Jim Acosta’s reinstated White House pass exposes media hypocrisy—defending his First Amendment rights while ignoring Obama-era scandals like Fast and Furious, despite Trump’s 96% negative coverage amid economic growth. The episode contrasts Acosta’s disruptive antics with Dan Crenshaw’s measured responses, framing press bias as an echo-chamber protecting its own. Shifting to Thanksgiving, Michael Knowles traces Squanto’s pivotal role in the Pilgrims’ survival, debunking myths of a one-sided alliance and highlighting mutual aid that ended only after Massasoit’s death sparked King Philip’s War. The segment ties historical gratitude to modern "ingratitude," from Michelle Obama’s perceived entitlement to Rep. Swalwell’s nuclear threats, warning that Madison’s warnings about human nature still apply—government must be checked, not blindly trusted. [Automatically generated summary]
A record number of women will be joining the House of Representatives next year, and that means many of us will only be pretending to listen to what they're saying while hoping they have the common decency to bring us another beer.
Among the gals who will be joining our nation's lawmakers will be the Google-eyed socialist loony tune Alexandria Ecasio-Cortez.
And yes, she's another one of those brainless dames who make a profession out of spending the money you earn.
But on the other hand, the dim-witted babe assures us she can definitely slay a Luke.
So at least the beauty contest has been taken out of the Miss America pageant and brought into the government where it belongs.
Two other frails who will be joining the lawmakers are the first two Muslim women in the house, which means it's time for the press to celebrate their diversity without noticing that that diversity includes rampant anti-Semitism.
One of these allah-loving chickadees is Ilhan Omar, who has referred to Israel as a, quote, apartheid regime and has prayed that Allah would awake us from Israel's quote evil.
Now, you might say it's not inherently anti-Semitic to criticize Israel as an evil apartheid regime, but you'd be utterly in the wrong and should stop talking because you're making a fool of yourself.
The other Islamo girl is Rashida Talib, who has declared that we should cut all aid to Israel because supporting the Jewish state, quote, doesn't fit the values of our country.
When asked why supporting the only truly democratic, freedom-loving nation in the Middle East is out of keeping with the values of America, Talib responded, quote, oh, right, America.
When I said our country, that's not exactly what I meant, unquote.
And all right, I made that last quote up, but only the last one.
Now, some of the new women are Republicans, but you won't hear too much about them from our leftist press.
Being Republican, they retain the capacity to reason and so fail to fulfill the left's definition of a female.
Bowl and Branch Sheets00:02:35
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin.
And this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety boom.
Birds are winging, also singing hunky-dunky.
Shipshaw, tipsy-topsy, the world is it easing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
Whoever wrote that opening is a terrible, terrible person.
I'm just sorry it's me.
The Clavenless weekend is over.
I knew the Clavenless weekend was over when I woke up this morning.
And yesterday, Stormy Daniels had tweeted, she said, Donald Trump has ruined my career.
And I tweeted back, Donald Trump is your career.
And then Tom Arnold tweeted, I saw this morning, he said, you should talk.
Stormy Daniels has blown a thousand men.
You only blow Donald Trump.
And I just thought, you know, every day I have awakened and asked myself, is this the day that Roseanne Barr's crazy ex-husband is going to accuse me of giving oral sex to the President of the United States?
And finally, that day has arrived.
This is like Pete Clavin at 2018.
I had to pinch myself.
I was like, this is really happening.
It's wonderful.
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Press Pass Controversy00:09:45
So I have to talk about Jim, look at me, I'm Jim Acosta, because I know that that's what he wants.
You know, when somebody wants something that badly to be talked about and looked at that badly, you got to do it.
You just got to give it up for him.
Now, what happened basically since I've been here is that a federal judge gave him back his press pass.
His hard pass to the White House was taken away.
Without the hard pass, he would have had to apply every day for a pass to the White House.
And of course, who would give him a pass to anything?
So that would have been a problem.
So CNN sued, which was absurd.
And the judge temporarily, he issued an injunction saying his fifth, his Article 5 right to due process was violated because there was no hearing and there were no rules and his First Amendment rights were, I'm sorry, Fifth Amendment and First Amendment rights were violated by taken away.
Now this, I'm not a lawyer, but this seems to me completely absurd.
I mean, Donald Trump doesn't, it doesn't seem like the president even has to give a press conference, let alone give a hard pass to any one particular reporter, but that's what the judge said, and now they'll work it out.
