Bennett’s Uncivil episode skewers the Kavanaugh hearings as a Democratic farce—coordinated protests, last-minute document demands, and hypocritical praise for McCain’s "civility" while attacking Trump. He contrasts conservative constitutionalism with liberal judicial activism, then pivots to Ryan Hampton’s opioid crisis exposé: how Purdue Pharma’s deceptive marketing triggered the early 2000s "Pillmill" epidemic, leaving millions trapped in addiction despite failed rehab models and misallocated government funds. Hampton’s bipartisan frustration reveals a recovery movement as an untapped political force, while Klavan’s free-speech rant on Bannon’s canceled appearance underscores how leftist censorship ironically fuels conservative cultural dominance. [Automatically generated summary]
Normally here at the Andrew Clavin Show, we don't make predictions about what's going to happen in the future because we don't know what's going to happen in the future.
It's the future.
No one knows what it is.
But today, as the new political season begins, I have found a way to overcome that problem by making stuff up.
So here's my official political preview for fall.
This week, the Senate will begin holding hearings on the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Democrats will repeatedly attack Kavanaugh by denouncing him as an honest man who will interpret the Constitution as written and thus overturn the tremendous progress Democrat court appointments have made toward eviscerating our laws in the service of tyrannical leftism.
After Kavanaugh's appointment is approved, Democrats will claim that Russia hacked the vote by magically causing Democrats to make fools of themselves and say stupid stuff like the stuff they said.
Hillary Clinton will strongly denounce the outcome and then pitch face first into an elegant artisanal salad bowl filled with Chardonnay.
In late September, Pope Francis will finally take on the homosexual rape crisis in the Catholic Church by issuing an encyclical calling for a worldwide ban on plastic straws.
In response, a gigantic pit filled with flaming sulfur will suddenly open up and swallow not only the Pope, but also a substantial percentage of the priesthood.
The New York Times, a former newspaper, will greet the event with the headline, LGBT priests face fresh religious persecution as they burn in hell for all eternity.
In late October, John McCain's funeral will come to an end as the last Democrats pay tribute to a man they always hated by denouncing President Trump in his name.
Democrats will then congratulate themselves on how beautifully they twisted a patriot's funeral to their political purposes and wonder why Trump's approval rating is suddenly at 68%.
Finally, in November, the Russians will hack the midterms in favor of the Republicans by dressing up as Democrats and proclaiming that socialism is the wave of the future.
Or maybe those will be actual Democrats.
DollarShaveClub Starter Set00:02:55
How would we be able to tell the difference?
Trigger warning of Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Birds are wingy, also singing hunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped, hip-sy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, we're back, and it is magically Tuesday.
I hope you had a wonderful three-day weekend, but that means that tomorrow is mailbag day.
So you only have a single moment to get your mailbag questions in.
Go to thedailywire.com, subscribe.
It's a lousy 10 bucks a month or 100 bucks for the year, and you get all your questions answered in the mailbag.
If you just press the podcast thing at the top of the page and then press the Andrew Clavin podcast button and then press the mailbag, you can write me any question you want on politics, on religion, on your personal, screwed up, messed up, lousy life, and I will answer those questions.
My answers are guaranteed 100% correct and will change your life.
And you may say, for the better, and I would say, who knows?
But we'll find out.
But, you know, this is a good time to do it because we only got one day of warning.
So there may not be as many questions in, and maybe I'll get a chance to get to yours.
We also have the new lefty's dictionary coming up, H is for Hollywood.
So stay with us for that.
Now, many of you don't realize that I actually was not born this way.
This is something I do to my head, and I do it by shaving carefully every morning for about four hours it takes me.
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Head over to dollarshaveclub.com/slash Claven to pick up your own DSC starter set for just five bucks after your starter set products ship at their regular price.
I have been a member for years, and for years I've been saying to myself, How do you spell Clavin?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
Arguing for Civility00:15:47
So, we're in the second month of the McCain funeral, it feels like.
Maybe it ended, who knows?
It went on forever, and it was all lies.
The whole thing, the way it was covered, the way it was, they just used McCain.
I mean, McCain and Trump didn't like each other, fine, and McCain didn't invite Trump, so they made fun of Trump for playing golf.
Like, what was he supposed to do?
Sit there and stare at the wall.
He wasn't invited to the funeral.
What was he supposed to do?
They made speech after speech after speech, attacking Trump, but also hearkening back to the wonderful McCain-like days of civility.
Oh, the wonderful days of unity and civility when John McCain represented this country.
All lies.
And we know if you just ever want to see a cartoon example, just a cartoon example of hypocrisy.
Watch the difference between all the McCain rhetoric at the funeral about how wonderful it used to be when we could attack John McCain as a racist, which they did.
We could attack him as an angry old man, which they did, which we could just run him down and hit him and make sure that he lost elections, which they did, and then get together and praise him because and use him to attack Donald Trump.
