Donald Trump’s midterm "tremendous victory" defied Democratic expectations, with suburban women swayed by media narratives and GOP control of the Senate intact—Kavanaugh-supporting senators kept their seats while opponents lost. His press conference clash with Jim Acosta symbolized a broader pushback against demonization, yet potential investigations loom. Beyond politics, the host dissects joy as active engagement with life’s realities, not fleeting happiness, and dismisses automation fears as cyclical Luddite panic. Satire like "leftist tears tumbler" exposes hypocrisy (e.g., Beto O’Rourke’s millionaire roots), while dating advice pivots to emotional connection over uncertainty. The episode blends cultural wins with pragmatic life lessons, ending by celebrating resistance to media caricatures of rural America and promoting his book Another Kingdom. [Automatically generated summary]
In the aftermath of yesterday's vote, some interesting exit poll interviews are casting fresh light on the reasoning behind Democrat voters' choices.
For instance, many blue congressional strongholds saw suburban women turn out and force for Democrats, inspired by dislike of Donald Trump.
One suburban female told reporters, quote, I know the economy is doing well, which has helped my family tremendously, but as a woman, I'm easily manipulated through my emotions until I'm virtually incapable of reason.
And so I voted against my best interests because Donald Trump has a big, scary voice and authoritative men on TV told me he was bad.
I'm simply not going to stand by and let things get better for me and my family as long as I can be coaxed into hysteria over Trump's manners and insensitive remarks.
In the old days, a woman like myself would have let her husband dictator vote and the country would have remained prosperous and free, but I am now fully empowered to destroy everything good in my life in the name of meaningless side issues that affect me emotionally, unquote.
In California, Democrats continue to dominate every aspect of political life.
One voter in San Francisco explained his motive saying, quote, I'm homeless and mentally ill, and it's very important to me to be able to crap on the sidewalk.
So I told the Venusians who are sending me radio messages through the fillings in my teeth that I wanted to vote for Democrats, and they teleported me to the polls where I cast a vote for Gavin Newsom, and so did I, unquote.
Finally, in New York, one anti-Trump voter gave an exit interview saying, quote, we must stop racism and destroy white people.
We must stop anti-Semitism and boycott Israel.
And we must stop hateful rhetoric spewed by disgusting Nazi Republicans.
Now, excuse me, I'm late for work at CNN.
Trigger warning.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing hunky-dunky.
Shipshape, dipsy-topsy, no one does it-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, I had to write that opening late this morning and didn't have time to rehearse it enough.
Okay, well, I hope you enjoyed the show last night.
We're up all night.
If I pass out or doze off during the middle of this show, you'll understand.
But we do have the mailbag coming up.
Listen, all day long, you are going to be hearing about this district and that district and these numbers and that numbers and the ramifications of Trump losing the House and winning in the Senate.
I want to tell you, and you may not hear this anywhere else, through all that, through all that fog, Trump won a tremendous victory that has nothing to do with politics.
Trump won a cultural victory, which is what, exactly what he was sent to Washington to do.
It is why the people sent him there is because they've had no voice.
They've been insulted by Hollywood, by the news media, by the Academy, all this time.
Donald Trump stood up and fought back, and he fought, boy, he fought back.
He just ripped them.
He ripped them to pieces, and they brought out the big guns, right?
They told you you were evil.
They told you he was evil.
They told you anyone who came in contact with him is evil.
If you voted for him, you had no conscience.
Racist, All this stuff you've been telling you, they've been telling you for years.
They just amped it up.
News media, Hollywood, every comedian, every single one of them, they demonized him.
They demonized you.
And yesterday, the voters turned out and it was kind of a typical midterm election.
That is a tremendous victory.
They were expecting a blue wave.
It didn't turn up.
They won 34 seats in the House, which is like half of what they lost.
The Republicans lost 34 seats in the House, which is half of what Obama lost during his midterm election.
Three of those seats, by the way, were probably a gift from the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court that just by force redistricted Pennsylvania and took away the right of the reigning Republicans to redistrict it.
They said, oh, it's too political, as if that hasn't been going on since the country began.
So three of those are very questionable wins, but they did win them.
And we Republicans, the Republicans, won seats in the Senate.
That's amazing.
I mean, you have to stop for a minute.
Before you get to the political ramifications, you have to understand what that means.
You know, I mean, first, let's just look at what they were expecting, right?
They unleashed.
You know they did.
They just came out with one thing after another.
Bigot, bigot, bigot, racist, racist, racist.
You stink, you lie, you evil.
The word lie, which you're really not supposed to even use in journalism, the word lie, immediately they started using it.
If he talked about crowd sizes, never mind what Obama did on healthcare.
Never mind what he did with the terrorist Bill Ayers.
If you talked, you said your crowd size was too large, you're a liar.
You're a liar, and the people who voted for you liars, and the people who voted for you were racists, and you're a racist.
Everything, everything they did, and they thought they had this.
They thought that the effect, because they're living in a bubble, they thought the effect was going to be great.
Somebody, I don't know who to credit on this, but somebody put together this blue wave montage of predictions before and the results afterwards.
Listen to this because this is the victory.
Democrats are banking on a blue wave on the.
Democrats, hoping to ride a blue wave tonight.
And I think we're going to see a real blue wave.
