitution, have the Constitution guide all and protect the minority, have the president have certain powers, but only certain powers, have the federal government have powers and the state have powers, make sure everybody has guns so they can kill each other if they disagree.
That is basically this kind of rickety old machine that they built that has worked for over 200 years amazingly.
I mean, it is the longest lasting constitution on the face of the planet.
So one side of us is saying, one side is saying, you know, I mean, this is why when it comes to the Supreme Court, it is not a fair argument.
One side is saying we want our Supreme Court guys to go in there and give us rights to abortion and to give us rights to gay marriage.
And the other side is saying, hey, that's not the question.
The question is, will you do your job in the Rube Goldberg machine?
Will you do your little piece and knock over the marble that flows down here so we can make the laws in our localities, but you will keep the machine alive by upholding the Constitution?
That's the difference between us.
And if we're not talking about that difference, we're not talking about anything.
If we're talking about abortion, we don't agree on abortion.
I get it.
But do we agree on the Supreme Court's role on abortion?
That's the question that we're never talking about.
The other side is saying we want to fundamentally transform this country.
You know, here's a perfect example, though.
All these socialists who are springing up on the ignorant left, these idiots like Alexandria, Google Eyes, Cortez, who just like, every time she opens her mouth, I sit there going like, you know, girl, go to college.
I mean, get a degree in something other than leftism because you don't know what you're talking about.
Let's say we agree on capitalism.
Why?
Because capitalism keeps us free.
I make something, you choose whether you want to give me money for it or not.
Very simple.
The government doesn't tell you what it should cost.
We agree between each other what it should cost.
It keeps people free.
It's free markets with free choices.
That's why we love it.
And it only works if you leave.
And it protects your right to property, which is the result.
Your property is the result of your time.
Your time is what your life is made of.
So it protects the right to property.
If we agree on that and we say, you know what, we can do so much good by a little social spending that we're going to violate the rules of capitalism to have a little bit of welfare, a little bit of programs that get people out of the gap, you know, just a couple of things.
And we say, well, that does violate our principles, but maybe just to all get along and maybe because it'll do some good, maybe we'll agree to some of that social spending to keep capitalism alive.
If we both agree that capitalism is the baseline, then we're arguing about how much can we have before we start to damage capitalism?
How much good can we do by violating the principle of your property rights?
I'm taking your right, I'm taking your earned property away and saying that I know how to spend it better than you.
That's a form of slavery, right?
The state is saying, give me that money that you earned and I'm going to spend it because you would just spend it on a restaurant or a local business or give it to charity.
But no, no, no, I'm the expert.
I know better than you and I'm going to do this.
When we argue in those terms, when we both agree on the baseline, we can have that argument.
We can make some compromises.
I'll stand down a little bit.
I won't be absolute about my principles because we're all living in the same country.
But when you tell me, when I know that your ultimate goal is to destroy the free market system, then every single thing you say is a step toward that goal and I will have none of it.
If I know that you want to take guns away so I can no longer defend my freedom from my home, every single restriction you want, whether it's on bump stocks, whether it's on bazookas, whether it's on nuclear weapons, every single step you take is wrong.
See, if you say, you know what, I favor the Second Amendment, I will write it down, I will never stop favoring the Second Amendment, and you have the right, here's a reason why there might be a restriction, then maybe we can talk.
But how can we talk?
How can we have a conversation?
If I know, I know you are trying to destroy the very system that gave us everything that we have.
If you're trying to destroy the capitalism, if you're trying to destroy the gun rights, if you're trying to destroy the First Amendment, which is the big one for me, Donald Trump can pay off the entire rockets if he wants.
If you are not for the First Amendment, if you're Facebook and you're taking down Dennis Prager, if you're Google and you're putting all the liberal answers to have them all come up first in your algorithm, if you are the Democrats and voting to rewrite the First Amendment, if you're the mainstream media and you are lying every single day in order to keep conservative voices off the air and demonize them, Donald Trump can sleep with every single rocket and pay them off, and I don't give a damn.
So we have nothing to talk about because we're not talking about the thing we disagree on.
We're not, you know, I can sit with all kinds of liberals and have all kinds of discussions.
I was talking about my late friend and how we'd have these discussions because we love the country.
We love what the country was.
We were arguing to make the country its best self as the founders imagined it.
If at any point he had said to me, what we really need to be a socialist, we wouldn't have been able to just talk about it anymore.
We would have just played tennis.
Pope Francis' Confusionunami00:14:59
You know, I really want to move on to talking about the scandal in the Catholic Church, but I want to bring on Knowles because Knowles actually is a believer in the Catholic Church and he has a very insightful take on this.