So now the cartoon hypocrisy is that the Brett Kavanaugh hearings have begun and it's just a free-for-all of hatred.
And this is really interesting.
This is Brett Kavanaugh, obviously Trump's appointment to the Supreme Court.
They won't even let the hearings take place in what apparently is a coordinated effort.
A reporter named Cassie Hunt, maybe Casey Hunt, at NBC is saying that sources told her that the Democrats plotted a coordinated protest strategy over the holiday weekend, and they all agreed to disrupt and protest the hearing.
She says, sources tell me in Frank Thorpe Democrat leader Chuck Schumer led a phone call and committee members are executing that right now.
Let us take a quick look at as Chuck Grassley tried to start the hearing and Kamala Harris immediately interrupted him and then the Democrats on the panel were helped out by the hecklers in the stands.
Here's the cut.
I welcome everyone to this confirmation hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to serve as Associate Justice.
Mr. Chairman, I'd like to be recognized for a question before we proceed.
Mr. Chairman, I'd like to be recognized to ask a question before we proceed.
The committee received just last night, less than 15 hours ago, 100,000 pages of documents that we have not had an opportunity to review or read or analyze.
You're out of order.
I'll proceed.
We cannot possibly move forward, Mr. Chairman.
I extend a very warm welcome.
I have not been given an opportunity to have a meeting with his wife nominee.
Mr. Chairman, I therefore move to adjourn this hearing.
Okay.
This is a robbery and a tragedy of justice.
Oh, if only Donald Trump weren't so uncivil, if only that doggone Donald Trump, if he weren't so uncivil, they can't even let the democratic process take place.
They can't even just say, you know, we're going to hammer this guy, we're going to expose him.
And then this is what the Republicans do.
What the Republicans do is they take, they rake the guy over the coals, then they vote for him, then they go back to their constituency and say, if you don't want judges like that, you got to vote for me.
You got to vote for more Republicans.
They can't even do that.
They cannot even, they do not believe in the Democrat process.
And this is the thing.
This is the thing that made me, I mean, I thought John McCain, I told you before, I didn't agree with a lot of what he said, and I didn't agree with a lot of what he did, but he was a patriot and he was a hero.
I would never take that away from him.
I was happy to see him honored, but at the same time, I thought the funeral was a farce.
They did what they always do.
Everything they touched turns to politics.
But as we get into the real stuff, the real political fight that's coming with the midterms and with this hearing, just remember this.
The two sides in the argument are not the same.
They are not the same.
It is not as if we are arguing for a right-wing Supreme Court justice and they're arguing for a left-wing Supreme Court justice.
That would be the same argument, both sides kind of wrong.
We're arguing for Supreme Court justices who interpret the law and allow the legislature to make the law, if they will, and compare that law to what's in the Constitution and rule on whether it violates the Constitution as the overarching law of the land.
That's what we're arguing for.
They are arguing to preserve the stuff that they stuffed into the Constitution that wasn't there.
The right to an abortion that our founders would have been appalled by, the right to gay marriage that our founders would have been appalled by.
Not that the state shouldn't be allowed to make those laws.
They should be allowed to make those laws.
But in the enumerated power, there is no enumerated power in the Constitution given to the federal government to make laws about marriage or about abortion, unless you're going to argue that it violates the right to abortion, violates the right to life.
But they want left-wing decisions.
That's two different arguments.
We want fair decisions.
We're going to lose some of those decisions.
Sometimes we're going to try and pass a law that we like, and they're going to say, no, fair enough.
It's unconstitutional.
We're going to have to eat that.
But the left doesn't want that.
The left wants left-wing law passed by a five-person judiciary.
That's what they want.
Different arguments, different arguments.
Same thing on everything.
We want a fair press.
I don't want to watch conservative news.
I wish I didn't have to watch conservative news.
I only have to watch conservative news to get the news.
They want a press that is dominated by the left.
They want all leftism all the time.
That is what they want.
Civility, hey, I want civility.
What I don't want is to be called a racist and then told that I'm uncivil when I fight back.
That's what I don't want.
I certainly would like more civility in our political discourse.
It would be a first.
There never has been.
The second presidential race with Jefferson and Adams was one of the most ferocious races ever run.
I mean, this has never been a civil political process.
But if you want to be civil, fine.
Don't call me a racist.
Don't call me an Islamophobic.
Don't call me homophobic.
Don't call me sexist or sexist pig and then expect me to take it with a smile.
So we're arguing over two different things.
So let me just show you former Hillary Clinton hack, George, I love you, Hillary, Succalopagus, whatever his name is.
Covering this Kavanaugh hearing, let's just see what the left-wing press looks like.
This is just activism as reporting.
Okay, here it is.
Republicans believe they have the votes, but that's a bit surprising given Kavanaugh's poll numbers.
Yes, poll numbers are low.