Yeah, I feel very good.
There's an enormous tsunami-like blue wave coming.
There was a huge blue wave.
Can the president save his party and knock down that blue wave?
There was some hope that the Democrats would have a wave election.
It's not going to be a wave election.
Where is the blue wave tonight?
This is not a blue wave.
I don't think we're seeing some massive blue wave.
Democrats did hope for a big blue wave.
That is not happening.
And these statewide races, no signature win for Democrats.
Democrats are not winning in the way they were hoping to win early in the 90s.
A red wave on the Senate side at least.
So the heart of this, the heart of this victory, and it is a tremendous cultural victory.
You know, listen, politics goes back and forth.
Power goes back and forth.
But what these guys have been doing to Republicans and to you and to the normal people in the middle of the country, to anybody who didn't buy into their leftist agenda, has been going on unchecked, unchecked.
It has been going on for decades.
There has been no one, no one to stand up against it.
Trump has stood up against it.
He was sent to do that.
He was sent to do that very thing.
That was why, that was why when they heard his voice, for all of us on the right, including me who didn't see it, who didn't understand, didn't see why they were acting out of anger, they were acting out of anger because of the way they had been treated and they answered that.
And this wave, you want to talk about where the wave was, the blue wave of garbage that has been dumped on the American people since Donald Trump got into office and for 20, 30 years before that.
And he answered it and he He walked away.
He walked away without a scratch because this is a normal, normal midterm result.
That's an amazing thing.
It is an amazing thing.
And at the heart of it is Brett Kavanaugh.
If you're a regular listener to this show, you knew when Brett Kavanaugh was installed in the Supreme Court, I was in seventh heaven.
That's why.
It wasn't because a great conservative justice had been elevated, though I hope that turns out to be the case.
It was not because of that.
It was because they threw everything at him.
They unleashed hell on the guy, and they told you again and again, people in suits and ties, people who should be adults, people who should know better, sat on TV and looked at you and said, if you don't believe women, these lying, many of them lying women, if you don't believe women, you stink.
You hate women.
If you don't believe these women, you are not a good person.
You are as good as a sexual offender.
You're letting this rapist get to the court.
I mean, I've been joking about the fact that he's going to be chasing Ruth Bader Ginsburg around the bench.
He knows, help, help.
There's a rapist in the Supreme Court.
Obviously, obviously, it was all a lie.
It was all a put-up job, but they threw everything.
You have to admit it.
You go back and remember.
Go back and remember the New York Times.
I was raped.
Therefore, I believe this person.
CNN, certainly, NBC, ABC, they just kept throwing this stuff at you.
Because of the teamwork of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, they stood up to that.
And not only did they win, not only did they install these guys in the Supreme Court, but they won with the people.
They won with the electorate.
Every single Republican senator who voted against Kavanaugh from a red state lost.
Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota, Claire McCaskill, Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, they voted against Trump's Supreme Court pick and all three of them lost.
And the one guy who didn't buy in Joe Manchin in West Virginia, he's the only guy who survived.
He's the only guy who survived.
And, you know, Trump's campaigning, he went out and campaigned, and that helped his people.
And Obama went out and campaigned.
He campaigned in Indiana and in Florida and the Senate flipped.
Ron DeSandis won the governorship in Florida against Andrew Gillum, Rick Scott.
They say they're going to recount that, but it looks like a clear victory.
Rick Scott won the Senate seat over Bill Nelson in Indiana.
Mike Braun over Joe Donnelly.
These are places where Obama showed up.
The saint showed up.
The savior of America showed up.
You know, all he would say was, me, Oh, I'm responsible for this economy that Trump started.
In Georgia, Brian Kemp over Stacey Abrams for governor.
Obama did nothing.
He accomplished nothing.
I mean, it's hard for me to convey, to convey the victory over the forces of narrative, the forces of culture that Trump has won.
It is an amazing, amazing thing.
And was there a price?
Yes, there's a price, and I'm going to talk about that.
There's a price for everything.
Everything comes with a price.
No victory is without a price.
But you have to pause for just a second and say, look, look at this.
You know, sure, there are going to be ramifications of losing the House.
There are going to be all kinds of things that happen.
But they don't even get it.
They don't even get it.
Trump came out today in his morning interview, the morning press conference, and he gave a very bipartisan, very measured speech.
And what he said was, which was really smart, he said, you know, if we'd only won a couple of, if we'd kept the House but only had a couple of votes in the House, it wouldn't have been so good for us because those people could then have twisted our arms and tried to get anything.
He said they were going to do that.
They would have grandstanded.
Jim Acosta's Challenge00:13:37
Now, let the Democrats come.
We'll adjust their desires on infrastructure and things like that.
And we will get some bipartisan action or they're going to investigate and we'll investigate them right back.
Okay, that's a very bipartisan statement, a challenge, a big challenge to the Democrats.
We'll talk about that in a second, what the Democrats are going to do next.
But, you know, so this is what he said.
And he started taking questions and Jim Acosta, Jim, look at me, I'm Jim Acosta, started in on him.
It was a beautiful thing to behold because these are the losers.
These guys are the losers.
They deserve to be losers.
They don't do their job well.
We hate them because they lie.
We hate them because they lied for eight years.
And it was just like watching a guy swap a fly.