Now, I just want to go back.
The thing for me about this has been the reaction of the press.
The press stood in solidarity with Acosta, even though sources say that many people just hate the guy.
He's a showboater.
He's really a second-rate clown.
I mean, he is just ridiculous.
The question that he asked at the time, you remember, was when he said, you called the caravan an invasion, but it's not an invasion, which is like, who cares what you think?
Acosta and Trump wonderfully said, we have a difference of opinion.
So obviously, this is a guy who thinks his opinion matters.
His job is to put his opinion next to the President of the United States.
And somehow that's pointing out that Trump has a different opinion.
I'm not sure what the hell he's doing, but the most important thing is he wants people to look at him.
After he won this temporary injunction, got his hard pass back, he shows up, wonderful piece of videos.
He shows up and begs the press to interview him.
You guys want to ask a question?
I could just tell you, I'm not sure.
I just want to say that I'm very grateful for what happened today and grateful for my colleagues in the press who stood by us through all of this.
You know, this was a test, and I think we passed the test.
So I love that.
You guys want to ask me a question?
Could you ask me, please, please ask me a question?
And look at me, look at me.
And of course, we have to add in here that in the court case, the Trump lawyers came in and kind of tried to steamroll the judge a little bit.
They said, you know, we can ban anybody we want, which probably got the judge's backup.
It probably was not the best argument they could have made.
They should have gone in and just said, hey, he was disruptive.
He wasn't following the rules.
And he obviously was.
When the young intern came and tried to take his mic away, he strangled her to death, screaming, look at me, look at me, I'm Jim Acosta.
All right, it wasn't that bad, but it was still pretty bad.
And he made a big fuss about everything.
And the whole thing was useless.
The thing is, the thing is about Acosta, though, we have to step back for just a minute.
Jim Acosta is the news media.
Jim Acosta is the news media.
Here's what I mean.
This incident happened right after Donald Trump came out after the midterm election and made some pretty bipartisan noises.
I mean, they were Trumpian bipartisan noises.
They came along with some belligerence.
He said, if you start investigating me, I'm going to investigate you.
We'll be at war.
But the main thrust of the speech he made was, okay, now the Democrats have the House.
Let him make some laws and let us do some deals and do some trading, which is what conservatives like me have been worried about with Trump all along, that he would drift to the left if ever the left started dealing with him.
The only reason he's been such a great conservative president is because the left has given him nowhere to go.
So he said, you know, I'll give you DACA, you give me the wall, there are deals that could be made, blah, That's politics.
That's typical politics.
That's the way the country is supposed to work.
That's the way we're all supposed to be a little bit unhappy with the compromises.
That's the way the ball is supposed to roll forward.
The press will not let him go there.
It's got to be, you are a tyrant, you're a bigot, you're a racist.
I mean, so help me.
If Don Lemon couldn't call people who disagree with him racist, he would just stare into the camera with that stupid look on his face for an hour, and that would be the entire show.
So they had to bring it back.
The press, in the person of Acosta, who is now the avatar of the left-wing press, had to bring it back to this confrontational emergency level where Trump can never just be the president of the United States.
Dan Crenshaw, the newly the congressman-elect in Texas, remember the one-eyed warrior who they made fun of on Saturday Night Live?
This guy, he is being elevated from merely the nation's hero.
He is becoming my hero, which is a much better gig.
And the reason is, the reason he's becoming my hero is every time he opens his mouth, he says something so commonsensical, so decent, so American that he makes everybody on both sides look ridiculous.
So he's on Face the Nation, and somebody says, oh, the usual garbage these guys are spewing.
Oh, the danger to our democratic way of life that Trump poses, what Trump is doing.
He's destroying our way of life.
And Crenshaw makes one of the great responses ever, and the entire panel just falls apart at his feet.
Listen to this.
I always ask the question, like, like what?
You know, like, what is he undermining exactly?
You know, what democratic freedoms have been undermined?
We just had an election where we switched power in the House.
Democracy is at work.
People are voting and we're in record numbers.
I always ask for examples, and then we can hit those examples one by one.
And if it's worth criticizing, it's worth criticizing.
But just kind of this broad-brush criticism that the president is somehow undermining our democracy.
I always wonder what exactly we're talking about.
I'll be happy to add it.
All of that.
I'm happy to give it to you.
I mean, the undermining of the freedom of the pressure.
The free press, judiciary, CIA, FBI.
The voting process.
Obama indicted, had many press members under investigation.