The public is evenly divided of whether or not the Senate should confirm him.
We haven't seen numbers this low since Harriet Myers, whose nomination was withdrawn, and Robert Bork, whose nomination was defeated.
And Kate, as Terry was also saying, this will really cement if Kavanaugh has confirmed that conservative majority in the Supreme Court.
Talk about the impact.
That's right.
So the stakes couldn't be higher, and I think the impact could be really dramatic.
So we're talking about a conservative majority on issues like abortion, but not just abortion, on environmental regulation, on workers' rights, on voting rights, on presidential power.
So the senators considering this nomination should vote as they see fit, but they should do so with their eyes wide open to the likely impact on the law.
Pure scare tactics, first of all, but also just scare tactics for the left.
They're assuming that you're for abortion and you want not only that you're for abortion, they're not just assuming that, they're assuming that you want the court to make the law.
That is what they're assuming.
Think about the two people they compared him to.
First of all, his poll numbers are low because all people have heard is what they've heard from these people.
These clowns have been selling this routine.
They haven't heard Kavanaugh yet.
They haven't seen him stand up before the hearing.
They haven't had any chance to make a decision.
So they compared him to Harriet Myers, whose name was withdrawn.
Why?
Because she was unqualified to be a Supreme Court justice, and George W. Bush made a mistake in appointing her, and the right went off.
The right exploded, saying, No, she's not good enough.
And they forced him to come up.
It was Alito, I think, that he replaced her with.
And Bush, you'll remember, was winking at conservatives saying she'll make the right decisions, meaning she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
And the right said, no, we don't want her to make the right decisions.
We want her to be a constitutional scholar who holds the law up to the Constitution.
The right had integrity, the left did not, because the other one she compared him to was Robert Bork.
And you will remember that Robert Bork, when he was nominated, Kennedy, within minutes, was on the Senate floor making a speech saying he would force blacks out of diners and it would be a segregated world and women would be forced back into the home and all this stuff.
It just this incredible speech.
And then and then the right was not prepared.
They didn't know that Kennedy would stoop that low.
It was one of the most shameful performances really in American history.
And that's saying something as Teddy Kennedy.
But you know, Teddy Kennedy was already way, way beyond shame.
So they're comparing him to that.
So that's the thing.
But now let's remember, let's remember when Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the most leftist, biased, unfair, and unconstitutional member of the court, when she was up for hearings, she said this about how she should be questioned.
This is her opening statement about how she should be questioned, and it has become known as the Ginsburg Rule.
Here it is: You are well aware that I come to this proceeding to be judged as a judge, not as an advocate.
Because I am and hope to continue to be a judge, it would be wrong for me to say or to preview in this legislative chamber how I would cast my vote on questions the Supreme Court may be called upon to decide.
Were I to rehearse here what I would say and how I would reason on such questions, I would act injudiciously.
A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.
So it's just not the same argument.
She is sitting there saying, you cannot ask me how I'm going to decide.
You think that's going to be true about Brett Kavanaugh?
You think they will stick to that rule, like they stuck to it with her?
You think they will stick to that rule when they're asking Brett Kavanaugh how he'll rule about the president being subpoenaed or indicted, how he'll rule about Roe v. Wade, how he'll rule about gay marriage.
You know, of course they're not going to follow those rules.
They don't have to follow those rules because the press will back up their double standard.
The press will back up their double standard.
But just remember, just remember, it is not the arguments are not the same.
We are arguing for a constitutional justice.
They are arguing for a left-wing justice.
We're not arguing for a right-wing press.
We're arguing for a fair press.
They're arguing for a left-wing press.
Very different arguments.
These are very different points of view.
And it's important when you sit there and you listen to the garbage they spewed over the body of John McCain, the body of a patriot, the garbage they spewed about civility and how wonderful we were all united.
We were not united.
It was them attacking us and us not really fighting back in the same standard.
Let's take a look.
You know, Joe Biden, who you may remember was once vice president, comes out of the funeral and they ask him what's at stake in the midterms.
And here's his response.
What's your message about what's going to take here as a good president?
Simple, everything.
We're in a fight with the soul of America.
It's about time to restore dignity to work.
It's about time we start talking to each other like we're civilized.
Deal with one another with respect.
Okay, talking to one another like we're civilized, dealing with one another with respect.
Now, let's have an example of that respect as we look at Joe Biden campaigning against Mitt Romney, okay, the most decent man who ever ran for president.
Mitt Romney, maybe not the best man who ever ran for president, but certainly the most decent man who ever ran for president, speaking at an Obama rally where there are a lot of African Americans, where there are a lot of black Americans there.
This is Biden talking to that meeting.
Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they're proposing.
Romney wants to let the, he said in the first hundred days, he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules.
Unchain Wall Street.
They're going to put you all back in chains.
Ah, I miss those days of civility and respect.
Those days of civility and respect were days where the Democrats got away with that garbage.