And if you can't see this, if you're just listening, at one point, the woman whose assignment it is to take the mic away from Jim Acosta went to take the mic away because President Trump said he was finished answering questions from him.
And Acosta basically manhandled her.
I mean, he just wouldn't let her get the mic.
If a right-winger, a conservative had done that, it would be the news from now for forever.
It would have been the front page picture in the New York Times, a former newspaper.
But when Jim Acosta does it, they're going to ignore it, but we're not ignoring it.
The people aren't ignoring it.
Neither is Donald Trump.
And now, these guys are nobody.
Watch.
This is a long clip, but watch this exchange.
It is well worth it.
Here we go.
Well, if you don't mind, Mr. President, that this caravan was an invasion.
As you know, I consider it to be an invasion.
As you know, Mr. President, the caravan was not an invasion.
It's a group of migrants moving up from Central America towards the border with the U.S. Thank you for telling me.
And why did you characterize it as such?
Because I consider it an invasion.
You and I have a difference of opinion.
But do you think that you demonized immigrants in this election to try to get it?
I want them to come into the country, but they have to come in legally.
You know, they have to come in, Jim, through a process.
I want it to be a process.
And I want people to come in, and we need the people.
You know why we need the people, Daji?
Because we have hundreds of companies moving in.
We need the people.
But your campaign had an ad showing migrants climbing over walls and such.
They weren't actors.
They're not going to be doing that.
They weren't actors.
Well, no, it's true.
Do you think they were actors?
They weren't actors.
They didn't come from Hollywood.
These were people.
This was an actual, you know, it happened a few days ago.
They're hundreds of miles away, though.
They're hundreds and hundreds of miles away.
That's not an invasion.
Honestly, I think you should let me run the country.
You run CNN.
And if you did it well, you're rating.
Let me ask you.
If I may ask one other question.
Mr. President, if I may ask one other question, are you worried?
That's enough.
That's enough.
I was going to ask one of the other folks that's enough.
Pardon me, ma'am.
Ms. President, that's enough.
Ms. President, one of the things I may ask on the Russia investigation, are you concerned that you may have anything within a certain investigation because it's a hoax.
That's enough.
Put down the mic.
Mr. President, are you worried about indictments coming down in this investigation?
Mr. President, I'll tell you what, CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them.
You are a rude, terrible person.
You shouldn't be working for CNN.
He looked like he was going to come and take the mic himself when he wrestled the woman.
And the key question in there, the key moment, which sums up this entire thing, it sums up the entire victory that Trump won last night was when Acosta said to him, why did you characterize the caravan as an invasion when I, Jim, look at me, I'm Jim, Acosta, say it wasn't.
Why?
How did you dare?
You're just the president of the United States.
We're the press.
How did you dare to characterize it in a way that we don't approve of and continue to do that when we told you you were racist?
We told you you were deplorable.
We told you you were hateful.
and Trump smashed him like a spider.
It is an amazing victory that after all this demonization, all they got, all they got, was a typical normal midterm election.
That really tells you something.
If Republicans can seize hold of this, and you know what, not just Republicans in Washington, if the people here in Hollywood, if the people here in Hollywood who whisper to me and come up to me and say, you know, I kind of like what you do, I don't want to raise my voice.
If all those frightened people would just look at how it's done, if all the people who don't make the movie because they're afraid the critics at the New York Times are going to slam it, if all the people who don't say what they mean, you know, in classrooms around the country, who write the papers, these students tell me, yeah, I say what the professor wants me to say so I can get the grade.
If all of them would learn from Donald Trump that you can do this and win, the country is largely on your side on this issue.
Look, we disagree about things.
That's fine.
It's fine to be a little bit on the liberal side.
Fine to be on the conservative side.
That's not the point.
The point is they want us to shut up if, if we won't do them a favor and just dry up and die.
They want us to shut up.
We sent Trump to say, no, here is how we feel.
We're going to talk about it.
We won't do it.
If only, if only the people in Washington and in Hollywood and in the academy will take this tip, this could be a turning point in the culture.
It really could.
It's been like this since the 60s.
Since the 60s, these guys have been hammering everybody they don't like as racist, as sexist, all the various ists and phobias and this whole thing.
Donald Trump has turned this around and shown that he walks away, he can walk away without a scratch.
Now, let's talk a little bit about the price and the ramifications of what are going to happen.
I talk about Trump's rudeness a lot, which makes it hard when he goes after Acosta for being rude.
It makes it a little hard because he's so rude.
And people attack me.
I see people saying, why can't you be more like Sean Hannity?
Even Knowles is probably more kind to him.
Why do you have to get the vapors and clutch your pearls?
Well, it's because when you, you know, listen, I get it, but it's kind of like the man who shot Liberty Valence.
If you've ever seen the film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, John Wayne is the tough guy with the gun who cleans up the West, but he knows there comes a time when Jimmy Stewart, the lawman, has to civilize the world.
At some point, we're going to have to go back to talking to each other.
At some point, we're going to have to make this the bipartisan country it was.
By bipartisan, I don't mean that we agree.
I simply mean that we can disagree without killing each other.
And so there's a price that we're going to pay.
There's going to a price that we pay for having a guy this rude.
Listen, I think it had to be done.
I think the thing is, it's just like China.