Trump has not.
It's true.
So just to say that.
So what is the difference?
Just last week, one of the largest media publications in the United States had to go to a federal court in order to essentially regain access to the press.
That was for one reporter.
One reporter.
Not the whole organization.
Organizations, including CBS, did file amicus treatment support.
Yeah.
So, I mean, again, I think we obviously would be, it's part of much larger.
Because it was disruptive.
Well, again, I would argue that our president is consistently disruptive in those very same press conferences.
And I would argue that he takes a lot of time.
How is that an attack on the press, though?
Because it's literally an attack on the press.
Well, I've literally been attacked.
So let's choose our words carefully.
He says he's literally attacking the press.
Here's a guy whose eye was blown out by an IED.
He says, I've literally been attacked.
And it's true.
It is true that one reporter was banned for his poor behavior.
This is the truth.
Like I said, I'm not a lawyer, but I do not understand why any one reporter has a right to be there.
But they feel that an attack on one reporter is an attack on all reporters, even if the guy's doing, I mean, he's a second-rate journalist, a third-rate journalist.
I was going to say he's a third-rate clown, but he's a first-rate clown.
He's a third-rate journalist and a clown.
You know, there's absolutely no reason he couldn't be banned.
However, however, there is another side to this, and I will give it to you in just a minute.
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And don't pronounce it because they don't like that.
They don't put in the vowels.
What do you want to do?
Here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
Jim Acosta is a third-rate journalist and a clown.
But I'd rather live in a country, when we step back a little bit, step back a little bit from disliking him personally, I would rather live in a country in which the occasional knucklehead can give the top man a headache from time to time than a country in which that can happen.
So even though I don't think the First Amendment or the Fifth Amendment decrees that Jim Acosta needs to get his press pass back, I do believe it is generally a good thing that the press can annoy the president of the United States.
Why The PressannoysThePresident00:07:19
The reason the press is suffering the Donald Trump backlash that it's suffering is because they didn't do their job for eight years.
That is why, if they treated Barack Obama like this, and they have this delusional sense that they once asked Barack Obama a hard question, something like, what time is it or something?
You know, what enchants you most about the presidency?
They have this delusional idea that they covered Obama.
They didn't cover Obama.
They covered up for Obama for eight years.
That scandal-free administration that included scandal after scandal, the IRS scandal, the Fast and Furious scandal, one scandal after another, the scandal of the Iran deal, the scandal of dumping cash into the pockets of the Iranians for nothing, for no reasons, because they were going to get their nuclear weapon anyway.
All of those scandals were left uncovered.
They covered them up instead.
And that's what they're paying for now.
And that's why Donald Trump gets away with the stuff he does, because otherwise, even I would attack him.
I don't want to see the president of the United States throwing reporters out.
Even a bad reporter, even a bad reporter like Jim Acosta, who's just a grandstander throwing his opinion at the president, I want those guys there.
The problem is you cannot show up after eight years and put on your reporter pants again and say, suddenly, we're reporters.
So this is the problem that I have with this idea that we stand in solidarity.
There was an exchange, Chris Wallace had Trump on.
And I thought, I mean, Trump said a couple of things that I would question, but not on this subject.
But they had an exchange.
Chris Wallace and Trump had this back and forth exchange in which Wallace kind of did this whole thing.
The press stands in solidarity.
Let's just play this clip.
This is number seven.
I'm saying fake news, false reporting, dishonest reporting, of which there is a lot, and I know it.
See, I know it because I'm a subject of it.
A lot of people don't know it, but when I explain it to them, they understand it.
And Chris, you know that better.
You don't have to sit here and act like a perfect little wonderful, innocent angel.
I know you too well.
I knew your father too well.
That's not your gene.
But let me tell you, folks.
Look, I think some of the coverage of you, sir, and I've said it on the record, is biased.
But I don't think that they are...
Most of it is biased.
I don't know, but the idea that you call us the enemy of the people.
I'm not calling you that.
I'm talking.
We're all together.
You don't understand it.
We're all together.
No, no, no.
I'm not calling you.
It doesn't matter what you call it.
When you call CNN and the New York Times.
I am calling you.
We're in solidarity.
I'm calling fake news.
Fake reporting is what's tearing this country apart.
Because people know, people like things that are happening, and they're not hearing about it.
Now, Trump is absolutely right about this.
He's right twice.