But anything, you remember what happened when just the other day the guy, the gubernatorial guy DeSantis in Florida, used the term monkey about socialism, saying, we don't want to monkey around with our economy with socialism.
And because his opponent is black, suddenly, as one, the press leapt up and said, oh my goodness, this is racism, racism, racism.
That's their civility.
That is their civility.
So if we're talking about civility in the same sense as I want a constitutional justice, I want civility for both sides.
We haven't had it.
Trump is a result to that.
Trump is a reaction to that kind of talk that you just heard from Joe Biden.
Trump didn't start this fight.
Trump did not start this fight.
Trump, you have heard me again and again say, I don't like Trump's manners.
I don't like how rude he is, but he didn't start it.
He is an answer to 50 years of this stuff coming from a united left-wing press and a united Democrat Party that felt that they could call us pigs, that they could call us racist, sexist, Islamophobes, when we were expressing our opinions, and they're doing it still, and they haven't started.
And this is true of the press as well.
You know, Chuck Todd, Chuck Todd has become an unbelievable figure.
I mean, this is a guy.
Chuck Todd worked for the presidential campaign of Senator Tom Harkin.
How many people worked for the presidential campaign of like George W. Bush or working with Chuck Todd at NBC News, right?
And he wrote a piece today saying, it's time for us journalists to fight back against these Roger Ailes Fox News-inspired attacks of bias.
I mean, this is as if Sean Hannity got up and said, how could you call me biased?
But Sean Hannity would never do that because he's an honest man.
Sean Hannity says, I'm a right-wing guy, a conservative guy, fighting for conservative values.
Chuck Todd says he's an honest journalist.
Those are not the same things.
Chuck Todd is not telling the truth.
Sean Hannity is.
Sean Hannity is what he is.
You pay your money.
He takes your choice.
You don't want Sean Hannity's conservative opinions?
Don't watch Sean Hannity.
But if you want to get the news and you turn on NBC, you will get Chuck Todd's left-wing slant on everything.
So he writes, this is in The Atlantic.
He writes, the truth is that most journalists in newsrooms large and small across the country are doing their best each day to be fair, honest, and direct.
These values are what Americans demand of one another, and it should be what they demand of their media.
Hollywood's Leftward Slant00:07:29
The challenge for viewers and readers is this.
Ask yourself why someone is so determined to convince you not to believe your lying eyes.
Well, remember, my lying eyes are looking at you lying.
That's the problem.
My lying eyes are looking at television.
You know, this is a guy, by the way, who works for NBC, where it is now coming out that they tried to suppress Ronan Farrow's reporting on Harvey Weinstein.
Harvey Weinstein tried to suppress it, and NBC kept getting in the way.
And Ronan Farrow is now coming out and saying, yes, they tried to stop me.
And his producer is coming out and saying they tried to stop me.
And Andrew Lack, the head of NBC, put out a memo, an internal memo that got leaked, I think, to the New York Times.
And he said, no, The problem was these ever-so-brave women who were coming out against Harvey Weinstein weren't brave enough, weren't brave enough to come on camera.
And one of the women, let me see if I have her name.
One of the women said, yes, I would.
I was ready to come out.
I was ready to come out and talk on camera.
And Ronan Farrow says he had women who were ready that he left and went to the New Yorker with the story that broke, started the Me Too movement.
He went to the New Yorker at NBC suggestion.
They said, take that story and get it out of here.
So that is what Chuck Todd, that's what Chuck Todd represents.
Chuck Todd represents an NBC News that tried to shut down a story about what Harvey Weinstein is.
And why do you think Harvey Weinstein came under that protection?
And finally, I just have to add this one thing before we go on to H's for Hollywood, the next installment in the lefties dictionary.
Our attitudes toward America are not the same.
Two stories came out over the weekend that really said something about this.
One is this movie about Neil Armstrong, First Man, where it was revealed that they left out the scene where he planted the flag.
Neil Armstrong, obviously the first man on the moon.
They left out the scene where he planted the American flag on the moon.
And when they asked Ryan Gosling, who plays Armstrong, he said, well, I think this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement, and that's how he chose to view it.
And I'm not sure yet.
I couldn't quite confirm this.
I think they left the flag out of the picture altogether.
I think they're on the moon without the American flag there.
That may not be true.
I'm not sure about this.
So it's not, I mean, all you have to do is tell the truth.
All you have to, it's a movie.
That was the most triumphant moment when they planted that American flag.
That was the climax of the story.
Why rewrite it if you love America?
Why rewrite it if you want to pay tribute?
If you don't want to not pay tribute, if you don't want to insult America, why rewrite the truth?
Why not just tell the story?
Buzz Aldrin, who was the second man on the moon, he tweeted out a picture of the flag planted and him today saluting it.
All right.
So that's one thing.
And by the way, this film comes out on the same day that the Gosnell story, about the abortion doctor, comes out on the same day.