When people say, oh, he shouldn't put tariffs on China.
The thing is, we're already in a trade war with China.
Trump is just fighting back.
And the thing is, we were already in a war of words, of incivility with the press and with Hollywood.
And Trump is just fighting back.
I understand that.
But it doesn't, you know, when you say that women are alienated by him and women in their districts are turning blue districts even bluer, this is part of it.
You know, you know this.
I mean, any guy who is married to any girl has had his wife say to him at some point, it's not what you're saying.
It's the way you say it, right?
Every guy that, when I said that, was rolling his eyes.
Yes, I've heard that.
I know that.
And you're saying, what difference does it make the way I say it?
Listen to what I'm saying.
Women are affected by this.
We lose women because he is not civil.
And so what is the result?
What is the result of this?
What is going to happen?
First, Nancy Pelosi is out there making bipartisan sounds.
Let's hear a little of Nancy Pelosi celebrating her victory.
And by the way, Trump has been really kind to her, saying she deserves some respect.
She's fought very hard for this victory.
If they try to take her leader, he wants her in the leadership, clearly.
Listen to what she said.
A Democratic Congress will work for solutions that bring us together because we have all had enough of division.
The American people want peace.
They want results.
They want us to work for positive results for their lives.
Our founders believed in a principle that they knew must guide our nation.
First in our declaration, they promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But they gave us guidance, i ple basinum, from any one.
The founders could never have imagined how vast our country would become, how many we would be, how different we would be from each other.
But they knew we had to be one.
So that's the noise that Nancy Pelosi is making.
The New York Times as well is making this.
Don't go for impeachment yet.
Don't go for impeachment yet.
Don't start.
And what Trump said to them is, look, you investigate me.
I've got the Senate.
We've got committees too.
We will investigate you.
So that's the challenge he threw down to Nancy Pelosi.
She's basically saying, you know, if we do this, if we jam up the government, you know, we're going to pay a price at the polls.
She's trying to be civilized.
And there are things they can work at.
Infrastructure.
Infrastructure is going to be interesting because the question is not whether we need infrastructure.
We clearly do.
The question is how you pay for it.
And Trump has an idea, or at least he started out with an idea about incentivizing private companies to do infrastructure.
That, of course, is the best way to go forward.
You don't want just, when government just pours money into this thing, we had that from Obama, those shovel-ready jobs.
The money just disappears.
It just goes away.
It doesn't do what it's supposed to do.
So if they follow Trump's ideas, I think they could really do something in infrastructure.
I'm a little bit more worried when they talk about bringing down the price of prescription drugs.
The way you bring down the price of prescription drugs is not by price controls, because that is just going to mean less R ⁇ D, fewer drugs down the line.
And people won't know that.
You will not know that when you get to be old and someone tells you has Alzheimer's, there could have been a pill there to help you, but that pill won't be there.
So you've got to be careful of the way you control, you shouldn't control prices.
You got to be careful of the way you open that up to more competition to do it.
But are they going to go this way?
I believe they're not.
I know a lot of you probably believe they're not.
I think you're right.
Here's why.
Let's listen to Adam Schiff, the Joseph McCarthy of the present day, my congressman, Adam Schiff, and the reporter on MSNBC asking him, who are you going to investigate?
Are you going to investigate DJ Jr.?
Who's he going to start with?
And his response.
Greg Miller, who covers National Security for the Washington Post, tweeted tonight that you, as the new chairman of the House Intel Committee, will bring back Trump Jr.
You'll bring back perhaps Roger Stone or Paul Manafer, other witnesses.
Do you have a list?
Do you know what you're going to do as the chairman?
And are you able to tell us who you want to bring back?
You know, I'm not able to tell you that tonight.
We're certainly going to look at the work that we were able to do.
We're going to look at the work that the GOP obstructed on our committee.
And it was really worse than abdicating the responsibility of the committee.
The majority went further to be complicit in the president's attacks on the independence of the Justice Department, on the men and women of the FBI, on our intelligence community.
So we also need to restore the relationship between our committee and the intelligence community and law enforcement.
But look, at the time when we formally take control of the House, that won't be until January.
And we'll have to see what Bob Mueller has been able to do and what Bob Mueller has been able to say, either via indictment or via report.
And that will also guide what we intend to do in our committee.
Okay, so the question is, and Trump was asked at the press conference, can you do both?
Can you both have investigations, but also work together?
And Trump said, no, no.
Once you start investigating me, I'm going to start investigating you, and that's what we're going to do.
So who's going to win?
Well, I think it's pretty obvious.
I think it's pretty obvious that it's going to be Adam Schiff who wins and not Nancy Pelosi.
It's going to be the investigation impeachment gang.
Why?
I will show you a clip that will explain why.
Here is billionaire Tom Steyer, who is one of the big supporters of the Democrat Party and represents the donor class and the base that are egging them on.
He's sending the money.
He's bringing the dough.
And this is what he says.
This is a president who is breaking all of the norms, all of the laws on a daily basis.
When you watch what he's done at the end of this campaign, when you see the ad he ran, when you see him saying to law enforcement officials, you should go to the polls to prevent completely fictitious voter fraud, but actually to intimidate voters.
This is someone who's breaking his oath to the American people, his oath to the Constitution, and those are high crimes and misdemeanors, and it is urgent to get him out.