It's immense fake reporting when you have 94, between 94 and 96% of the coverage of Trump has been negative when the economy is so good, when ISIS is gone, when the judges are good, when the regulations cut back and business is thriving.
All of that, that that's covered 96% negative.
He is absolutely right.
And the problem is that the problem with Wallace's point of view is that it is the opposite problem we have with Jim Acosta.
We want clowns like Jim Acosta to be able to annoy the president.
I want that to happen.
My gripe is that it didn't happen for eight years.
That's my real gripe, not the way they treat Trump.
It's the way they treated Obama and the way they treated Trump.
But this solidarity of the press is masking a genuine, genuine dysfunction in the press, and it is keeping them from doing what needs to be done, which is they need to reform themselves.
They really do.
And we can't reform them because of the First Amendment.
That's the way it should be.
That's right.
We shouldn't be able to force them to reform.
They should reform themselves.
So instead of Chris Wallace and all those people on Face the Nation saying, oh yes, the press is one.
We stand together as one.
They should be, why are they not looking at themselves?
Why are they not saying, hey, is there a problem here?
If Donald Trump can curse us out and half the country says he's right, it's really more than half the country that agrees that the press is biased.
Something like 70%, 72% of the country believes that the press is what is tearing us apart, as Trump said.
They're the ones who believe, they believe that they're the ones who are dividing us.
If that's a problem, why are there no conversations like this?
And the reason there are no conversations like this is because the system generates its own logic, right?
Let's say you're the New York Times, a former newspaper.
I call them that as a joke, but it's true.
They used to be a great newspaper.
Back in the 1980s, they were a genuinely good newspaper.
They were genuinely fair.
They did all kinds of studies of their coverage.
Conservatives still hated them, but they were generally fair to the Republicans and Democrats.
Now they're a left-wing rag.
They're a sophomoric left-wing rag.
A college could put, a bunch of college kids could put out a better newspaper than the New York Times.
They have wonderful resources, and because of their reputation, they have wonderful reporters.
So some of the reporting is actually talented, but it is not a fair, it's not fair coverage.
It's hysterical.
It's like a little girl who's seen a mouse.
It's just one constant high-pitched scream.
Okay, so what happens when a paper becomes like that?
The only people who read it are the people who believe it, the people who think that that's a true worldview.
Go to New York.
It's amazing.
You go to New York, you talk to people who read the New York Times.
They really do think the house is on fire.
They think everything is going wrong.
Country's falling apart.
Never mind the good economy.
Never mind the word peace.
Never mind that ISIS is gone.
Never mind all that.
Never mind it.
I read it in the Times and this is really happening.
Once you're there, once you're in that place, your audience and Maureen Dowd and others have reported this.
Writers in the New York Times have reported this.
Your audience will not tolerate deviation.
I mean, look, we have some of this at the Daily Wire.
Every time I come out and I say that Trump's rudeness is a problem, I hear from you guys saying, don't you insult, don't clutch your pearls.
Because we're a right-wing place.
We're a right-wing place.
You want to hear right-wing opinions.
That's your right, but we don't pretend to be a newspaper.
We don't say this is all the news that's fit to print.
I mean, look at me.
If I wanted to give you all the news that's fit to print, you'd have to get somebody else with a much more balanced point of view.
I am a conservative and I tell you things from a conservative point of view.
Once you do that, once you do that, your audience demands more.
Your audience demands more.
If the New York Times had integrity, if they had honesty, if they had decency, if they wanted to live up to their masthead, they would start to hire some people like me on their desk, on the news desk, saying this story gets in, that story gets in.
No wait, that's a hit job.
You can't do that.
Hey, this is not a fair to Trump.
People who supported Trump, they would hire them.
They can't.
Even if they did now, the staff itself is so woke, so left, so radical that they would protest.
They would have one of those meetings where everybody got together and said, you know, you can't hire this person.
He'd be fired in a day like Kevin Williamson was fired from the Atlantic.
Once you're in that cycle, the cycle just insists on increasing itself.
And that's the problem.
That's the problem with this idea that Jim Acosta represents everybody, because the problem is Jim Acosta does represent the whole press because they've all become a bunch of left-wing showboats and buffoons.
Thanksgiving Feasts and Kingdoms00:14:51
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Hey, you know, Michael Knowles is going to be with us.
He hasn't been with us for a couple of weeks because of all the technical glitches and then he was traveling.
So he's going to come back and we're going to talk about Thanksgiving.