I know that's hard to believe.
We're talking about Knowles, but it's absolutely true.
But I got to say goodbye to Facebook and to YouTube.
And come on over.
So please come on over to thedailywire.com and subscribe.
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Because we want it so much.
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Michael Knowles coming up.
How you doing?
Hey, how you doing?
I can't believe that's the nicest thing you ever said about me.
That on rare occasions, I have almost some insight.
It may be that we went to watch the MEG yesterday, and the film was so bad that everything you said afterwards just seemed brilliant to me.
You know, Drew, but this is a matter, and I suppose we can get to this when we talk about the church.
I think I just have lower expectations than you, because when I left the MEG, all I could think is, well, that was better than its, I'm sorry to bother you.
It was at least better than that.
I think once you have seen, I'm sorry to bother you, everything seems better.
And by the way, by the way, just to put in a quick plug, because it's not time yet, we're bringing out the second season of Another Kingdom in October.
But it'll be out in October, and we are recording it now, and you have done almost almost halfway.
I guess next week we'll get through the first half.
And I will also say you are doing a spectacular job.
You're performing absolutely great.
Thank you very much.
It is always really nice.
I don't recommend the job of being an actor because when you're a working actor, it's very hard.
But I will say, when you are working, it's great because someone gives you the words.
And you just say them.
I could see, though, that you were in your element because you had the entire room and absolute stitches.
And that was before we started shooting.
Oh, thanks.
Come on.
I never met a camera I didn't like.
Get out of here.
You know, I didn't get a chance to get to this thing with the church.
So I'm going to put it on you because you really have been keeping up with it and it is your church.
What happened in this latest letter from the Nunzio?
And what is a Nunzio also?
Well, Nunzio is my uncle, you know, my uncle back in the Bronx.
But the Nuncio is there.
Uncle Nunzio, come in, yeah.
The Nuncio is the papal representative to the United States.
So the Nuncio that we're talking about here, Cardinal Carlo Maria Viganeau, was the Vatican's representative to the United States.
And let's not forget, the United States and Germany basically fund the Catholic Church.
I mean, this is a very important, high-level Vatican position.
In the Catholic Church, there aren't many things that are unprecedented.
We've had popes kidnapped by foreign armies.
There have been a lot of things.
This is an unprecedented event in the history of the Catholic Church.
You have a top-level Vatican official accusing the Pope of covering up sex abuse, of undoing punishments that were put on an abusive cardinal by Pope Benedict, of undoing that and actually giving that cardinal a lot more power.
And you have this top Vatican official, Cardinal Vigano, calling on the Pope to resign.
Wow.
This is all but earth-shattering news.
Now, the New York Times, a former newspaper, reported this today as Vigano, is that how you pronounce it?
Vigano.
Vigano.
Vigano is an enemy of this wonderful liberal pope, and these are unsubstantiated charges.
Is that a fair characterization?
I knew I got a laugh anyway.
It's as fair as anything else in the New York Times.
It has that damning with faint phrase.
That's absurd.
Certainly one could say that Vigano is more conservative or has been a critic of aspects of Francis' papacy.
But then who among us hasn't been a critic of Francis' papacy?
Pope Francis has bred a lot of confusion in the church.
He seems to contradict millennia of doctrine.
And he's also been very dismissive, not only to his critics, but to young Catholics who desire orthodoxy and liturgical seriousness.
He's dismissed young Catholics who prefer older forms of liturgy as too rigid.
And he's suggested that there's some psychological problem with these young Catholics.
And this is why while conservative churches thrive and liberal churches like the Episcopal Church are vanishing off the face of the earth.
Well, that's exactly right.
The Catholic Church will be the Catholic Church or there won't be a Catholic Church.
You cannot water it down.
The pew's empty.
So I think that is very uncharitable of the New York Times, if not higher ups in the clergy.
But also, this report has been substantiated.
He's named people here.
Monsignor Jean-François Lantum, who was counselor to the Nunciet in the United States, was asked for comment on this.
His reply to the media is, Vigano said the truth, that's all.
And this is an 11-page document that was not given flippantly, like some comments of the Pope, to media outlets on airplanes and in coffee shops.
This was well thought out.
This was well planned.
And there's nothing to be gained here.
Some people like the Times want to say that this is a power play for this cardinal.
The cardinal's retired.
Cardinal Vigano is retired.
He has nothing personally to gain from this, but I think he's unburdening his conscience here.
You know, I've been getting some flack through emails telling me that I sound anti-Catholic.
And I think you know that I am pro-Catholic, in fact, that I think the Catholic Church is an enormously important priesthood.