So listen, there are going to be people who tell you that if they investigate and if they try to impeach him, it's going to be good for Trump in 2020.
There are going to be people who tell you that if there's bipartisanship, that's going to be good or it's going to be bad.
People are going to tell you, oh, the numbers are telling me what's going to happen in 2020.
I don't report on the future here because I don't know what the future is because it's the future.
It hasn't happened yet.
There are going to be events.
Listen, this is the Trump era.
All kinds of things are going to happen.
You know, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg could keel over.
You know, there could be shooting.
We don't know what is going to happen and all of that is going to have an effect.
I do not know the future.
Why Joy Matters00:12:22
I'm telling you that right now, we on the right have scored a major, major cultural victory.
We have beaten back this blue wave and the Kavanaugh, our reaction to Kavanaugh has been verified and legitimized by the American voter.
This is an amazing thing.
This is an amazing thing.
It hasn't happened in a long time, not since Reagan.
It really hasn't happened since Ronald Reagan, that an American president has turned back this tide of anger.
And that tide has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.
You know what?
Trump built his wall.
He built a wall that held back this tide yesterday.
It's an amazing victory.
He is the man who shot Liberty Valence.
And Liberty Valence is our corrupt press.
It's Hollywood and the Academy.
We should be celebrating.
All right, we got the mailbag coming up.
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All right.
Mailbag.
I take it.
Somebody forgot to bring in the Lindsay tape, huh?
Oh, there she is.
Listen, that's not faked either.
This is natural excitement they have at the mailbag because they know they just think, this is great.
All our audience is about to have all their problems solved.
All right.
From Philip, dear Lord King Clavin, High Master of the Universe.
That is, in fact, my proper title.
I'm 18 and have just recently gotten into politics, and I'm struggling with feelings of hatred for Democrats due mainly to their constant lies and misrepresentation of my religious and political views.
As a Christian, I believe that hating someone is wrong, and I would really appreciate your advice on how to deal with this matter.
Thank you for your time.
You know, you're right.
You don't want to hate the opposition if only because it's going to make your life less good.
That's the thing.
To walk around in politics makes people angry.
People who pay too much attention to politics don't have the happy lives they should have, the joyful lives they should have.
Listen, it's all about ideas.
It is all about ideas.
And the people who demon, and we just saw this, this is what I've been talking about.
The people who demonize you, the people who attack you, are a very, very small number of people.
They are 8%.
8% of the American populace are these progressives who hate God, who hate you, who hate your patriotism.
That's not the typical voter.
The typical voter just wants to do right for himself and for his family and for the country.
So he may be wrong.
He may be misguided.
You don't know why he's voting Democrat.
You don't hate them.
That's ridiculous.
Focus on the ideas.
Don't focus on the people.
Politics is about ideas.
It really is.
And when people are dishonest, it's aggravating.
But most people on the left, most people on the left are trying to do right.
Most people on the left, there are plenty of people on the left who do worship God.
They disagree.
But if you sat down and talked to them face to face, you would find, oh, yeah, I get this.
We actually agree on more than we disagree about.
This is why I hammer the press so badly.
If the press would let us speak to one another, if they wouldn't get between us and demonize us, then we would find out that we have a lot more in common.
I really believe, and this recent poll kind of bore me out on this, almost amazingly.
I was just kind of estimating it, but it bore me out on this: that 70% of the American people agree on 70% of the issues in front of us.
And good things have come from the left as well.
They really have.
Good things have come from the left.
And you should remember that.
Sometimes we get in these battles where they say black, so we instantaneously say white, vice versa.
And we find that, no, somewhere in between was the right answer.
Hatred destroys the soul.
Don't do it.
All right.
From Jeff, from Jeffrey, dear K-L-V-N, you just left out.
That's pretty funny.
Left out the vowels of master of the multiverse.
In the past six months, I have become friends with an attractive young lady, and I have reason to believe she's interested in me, a single man interested in marriage.
So far, so good.
However, I've not asked her out because while I'm physically attracted to her, I've not felt like I have connected with her on an emotional or intellectual level.
I do not want to waste her time or mine, but should I take her out a few times or is it better not to start down that road?
Of course, this is one of the easiest questions I ever got.
Of course, you should take her out.
How can you know whether you are attracted to her on an emotional or intellectual level until you get to know her better, until you really talk to her and see what's what?
You know, you're physically attracted to her.
That's usually a good sign.
That usually means she has something, something is coming off her.
It may just be that she's a cutie pie, but it also may be that something, some atmosphere of her soul is coming off her and it's drawing you to her.
You got to get to know her.
Don't drag it out.
Don't lead her on, but give her a chance to get, you know, get to know her and find out what's going on.
Why would you not?
I don't understand why you would not.
It just seems the right.
That is why people go out together to find out whether they like each other.
From Brennan.
Pardon me.
Question: Supreme Leader and Lord of the Multiverse Clavin.
May there never be any E's in your title.
Oh, I get it.
So Supreme Leader as all the E's have been removed.
I have been a Christian all my life and have struggled with depression on and off since my teen years.
Today I have a beautiful wife and a two-year-old boy and a little girl on the way.
When I watch your show and see you speak, what strikes me the most is the joy that I can see in you.
I desperately want my children to see that joy in me as they grow up.