That's a story that I wrote the screenplay for.
And it is a story about an abortion mass murderer, Abortionist serial killer that the press refused to cover.
Hollywood would never make the film, so it was made by a bunch of right-wing lunatics like myself, and it will be coming out on the same day.
So you choose whether you want to see the flag deleted from the moon launch or you want to see the Gosnell movie and go and see that.
And the second one I really have to is this Colin Humperdunk ad from Nike, right?
They put out an ad, do we have it?
Yeah, here's Colin Limperdink.
Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything, just do it.
So, first of all, believing in something is not a good in and of itself.
Colin Kaepernick sacrificed nothing.
He was cut because he wasn't a very good quarterback.
And just do it.
Just do what?
Just do what?
So don't take your moral hints from your sneakers.
I mean, that's the first thing.
But now we know, now we know this is how they feel about America.
Okay, we get this.
And these are corporate interests, of course.
It's always the corporations with the most left-wing people in the country.
But this is how they feel.
So we're not even talking about the same attitude toward America.
However, I will say that Kaepernick did get some support on Twitter from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian tyrant who tweeted the NFL season will start this week.
Unfortunately, once again, Kaepernick is not on the NFL roster, even though he is one of the best quarterbacks in the league.
So Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is there.
All right, we got to take a look at H is for Hollywood, the latest edition in the Left Ease dictionary by that incredible handsome fellow.
I don't know who that is, but he's terrific.
Let's hear it.
H. H is for Hollywood.
Hollywood is where reality goes to become leftist.
Everywhere else on earth, reality is conservative.
In reality, America is a force for good and has had a hand in securing the freedom of every single free person on earth.
In reality, free markets, free speech, and freedom of worship make people richer, happier, and more productive.
In reality, punishing criminals harshly leads to less crime.
Racism is harmful, whether it favors whites or blacks.
Manly men and womanly women make stronger families with happier children.
In reality, faithful marriages lead to healthier and better sex, and worshiping God gives life meaning and purpose.
But that's only in reality, and reality is hard and unfair.
That's why we have Hollywood.
In Hollywood, everything is different.
In Hollywood, America is bad, and it transforms nice people like Matt Damon into assassins and then hurts innocent Muslims who are just minding their own business.
In Hollywood, free markets are mean, and so wise politicians have to take businessmen's money away and give it to the right people.
As long as no one takes away the money of the people who are in the business of making movies, that would be wrong.
In Hollywood, the best way to have sex is with a woman you met two scenes ago who knows how to fall backward in slow motion onto a bed while magical music plays from somewhere.
Don't try this at home.
In Hollywood, religious people just go around hating gays all day, unless the religious people are black.
Then they sing gospel music and everything's great.
History becomes leftist in Hollywood too.
In real history, a communist killed President John F. Kennedy because Kennedy was anti-communist.
In Hollywood history, like in the movie JFK, a conservative conspiracy killed Kennedy because he was trying to end the war in Vietnam.
In real history, President Jimmy Carter's sanctimonious naivete and incompetence led to the Islamist takeover of Iran and the taking of American hostages.
In Hollywood history, like Argo, Carter was a dignified visionary leader who ended the crisis peacefully.
In real history, America has battled oppression in the form of communism, Nazism, and Islamism.
In Hollywood history, from casualties of war to almost every movie about the war on terror, America is the oppressor, invading countries and killing indigenous people because that's just the way we roll.
Boy, oh boy, that Hollywood, it has been so successful at making reality and history leftist that reality and history would actually be leftist if it weren't for the fact that reality and history remain reality and history, no matter what Hollywood says.
H is for Hollywood.
I'm Andrew Clavin with the Lefties Dictionary.
You know, this is a great series.
I think most of the credit should go to Rebecca Shapiro, the talented Shapiro, as we call her, who does the illustrations of the fact.
They really are terrific.
I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Pharma's Role in Recovery00:14:53
We got a good interview with Ryan Hampton coming up.
He beat opiate addiction and now is becoming an anti-opiate addiction activist with a really interesting political point of view.
We'll be talking to him, but you got to come over to the dailywire.com where you can listen.
But while you're there, you can subscribe for lousy 10 bucks a month.
And then, and then, my friends, you can be in the mailbag where you can leave a question and I will answer it and my answer will be correct and will save your life or change your life.
I'm not sure which.
All right, come on over to TheDailyWire.com.
Ryan Hampton is a national addiction recovery advocate at Facing Addiction and founder of The Voices Project.
He's also a former White House staffer and the author of American Fix Inside the Opioid Addiction Crisis and How to End It.
We talked about the book, Ryan's personal story of addiction and recovery and how that shaped his views on the current crisis facing the country.
Ryan Hampton, thank you so much for coming on.
I appreciate it.
Great to be here, Andrew.
The book is American Fix Inside the Opioid Addiction Crisis and How to End It.