I think you're one Benedict away from being Catholic.
One Benedict.
No, if they struck, they had two incredible home runs, and then they swung and missed.
You can't win them all, you know.
I know.
But I think the thing is, I do believe that as Western civilization is tottering, teetering on the brink, I do believe that priesthoods are immensely important to restore our faith and to bring people back to God.
And I'm not against Catholicism.
I am appalled.
Like, for instance, the Pope responded to this on the plane, you know, coming back from Ireland.
Ireland, which in my lifetime was one of the most Catholic countries on earth, but which just voted to legalize abortion with people flying in, flying home from across the world coming back because they hate the church so much.
They're so ticked off at these abuses in the church that took place, some of which took place in Ireland.
The Pope responded to this letter by saying, basically, I have no comment.
I mean, is that fair?
I mean, is that a fair?
I just find that appalling.
That's exactly what he said.
It was actually even more on point than that.
He said, I will not say one word about this.
I think the statement speaks for itself, and you have sufficient journalistic capacity to reach your own conclusion.
And it's amazing how when the Pope wants to, apparently, we don't know because we're not in the conversations with journalists, but when it's being reported that the Pope is speaking freely, questioning millennia of church doctrine, he's perfectly willing to speak.
He's loquacious.
He's verbose.
But when it comes to direct charges, he will not respond.
And this goes back further than just Vigano's letter.
Four prominent cardinals in the church sent dubia to the Pope, five dubia, five questions, including two of those cardinals are now dead, but including Cardinal Burke, who is considered a conservative cardinal, very serious, high-ranking official in the church.
And five questions about what the Pope said in apostolic letters that seem to promote heresy.
And he's never responded to those questions.
He will not respond to his critics.
And this is a real outrage because this Pope has called for transparency.
He's always talking about transparency in the media.
He's always talking about how awful clericalism is, how we need to stop all of the clericalism.
And then what do we get as a response to him?
He tells the bishops, he tells his critics, he tells the public to pound sand.
I won't answer these doubts.
This is really horrifying behavior.
So the guy is calling for his resignation.
And he's not alone, right?
There are other people calling for the Pope's resignation.
But I cannot imagine this Pope resigning.
So I don't think that's going to happen.
What do you think will happen?
Well, far be it from me to tell the Holy Father what to do.
But he has said before, he actually said back in May that he believes that bishops should know when it's time to leave, including the Pope.
They should know when it's time to leave and retire.
This fueled, in the conspiracy theory realm, this fueled speculation that Pope Benedict was pushed out, although nobody has any hard evidence of that.
But this is another example of perhaps the Holy Father might take his own advice.
He wants transparency.
He wants an end to clericalism.
And he thinks that bishops, including the Bishop of Rome, should retire and not die in office.
Perhaps if these allegations are true, if the Nuncio's statement is true, then perhaps the Pope might take his own advice.
Wow, wow.
All right.
So speaking of institutions that have been infiltrated by people we disapprove of, let's talk for a minute about college campuses, because over the last weeks, there have been like just few weeks, there have been this incredible number of stories of this not only attempts to infiltrate the colleges, but just the fact that they've already been infiltrated coming to light.
I mean, I saw this article about socialists saying we've got to move into the schools.
Really?
I couldn't believe it.
This is great because this is from the young Democratic Socialists of America.
I didn't know there were old Democratic Socialists.
I thought Ocasio-Cortez was the oldest one, her and Grandpa Bernie.
But the Democratic Socialists of America, they've now said we need to move into the schools.
And this is unsurprising because socialists don't know anything about history.
So they don't know.
They already did it 50 years ago.
I was going to say they're going to displace the socialists in the school and move in socialists instead.
You can tell the old socialists of America clearly succeeded because the young socialists don't know about their own history.
But it's pretty interesting what they said.
They said, we've got to move in here because education is a strategic sector.
This goes without saying.
They point out that education is well paid.
Now, often we hear about teachers not being paid very much.
It is worth pointing out, in places like West Virginia, which has some of the lowest teacher pay in the country, teachers are often among the most well-paid members of their community, which was pointed out by the Democratic Socialists.
They also say that teachers have virtually ironclad job security.
True.
So if they have all of this job security, this is why the socialists are opposing charter schools.
They're supporting teacher unions.
They are attacking any chance that a young person might have to get an education or to have upward mobility.
They're trying to cut off early on.
And it makes sense because they can't win in the court of public opinion.
Well, this is the thing.
I mean, it seems to me an immediate giveaway, an immediate giveaway, if you say, this is my opinion and all other opinions either must be silenced, a la Facebook and Twitter, or you say any other opinion is hateful or literally Hitler.