How are you able to be so joyful seemingly regardless of the circumstances?
That's a really good question and a really smart reaction because you do want children.
You know, it doesn't, I used to say this to my wife.
It doesn't help if you do the right thing.
It doesn't help if you teach them the right thing.
You have to show them that it is a joy. to do the right thing, that it will enhance your life.
And that is what children learn and that is what they follow without becoming grim.
First of all, you're right.
I am a joyful person.
That is absolutely true.
I am a joyful person.
That does not mean I'm happy, okay?
I always have to make this distinction.
We have to talk about what joyful is, right?
Because when sad things happen, I'm sad.
When happy things happen, I'm happy.
I have a range of emotions.
There's a wonderful Zen story about the great Zen master.
And what was great about him, when he was murdered, they said you could hear him screaming three counties away.
In other words, he reacted to life as life came to him and was completely in life and completely present in life.
And that was where his Zen mastery came from.
So I always compare joy to living life as if you were watching a movie.
And that's not a perfect metaphor.
You're not watching your life.
You're living your life.
But when you watch a movie, sometimes the scene is sad.
Sometimes it's exciting.
Sometimes it's dangerous.
Sometimes it's happy.
But if it's a great movie, you're always loving the movie.
That is what joy looks like.
That's what joy looks like.
And listen, I'm not setting myself up as like the perfect example.
I'm sure I could be hit with enough grief, enough illness to sap the joy out of my life.
But having been through some grief and having been through some illness and having been through ups and downs like most people, if you live long enough, all those things will happen to you.
I can tell you that my joy has survived those things.
What is the source of joy?
All right.
Joy, I believe that joy is the natural state of man and the rational state of man.
And that means you have to question yourself, why am I not feeling joy?
If you are not feeling joy, it is, I believe, because you're not seeing reality clearly.
You're not seeing it reality realistically.
Let me see if I can explain this.
Life is good.
Life is a good thing.
You love life.
We know this because you're alive, right?
When Hamlet said to be or not to be, that is the question.
That is the question.
You have answered that question by living.
It must be that you love life or you wouldn't be here, that you think that life is good.
So you must see it clearly in order to experience that love.
All joy comes from love.
I'll get back to that in a minute, but all joy comes from love.
You have to experience the joy of life.
In order to see that, you have to see life clearly.
What is getting in your way of seeing it clearly?
Well, the first place to look is within yourself.
What is it about your past?
What is it about your upbringing?
What is it about your natural state?
You know, maybe just the way you were born that keeps you from seeing clearly.
Is there something inside you that is where you're locked in something from yesterday, where you're angry at your father or your mother, or they twisted you in some way that's no good, or you had experiences that are lingering, traumas that are lingering?
Deal with those.
Deal with those.
If it takes therapy, use therapy.
If it doesn't, just think it through, think it through, get rid of that.
And then start to look at other people and life in a realistic way.
What do we say?
What are the typical mistakes we make about life?
One, that we have some control over the future.
Two, that we are good people.
That is one of the big things.
Three, that other people are somehow worse than us or they should be good and they're not.
One of the wonderful things about actually coming to God and talking to God honestly is you find out you're not a good person.
You're not the person you were meant to be.
There was a person that you were meant to be who is better than the person you are now.
You may never get to be that person, but you can turn by turning to God, you will turn in the direction of that person, and that will make you more joyful all the time.
Life is full of suffering, and life ends, right?
It ends.
So if today, if today things are going well and you're healthy and you have all the things that you need, you have enough to eat, you have a roof over your head, your children are fine, it's a good day.
It's a good day, right?
You don't have control over the future.
Now, again, all of joy.
All of your joy, check it out.
I mean, check it yourself.
What makes you joyful?
When do you feel joyful?
You feel joyful when you love stuff, right?
One of the funny experiences of writing my memoir is all the time when we were raising children and having children, my wife and I would say to each other, more love, more life.
You know, when you have more love, you have more life.
And it would be a saying.
We would just bat it back and forth when a new baby, when the new baby was born, said, ah, more love, more life.
When my wife read my memoir, she was my first editor, and she read the memoir.
She said, I don't remember saying that.
She didn't remember at all.
We used to say it all the time.
But it is true.
The more love, the more life, the more joy.
When Jesus says to you, love God, love your neighbor, that's not a moral instruction.
That is not do this so you will be a good boy and I will let you into heaven.
That is, it's a secret of life.
He's telling you the secret of life.
Love God, love your neighbor.
You get more joy from the more the thing you love is worthwhile, the more joy you get.
So when you love God, you get a lot of joy.
When you love people, you get enormous joy.
When you love football, you get a little bit of joy, right?
It's not really that worthwhile.
You know, I love doing puzzles.
That gives me a certain amount of contentment and joy.
I love my work.
That gives me a lot of joy.
The more things you love and the more you notice that love, the more you notice what you love and the more you follow the love in your life, you will follow your way to joy.
So I mean, those are the answers.
Look at yourself.
Take a good look at yourself.
Get a realistic picture of yourself.
What is getting in the way of your realistic view of life?
What is getting in the way of your joy?
Look at life and develop a tragic sense of life because when you develop a tragic sense of life, you realize how good things are.