But I'd like to begin with your personal story, which is kind of amazing.
You went from being on the White House staff to being on heroin, which is quite a journey.
Can you tell us what happened?
Sure.
I mean, my story isn't really unique.
I mean, it's unique in the sense that I worked in the White House, but the circumstances of how I got addicted to heroin, you know, I had an up-and-coming career in politics.
I was a good student, you know, from Miami, Florida.
I had worked on multiple presidential campaigns.
I worked in the Clinton administration.
I was actually in Washington, D.C. in 2003, right after the midterms working for the Democratic National Committee.
And I went on a hiking trip to the Billy Go Trail.
If you don't know anything about a really steep trail in between Virginia and Maryland, and I slipped, injured my ankle, injured my knee, went to go see an urgent care doctor at the time.
And I was prescribed a very high-grade opioid delauded.
Now, I was supposed to get an MRI for that ankle, never did.
And I treated it pretty much with opioid pain medication for several months before moving to Florida.
Where things really spiraled out of control for me was when I moved back to Florida.
If you know anything about Florida in the mid-2000s, it was the height of what was the Pillmill epidemic, which I got caught up into.
And that eventually led to a heroin addiction as a result of being cut off of medications kind of at the 11th hour, several years later.
I didn't really have much of an option.
I was heavily, heavily dependent on them, physically, emotionally, everything about me.
And it was a quick fall from, you know, working in the White House and traveling aboard Air Force One to, you know, being on the streets homeless, addicted to heroin.
Wow.
Did you know when you started taking the drug that it was addictive?
I mean, when you didn't get the MRI, were you complicit in the addiction or did you just stumble into it?
I mean, that's a very valid question.
You know, I think about it today.
How could I not have known?
But I really didn't.
You know, this was a different time.
It was early 2000s.
I was legitimately prescribed the medication.
I thought that it was okay.
I knew something was different about it because of the way it made me felt.
However, with all that being said, I was told by doctors that I could easily wean off of it, that it was safe, that the addictive risk was minimal, that I didn't really need to worry about that.
It was given to me in the comfort of a doctor's office by someone whom we're taught to trust.
And the fact that it had my name on it, it was a pill bottle, it legitimized it.
I did not make the connection between what I was taking and the possible abuse factor that would come in later.
I really didn't.
Wow.
Now, before we talk about the rest of the country, how did you get clean?
So I found recovery.
Interestingly enough, I had been through multiple bouts of treatment.
And we could talk about that later, but none of it really worked for me.
I actually found recovery the day I left treatment as a result of plugging into a community, a peer support group in my hometown.
I was able to access stable housing.
I was able to access employment.
I was able to find the right types of recovery supports early on in my recovery that were critical to saving my life.
Part of that continuum that gets lost in the discussion.
You know, we talk about addiction as a chronic health problem and a chronic health crisis in this country, yet we still deal with it as an acute crisis issue.
All this money goes towards 28-day, 30-day solutions.
But what happens on the 30th day when someone leaves?
That's where everybody falls through the cracks for the one-tenth of people who actually do get to go to addiction treatment in the country, because most people don't.
So you come out of this and you find, in fact, you're a statistic, right?
You're part of an incredible crisis that's going on through the whole country.
And you took what you called an addiction road trip at one point.
Tell me what you saw and how that changed your point of view.
Well, the lead up, the genesis of that trip actually was I lost four really close friends of mine to overdoses early 20, mid-2015, early 2016.
I had been sober for about eight months, seven to eight months, and incredibly silent about, you know, I come from a political organizing background, right?
So I understand the community organizing model.
I understand the power in it, but I was still very silent, suffering in silence, did not want anybody to know that I had a problem with addiction.
And then I even had found recovery.
And then roommates of mine, I was still in sober living roommates of mine started dying.
People I went to treatment started dying.
People that I was very close to, loved, started dying.
And it was right around the time of the 2016 Democratic primaries in California.
And I wasn't even registered to vote in the state at the time.
I opened up the paper and I saw in the Sacramento B that people could run to be delegate to one of the conventions.
I ran.
I organized my community.
We had a few hundred people show up to vote, ended up winning, which was just kind of like this phenomenon.
And I was a delegate.
But after being elected, I said, hey, you know, it's not about the convention.
It's about the community.
Making sure that we're raising the issue, bringing it to the surface.
Let's travel the country.
Let's drive out to Philadelphia and let's visit as many communities as possible to see not just the train wreck story, but see the solutions.
Let's see what's going on.
Visited 22 states over the course of 30 days, 45 or 35 foot RV, traveled over 8,000 miles.
And it changed my life.
It changed my perception on what we could be doing.
What I saw in these communities was that the top-down solutions were not working.
The money wasn't making it to where it needed to be.
It really shattered a lot of biases I had in terms of Republican versus Democrat too.