You don't have an argument.
If you can't sit down and argue, you don't have an argument.
And I was talking about this earlier.
The real problem is not that they don't have an argument, but if they make their argument, nobody will, everyone will be horrified because their real argument is to destroy American freedom.
And that's the argument they don't want to make.
So they have to silence you before you challenge them.
That's exactly right.
They can't, you know, they pick on someone their own size, just little kids.
But this goes, you know, Campus Reform is one of the great websites for this.
And they did, this wasn't an academic study, but they went out with a camera and they talked to students in New York after Andrew Cuomo, the governor, said America was never great.
And they asked these students, what do you think?
And all the students said, yeah, America was never great.
And a number of them said, well, yeah, we don't think America was ever great because we were taught in schools.
We know the truth.
We had a progressive education.
So we know the truth.
And that's, of course, the case.
If you're going to replace textbooks with Howard Zinn, why would you think that America is great?
I almost don't blame this generation for their socialism and for their anti-Americanism.
They're just so ignorant.
It's interesting that states-funded schools are teaching them we need a bigger state, and it never occurs to them to question that.
It's as if like schools funded by AT ⁇ T were saying that, you know, how we save this is let AT ⁇ T take over the world.
And they were going, yes, now I know the truth.
It's that AT ⁇ T must rule the world.
I mean, they're not considering their sources here.
And there's an amazing study that was just out today.
I think it was from the University of San Diego, that a third of American teenagers have not read a book in the past year.
Wow.
Now, one has to wonder about this.
Well, a third of, statistically, all American teenagers are supposed to be in school, virtually all of them.
And they haven't read a book in the past year.
Perhaps there's something not only wrong with the culture in the generation, perhaps there's something wrong with the education.
Yeah, it does look that way.
All right, listen, I got to go, but tell me what's going to be on your show today.
So we're going to go into, there's a lot more to be said about this Catholic scandal.
We're going to be going very in-depth on it and asking what did the Pope know and when did he know it.
Then we'll also be talking about corruption at the federal level in American politics.
We're going to have Eric Egerson to talk about his new book on how the left steals elections and how they're going to steal the next one.
Oh, cool.
You know, I will therefore forward all my anti-Catholic letters to you from now on.
Very good.
I'll absolve you in my role as lay Catholic talk show host.
All right.
Thanks a lot, Nols.
I appreciate it.
Cedric.
Unbelievable.
You know, I always compare if you've seen, I've talked about this before, but you've seen Men in Black where the alien comes and devours the guy and puts on his skin and kind of walks around shambling around.
You can tell there's an alien inside the guy's skin, but he sort of still sort of looks like a human being.
That is what the left does to every institution.
Whether it's the New York Times, which really did used to be a newspaper, used to be a good, you know, a little left to center, but still a good, solid newspaper.
It's now just a shambling ruin of an institution.
Yale University, so many universities that used to be respectable are now teaching children ignorance.
Come in and we will make you ignorant.
And I hope they save the Catholic Church because I think we need it desperately.
But right this minute, it is not looking as good as it should.
All right, let's look to our crappy culture.
So CNN and just about everybody else had a bombshell report, as they always refer to it.
I like when they say that.
It's a bombshell because they're telling you.
You know, it's like, should be me.
Shouldn't it be me deciding it's a bombshell?
Shouldn't I look at it and say, hey, this is a bombshell?
But whenever they say bombshell, you know, I think like, all right, I'll be the judge.
I'm the reader.
I'll be the judge of that.
But they call it a bombshell.
Mixed Reporting on Trump00:06:07
This was last week.
Michael Cohen, who you know, right, the lawyer who has, you know, quote, flipped on Donald Trump.
I'll read you the CNN report.
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, claims that then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Sources with knowledge tell CNN.
Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller, thus sources said.
Cohen's claim would contradict repeated denials by Trump, Donald Trump Jr., their lawyers and other administration officials who have said that the president knew nothing about the Trump Tower meeting until he was approached about it by the New York Times.
Now, this is Lanny Davis, is Michael Cohen's lawyer, and he goes on TV on all the shows that he can get on, and he takes it back.
He says, this is what he's saying, just to make it clear, that this was an untrue story, but because he was involved in a legal case, he couldn't come out and say so.
He couldn't correct it.
The reporting of this story got mixed up.
And in the course of a criminal investigation, we were not the source of the story.
And in the course of a criminal investigation, the advice we were given, those of us dealing with the media, is that we could not do anything other than stay silent.