Developing a Tragic Sense of Life00:05:31
I always, you know, Ben said last night, he's a natural pessimist, and I always tease him that he is always sorry that it's not 1958, and I'm always glad it's not 1938.
I think my approach to life is more realistic because 1938 does come along, and if you ain't in it, you should be happy.
You know, optimism and joy are the only approaches to life that make sense if you are healthy and if things are going well, or even if you're just healthy, you know, because even in the times of trouble, you will find there are things that you love and those things will give you joy.
And always, always, if you are here, you love life.
So you should be full of joy.
I hope that's helpful.
I know it's a hard thing to do.
It's a lot to do.
It takes practice.
It takes insight.
It takes life.
You have to need time to figure it out, but it can be done.
And I swear, I tell you, if there is a tool for getting there, if I could give you a wrench, it would be Jesus Christ.
That would be it.
Because once you start to listen to Jesus, not your church, Jesus is not your preacher.
Jesus is not the people telling you who Jesus is.
Once you go into the book and listen to him, once you go into prayer and listen to him, he'll take you there.
He really will.
All right.
Question to Darth Clavin.
This is from Andrew, to Darth Clavin, Dark Lord of Satire.
Is the media's portrayal of rural America and the working class as backward, ignorant, or buffoonish a cause for the division in the U.S. and the left's obsession with ending the Electoral College?
I'm also looking forward to the book release of Another Kingdom.
Is there any chance to get a signed copy?
Yeah, we do actually have a system.
If you mail books here with a stamped returned envelope, I will sign them and send them back.
And here is just a little tip.
If you would like to get the book of Another Kingdom, which is the first season and the first book of Another Kingdom, and there's some extra stuff in the book that wasn't in the podcast, so you'll actually learn some stuff.
Go to the website, anotherkingdom.editorsexclusives.com, anotherkingdom.editorsexclusives.com and pre-order the book now.
And the reason I say that is because they give you all kinds of gifts, including a prequel that I wrote and a guide to the book that I wrote.
They will give you those things for free.
And they have games and videos and all kinds of things that they will give you for free if you pre-order it.
It doesn't come out until March, but if you pre-ordered anotherkingdom.com, editors exclusives.
I'm sorry, anotherkingdom.editorsexclusives.com.
Go on there if that's what you want to get.
And yeah, if you send it to me here, I will sign it and send it back.
And if you write to me through my website, I'll tell you how to do that.
Yes.
And the answer to your question is yes.
The media's portrayal of rural America is stupid, ignorant, buffoonish, is why we have the divisions.
It is the media that causes divisions.
If we had some comedians or if we had comedians who joked about all of us instead of just one side of us, if we had one comedian who joked about one side and one comedian who joked about the other, if we had a news media that looked at things from both sides and gave fair and balanced reporting to both sides, we would not be at each other's throats.
We would understand that everybody has a point of view and we can compromise and we can find a way forward.
Okay.
From Joshua, with a lot of the advancements in technology, it seems that in the not-too-distant future, it would be cheaper to pay people not to work and have machines do their job.
The obvious welfare problems aside, that would cause an even more profound loss of meaning for individuals and society.
So what do you suggest we do?
I think this is a false prediction.
I think this is what the Luddites thought would happen with the Industrial Revolution.
Oh, the machines will take all our jobs.
In fact, the machines over time created jobs.
We are going through a huge technical shift.
We're going into a robotic shift.
All these things are going to cause displacement.
They're going to cause different ways of life.
Just as the Industrial Revolution is still working, we're still working out the changes in our lives from the Industrial Revolution.
A lot of these changes are going to be good.
I think they will give more meaning.
They will change the nature of work.
Work is not going to go away.
I do not believe this.
I think this is one of those stupid things that intellectuals say because they don't care about your work.
They don't care about the work of people who aren't intellectuals.
They think, oh, you don't need work for meaning.
You do need work for meaning.
You need to be doing things.
It's going to take new training, new ways of looking at things, but there will be work to do.
Machines take end some kinds of work, but they also create other kinds of work.
There will be work to do.
I just do not believe this is the danger of the future.
I believe the danger is adapting to the new work that's going to be there.
From Peter, Mr. Clavin, I have heard some of your advice on writing.
You appear to advocate a character-driven story.
I see the merit of that, but I have a plot that I really like.
I'm struggling to work backwards from plot to character.
Do you have any advice for this situation?
Or am I swimming upstream?
Love the show, new subscriber.
You're not swimming upstream at all.
Most stories come to you first.
You know, you don't really get an idea for a character.
That's happened to me a couple of times, but usually I get an idea for a premise.
What if a guy walks into his nursery and his child has vanished?
That's what you get.
You get a premise.
My point, my point, is that a story becomes richer, deeper, more important, and more interesting even to the writer, but certainly to the reader, if the right character is in that story.
It makes a difference whether the person who goes to get rid of the ring is a little hobbit, right, or what's his name, Frodo.
It makes a difference whether it's Frodo or Superman, right?
Frodo is the right man for that job because it creates danger.
It makes you see how a little person can be a big person.
What Character Brings It Up?00:02:35
It requires faith.
If Superman does it, the story is over in a minute, right?
It makes a difference what character is in your story.
So once you get your story, if you think you have a really good story, start to think about who is this story about?
Who are the people, not just one person, who are the people who are going to be in the story and how it's going to affect them?