I really saw that this might be the single most unifying issue that we've seen in a generation when it comes to opioid.
might be the one issue that can unify us that we can get to solutions to.
One of the most fascinating things I saw that really led me to write, to start writing at a very high level was Chesterfield County, Virginia, which is a rural, red, Republican, Trump-leaning area district, and met with the Republican elected sheriff there.
His name's Sheriff Carl Leonard.
He's become one of my best friends and mentors, who's running a program out of his jail for inmates so that they can get help before they leave.
They can learn what the resources are.
They can learn what the triggers are.
He's bringing in clinicians.
He's having peer support groups.
He's allowing people to come back to jail after they're released to mentor the people that are currently in there.
And this sheriff couldn't get funding for this program.
Now, when we say funding, we're talking probably about $2,500 for 40 inmates a month, which is nothing compared to what we spend to lock people up and keep them sick.
And he was fighting for it.
So we started doing some creative things on social media.
I started writing about it, started forming these kind of unlikely partnerships to drive for solutions.
And we started getting solutions.
You know, people started paying attention to us.
Things picked up on social media.
It wasn't happening in the mainstream media.
So we really had to look at like non-traditional means like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, op-eds, anything to get our voice out there because we've been silenced.
I mean, that's the bottom line.
We've been silenced.
So when you say you talk about top-down solutions, you're talking about government solutions, essentially.
You're talking about people in the government looking down and saying, this is what we're going to do.
And those don't work.
Correct.
What's missing from them?
Well, I'll cite, you know, the example is there's all this money right now that's been tagged for the opioid crisis when in fact we have an addiction.
Even though I write about the opioid crisis as my book, because that's my story, what we have is an addiction crisis.
We need to be supporting people in recovery from all sorts of substances.
You know, if we can take care of the opioid crisis, but what's going to happen when we, you know, two or three years down the line when we're going into this booming meth crisis or this benzo crisis?
The money that's coming right now is being tagged specific for opioid treatment, which is medication-assisted treatment, which I fully support.
It is a viable, effective pathway for people who are seeking care for opioid addiction.
But that money is not trickling down to states, to counties, to local communities who actually know what to do.
So recovery, addiction and recovery is not equal in this country.
Every state is not equal when it comes to recovery resources.
So when the federal government comes in and says, we're going to give you $600 billion, the recovery community, the people who actually know what to do with it, will be lucky to get one tenth of one half of the percentage of that.
And I'm spending a lot of time in Nevada, a lot of time in California, New Hampshire.
I mean, all, I mean, rural, urban, whatever.
I'm all over the place.
And it's the same complaint.
The money is going to treat prevention, early intervention, and what they call treatment, which right now is medication, which is fine.
We need treatment money.
We need naloxone money.
We'll take it all.
But where the special sauce where I found recovery and where my friends who are living and thriving in recovery have found recovery is in the continuum of care.
It's in our community.
It's in my backyard.
It's in, you know, it's in Las Vegas, Nevada.
It's in places where, you know, they have found a solution, but they can't get funding for it.
And the government mandates where this money goes.
And local communities get screwed.
Can you be a little bit more specific about when you say it's in the community?
Is it the fact of the community that makes the recovery possible?
Or is it something they are doing at the community level specifically?
It's both.
So having a sense of community and a peer community to plug into, no matter where you are, is probably the most important thing to do when you're in recovery from addiction.
But each community does different, does something different, right?
So one community may be more focused on 12-step.
One community, another community may be more focused on faith-based.
So you talk about the big pharma, basically.
You talk about the pharmacological industries, which I do know have a lot of culpability here.
Can you be specific about what the problem is at that level?
Well, there's a lot of problems with big pharma.
So just last week, I led the largest protest in front of Purdue Pharma, which I think is America's number one drug cartel at their offices in Stanford, Connecticut.
We had over 500 families show up with their pictures of their kids and their loved ones that they had lost and friends that they had lost.
And it impacted me greatly.
You know, we're in the midst of these state lawsuits that state attorney generals are taking on against big pharma, opioid manufacturers and distributors.
President Trump just directed Attorney General Sessions on the federal lawsuit.
They are culpable.
They created this crisis.
That is my opinion.
And that is actually my personal experience.
They lied to doctors.
They lied to prescribers.
They lied to the American public.
They lied to Congress.
They lied to the FDA.
They presented false research.
They presented false studies.
Three top Purdue executives in the 2000s were criminally convicted for these crimes.
They were fined over $650 million, which is a drop in the bucket to what they should have paid.
And they made over $13 billion that's piled on tops of hundreds of thousands of American corpses.
Big pharma fueled this crisis from day one.
You just need, I mean, you can trace it with a timeline.
I mean, and I can trace it with my personal timeline.
You know, this all happened for me in the early 2000s.
Oxycontin became kind of their signature drug in the late 90s.
I remember going, I mean, if I would have known now what I know, if I would have known then what I know now, we'd be in a whole different spot in terms of where I am in my life.