So can you say now whether in fact Michael Cohen has information that President Trump was aware either before the Trump Tower meeting that Don Jr. was part of with a Russian attorney claiming to be from the Kremlin with dirt on Hillary Clinton, either that Michael Cohen has information that the president knew about it in advance or knew about it immediately after?
Senator Burr and Senator Warner read the answer to the question about his testimony, which is that he said he was not aware ahead of time and did not hear anything to the contrary.
And that was the testimony before the Senate as well as the House intelligence committees.
And he said that that testimony was accurate.
So Michael Cohen does not have information that President Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians beforehand or even?
No, does not.
The story is untrue and nobody picked this up.
I mean, Brett Baer was going nuts.
Brett Baer, the last honest man on television, was going absolutely crazy.
Why is nobody picking up this story?
CNN issues a statement.
We stand by our story and are confident in our reporting of it.
Except for the fact that it was untrue.
We got everything right, except for the facts.
That was it.
So, you know, there have been zero mistakes.
Let's count them.
Zero.
That's how many mistakes there have been that have benefited Donald Trump.
There have been zero errors that have benefited Donald Trump or put Donald Trump in a good light.
And, you know, CNN had to come in and say, oh, we're sorry, we put Donald Trump in a good light, but really he did something wrong.
Let's count him again.
Zero.
That's it.
None, right?
But they keep making mistakes.
All the mistakes are on one side.
And they never get corrected.
And you see them on Twitter.
The mistake gets 50,000 hits and the correction gets 200.
This happens again and again and again.
I want to play a piece by Chuck Todd of Chuck Todd.
He is talking to CBN's David Brody.
And CBN is a Christian broadcasting network, right?
It's a fairly conservative network.
David Brody is explaining to him, is explaining to Chuck Todd.
This is on Meet the Press, right?
So this is not MSNBC Chuck Todd.
This is NBC Chuck Todd.
We're supposed to be able to tell the difference, right?
But Brody is explaining to him.
Why we'll support Donald Trump as long as we know you're lying.
You know, as long as you're lying, what difference does it make what you say?
And listen to Todd's reaction.
I think one of the best things going in Donald Trump's favor, we know this, is the mainstream media.
I hate to say it.
I know I'm sitting on a Meet the Press roundtable, but the truth of the matter is 62% think the media is biased.
So in other words, if you look at the approval rating of Donald Trump, the approval rate is the conservative echo chamber created that environment.
It's not, it's not.
No, no, no, no.
I mean, it has been a tactic and a tool of the Roger A. Creative Echo Chamber.
So let's not pretend it's not anything other than that.
Well, hang on, yes and no, because remember, the independents are part of Donald Trump's base.
And I think that's very important.
A lot of times we say Republicans are Donald Trump's base.
Not really.
No, it's a separate Trump.
It is a different version of the Republic.
But those independents also distrust media.
This is not just Republicans.
It is many Americans across the world.
No, no, no, no, I take your point.
I'm just saying it was a creation.
It was a campaign tactic.
It's not like based in much.
I do think.
It's a guy smacking Todd in the face with the truth like a water balloon, like throwing a water balloon in the face of a clown.
And Chuck Todd is just, no, no, no, no.
Fox makes it all up.
Ooh, Fox.
Fox with its 3 million views.
Ooh, Fox.
You know, Fox is what it is because it gives us a different point of view.
That's the only reason it is what it is.
You guys are jet-fueled.
Chuck Todd is jet-fueled the fact.
Here's what I just want to ask.
I know I pick on the press a lot because they're lying scum, but here's what I want to say.
Just imagine for a minute.
Imagine for a minute what America would look like if the press were honest.
Not for Trump, not against Trump, just reporting the facts, just letting on enough voices on the right to counter the voices on the left, just putting people in the chairs where the editorial decisions are made, who have voted for all kinds of different people, or have at least voted for both parties, both major parties.
I would settle for that.
Imagine what America would look like.
Then, then we could start having the conversation that has to be had.
Now, when Chuck Todd delivers the news, my feeling is, I don't believe you.
I do not believe you.
I mean, I just don't.
No matter what he says, even when he does get it right, and they do get it right, I'm not saying they don't.
Why should I believe them when I know they're constantly spinning, constantly lying, constantly skewing the facts?
What would our country be like?
What would Twitter be like?
What would Facebook be like if everyone spoke and at least the two major parties, at least the two major sides were allowed to speak equally without being demonized?
Constantly Spinning Facts00:00:49
I think we would be much better friends, all of us.
All right, I got to say goodbye.
We've got more coming, though.
The week has just begun.
We are out of the Clavinless weekend and into the Clavin week.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show, and we'll see you again tomorrow.
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