That is how great stories are made, I believe.
That is what makes a story great.
All right.
I'm running out of time, aren't I?
Let me do one more.
From Brian, a longtime listener, first-time writer, my wife and I are planning to move to the west coast of Canada closer to my family in order to settle down and have children of our own.
We currently live in a city a few hours away from my wife's parents, but we found my family to be more supportive and helpful.
My wife's parents haven't visited us, whereas mine have multiple times.
And we both agree, my wife and I, that my parents will always be there if something bad happens.
This is a mutual decision.
My wife wants to do it as much as I do, but she does not know how to talk about this to her parents or to broach the subject.
The last time she talked about this as a possibility, her mother said that she would be very angry if we moved away.
I'm usually good at talking about tough subjects, but we both are not sure whether it should be me who brings this up.
Okay.
It should be her who brings it up, but you can be there, right?
And here's what you do.
You might want to do this in a public place so they don't get angry and start screaming.
You sit down with them, look them straight in the eye, and lie, okay?
This is what you say to them.
You say, for X and X reasons that have nothing to do with you, sadly, we have to move to such and such a place.
Maybe you have jobs there.
Maybe you feel you can get jobs there.
Maybe it's because of the weather.
Whatever it is, it's not because you're leaving them to go with your family.
They don't need to hear that.
They don't need to know it.
It's none of their business anyway.
This is your life.
You have to do what's best for you, right?
This is your life and your children's lives that are to be, right?
You have to do what's best for them, what's best for you.
That's your only, your top priority.
So you sit down with them.
I would do it together, but if she's the important one, she's the one who should say it.
You know, you sit down and you say, we have good and certain reasons why we have to do this.
We're sorry, but we'll have Skype.
We'll talk to you all the time.
If they never talk to you anyway, they're not going to know you're gone.
And explain it to them that way.
If they yell and scream, you have to stand up for your wife.
That's the reason I think you should be there.
You don't stand up for your wife by saying, you know, shut up, stop saying it.
You just say, look, we're sorry you take it this way.
We're sorry you're angry.
We're sorry to have to leave you, but this is why we're doing it and we're going to do it.
And you have to do it.
It's obvious from your description that it's something that has to be done.
All right, I'm out of time.
Surviving and Reaching People00:03:22
I have a couple more great questions.
We'll try and move them into next week.
But now it's time for Tickety Boo News.
That, by the way, is actually Rob playing the trumpet.
Not everybody knows that.
So when I was at UCLA the other day, and Knowles and I, by the way, are going to be at Marymount Loyola tonight.
So if you want to come to Marymount Loyola, Knowles and I will both be there.
We will actually be doing a soft shoe root.
No, we won't.
We'll be answering questions and talking about the election.
Somebody asked me about the leftist tears tumbler.
And he said, you know, if you want to reach out to people, and by the way, we've actually talked about this behind the scenes.
If you want to reach out to people, is it right?
You know, you want leftists to come and listen to you and change your mind.
Is it right to be making fun of people with the leftist tears tumbler?
And of course, I think it is.
It's alienating to some people.
The problem we have is they just taste so good.
If I want to show you just a little bit of one of the reasons we love the leftist tears.
You know, everybody's talking about Beto O'Rourke.
And of course, the left's idea is, oh, yes, he lost, but he really won because now he'll be president.
And the thing about this to me is like, you know, I'm not, the guy is a massively talented campaigner.
I know people in the cruise campaign, they said, man, this guy was great.
He did a great job.
We had to fight him with everything we had.
They just eked out a victory.
But the thing is, you know, the media has been protecting him.
And because it's only in Texas, we, the national right wing, have not come out and started to.
But the thing is, he's a make-believe guy.
You know, he calls himself Beto.
It's supposed to mean he has some connection to the Latino community.
Cruz is an actual Cuban-American.
You know, he calls himself a man of the people.
His father was a millionaire.
He was a millionaire real estate guy.
Cruz is the child of refugees.
Beto lied about a hit and run where he ran, he was in a hit and run accident, actually disappeared.
He covered up a shady deal where he helped his, you know, force people from their homes.
He was the kind of pretty face that fronted for this.
I'm not sure he's going to survive the national attention.
He may be talented, but I'm not sure he's going to survive the national attention.
Someone who did survive, however, was Dan Crenshaw.
He won in his district in Texas.
He's remember the guy that they made fun of for losing his eye to an IED.
And here's Dan Crenshaw accepting his victory despite the jokes from Saturday Night Live.
It's been an interesting last 72 hours for us.
Right?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Have you guys heard of that?
It was a little interesting.
People ask us: are you offended?
I'm like, well, I'm from the SEAL teams.
really get offended.
We also like it when comedians are actually funny.
Let's get back to that, right?
Let's get back to being funny.
Let's get back.
I love this guy.
And maybe he may have a bigger career coming up.
He's certainly very presentable.
It's the problem with leftist tears.
We shouldn't drink them, but they taste so good.
All right.
I'll see you tomorrow.
Celebrate this victory because it's real.
It is a genuine cultural victory.
More fights tomorrow.
The fight goes on.
The dream will never die.
Let's Get Back To Being Funny00:00:35
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
Technical producer, Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
And their animations are by Cynthia Angulo and Jacob Jackson.