I would have probably gotten 10 years of my life back.
I was told these drugs were state.
I was told non-addictive.
Purdue Pharma has some, there's still some marketing videos you could go on YouTube and find.
They said that the addictive risk, I think, was less than 4%.
Yeah.
Absolutely insane.
I have to ask you, I'm running out of time, but I want to know about the transformation in your political ideas.
I'm a conservative.
This is a conservative station.
When I hear that you were in the Obama administration and then you went out and saw America, I'd like to know specifically, how did that affect your political view?
I am still a registered Democrat.
I'll tell you, I am fighting right now with the California legislature, which is a Democratic legislature because of their lack of response to the opioid crisis.
I've been working on pieces of legislation there, consumer protections for people who have addiction problems, running up against walls with everything from the governor's office to the Senate to the Assembly in a fully Democratic legislature.
Transformation In Political Views00:04:38
I've worked with the Trump administration.
I meet with the Trump administration on various occasions.
I'm speaking to them all the time.
I meet with Republican legislators, members of Congress.
It hasn't necessarily changed my political views.
I'm still a very socially liberal person, socially conscious person when it comes to my politics.
It has changed my perception, though, on being a little bit more independent.
I have gone from being a liberal Democrat to being a single issue voter.
And my single issue is the opioid crisis.
I've seen great legislation and great progress, more progressive progress coming out from the Republican Party on some of these issues.
And I've seen some great stuff coming from Democrats too.
At the end of this, though, I'll tell you, coming with the 2018 midterm elections coming up, there is an opportunity for one of these parties to really capitalize it.
I think, capitalize on it.
I think the case can be made that President Trump won in part because he spoke to voters who were impacted by the opioid crisis better than Hillary did.
He absolutely did it.
Clear.
He won those states.
He won those counties.
They put him over the top.
There's 23 million people living in long-term recovery in the United States.
There's another 21 million people who are currently suffering.
That's 45 million Americans.
One in three households is impacted somehow, directly impacted.
We are a large constituency when we're organized, a very, very large constituency.
And we happen to be a single voting constituency when the issues are presented to us and we're organized in the right way.
So, I mean, we're doing some phenomenal work around that.
There's the first ever recovery pact that's coming out of Nevada.
It's organized by Republicans and Democrats and Republican funders and Democrat funders.
It has really made me more independent.
I am definitely a much more independent thinker when it comes to this.
I have sat across the desk of some senior Democratic officials, senior Democratic members of Congress, and I feel like banging my head up against the table.
And I have done the same thing at the White House.
It's all equal when it comes to this issue, 100%.
Ryan Hampton, I'd like to talk to you some more, but people are just going to have to read your book, American Fix Inside the Opioid Addiction Crisis and How to End It.
I really appreciate your coming on.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Andrew.
Appreciate it.
All right.
We're running short on time.
And I want to do, instead of going on to our usual Tuesday sexual follies, I want to stick with our crappy culture.
So I just wanted, the reason I wanted to do this, I wanted to bring up this thing about Steve Bannon, who was going to appear at the New Yorker Festival in New York.
He was going to be interviewed by the editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick.
And of course, all the left-wing children went mad.
Judge Appatau said, if Steve Bannon is at the New York Festival, I am out.
I will not take part in an event that normalizes hate, hate, which is disagreeing with Judge Appetow.
Who else did this?
A couple other people complained.
And of course, of course, Remnick and the New Yorker caved.
Always, they always cave.
They have complete absence of courage.
All they had to say is, all right, if you will not, we feel all voices should be heard.
If you won't come, don't come.
It would have been the last time.
They might have had a slightly empty festival this time.
Next time it would have been the packed.
If they don't stop apologizing, if people do not stop apologizing and backing down from this left-wing mob, who are the only hateful people in sight and the only people who want to sign, Steve Bannon isn't trying to silence anybody.
You may not like Steve Bannon's opinions.
You may not like Steve Bannon, but he's not trying to silence anybody.
They are silencing people.
If they don't stop apologizing, it's just going to get worse and worse and worse.
But here is the thing.
Their censorship, their cowardice is an opportunity for us.
It means that the right can take back, start to take back the culture simply by allowing everybody to have a voice, simply by not backing down, simply by not apologizing.
If this is not the lesson of Donald Trump, I don't know what is.
If we're not going to get anything positive out of Donald Trump's attitude that makes everybody crazy, I don't know what we're going to get out of it.
What we should get out of it is we don't apologize.
We stand firm.
We make culture, allowing all the different sides to have their voice.
If we don't let that opportunity slip, it is an amazing moment for us.
The left has become censorious, cowardly, mob-like, and they have just lost touch with what free speech means.
Make Culture, Stand Firm00:00:44
We should remember we should take back the culture and do it now.
All right, I got to say goodbye.
Mailbag tomorrow.
Be there.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
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