And if you just can't get enough of Michael Knowles and who can, it's almost time for the next episode of the conversation tomorrow, Tuesday, November 20th at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 p.m. Pacific.
All of your questions will be answered by Daily Wire's own Michael Knowles.
So please ask him lots of questions about embarrassing subjects and be sure to really torment him about his Catholicism because let's face it, you know, it's ridiculous.
Remember, we can't make this easy for him.
And as always, the lovely and talented Alicia Krauss will be hosting it and keeping Knowles in his place, which I like, I don't even think they should let Alicia sit next to Knowles.
I think that's a dangerous situation for both of them.
This month's episode will stream live on Daily Wire's YouTube and Facebook pages.
It will be free for everyone to watch, but only subscribers can ask the questions.
to ask questions as a subscriber, log in to the website dailywire.com, head over to the conversation page to watch the live stream, and just start typing into the Daily Wire chat box where Michael will answer questions as they come in for an entire hour.
Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by Michael Knowles on Tuesday, November 20th at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 p.m. Pacific.
Join the conversation and subscribe.
You know, we've given you so much at this point.
10 bucks a month, 100 bucks for the year, and you get the leftist tears tumbler.
You get another kingdom.
You get all the mailbags.
You get to ask me questions.
The conversation comes up.
He gets to ask everybody else questions.
You get the Shapiro show, Knowles' show, Walsh show.
It's an amazing deal for a lousy.
$10 a month.
And what were you going to do with that $10 anyway?
You're going to get yourself in trouble.
This will solve that problem.
All right, Michael Knowles is coming right up.
Come over to DailyWire.com.
While we're talking about Michael Knowles, I forgot to mention another kingdom is taking Thanksgiving off because we have this feeling that some of you will find something else to do rather than listen to another kingdom.
So we're taking a break between seven.
We've got three episodes left, but we have a conversation, really, actually a very entertaining conversation, at least it was to me, that Knowles and I had about Another Kingdom.
So we're posting that.
It's up today for subscribers.
Friday, it'll be available to all.
So if you are sick of arguing with your relatives, you'll be able to listen to that instead.
Knowles.
Long time no see.
It's good to see you, Bob.
Where are you going?
For like seven weeks, I was in Wisconsin.
I was in Michigan.
I was in New York about 15 times for about 20 minutes a clip.
Yeah, I come back.
We're in the Tora Bora Cave still.
That's great.
I know.
I'm issuing videos like, you Satan, I will destroy you now.
You know, were you at the University of Madison?
I was at University of Wisconsin Whitewater.
So you were in Madison?
I wasn't in Madison.
I would have been torn and feathered if I were in Madison.
Madison is great.
It's such a beautiful city.
Really?
It's unbelievable.
I thought it was left of Lennon.
Well, it is a little left of Lennon.
But, you know, we go in there and all we do is we talk to conservatives, so it's great.
But like, I have to say, the fact that they voted Scott Walker out of office, he transformed that city is so beautiful.
Well, this is what happens.
The left goes in and destroys governments, and then the right comes in, fixes everything, and by the time there are no problems left, they say, what do we need this conservative for?
There are no problems.
It's so true.
It is so true.
I mean, after Thatcher, they did it in England.
After Reagan, they did it here.
Churchill?
Churchill, I know.
It's like this kind of weird cycle.
It's almost as if nothing human is built to last.
I'm going to write that down.
It's like it's built into the mortal system.
Another kingdom is going great.
Yeah.
We're getting somewhere between 70 and 100,000 downloads every episode.
This is shocking.
This may mean that I, at some point in my life, could have another acting.
You are now the most famous actor in America.
Yeah, that's right.
Despite all of Hollywood's.
It's great.
No, it is great.
It's great.
I mean, if this were a book, it would be a New York Times bestseller.
I mean, that's.
Even at these speeches, I've been in Michigan or Wisconsin or wherever, and they'll come up, they'll say, Michael, I love the show.
And I say, oh, thank you so much.
Did you catch yesterday's?
They say, no, no, no, no, not your show.
No, no, no.
Another kingdom.
I love Another Kingdom.
It's okay.
I mean, no, it's great.
It's really amazing.
Let's talk about Thanksgiving.
Things I'm thankful for, like Another Kingdom, absolutely.
And also the holiday itself.
That's right.
The holiday itself.
This is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented holidays of all.
Let's hear it.
The main takeaways.
First of all, the providence of it all.
They arrive.
The pilgrims, you know, I actually have four ancestors of mine who were on the Mayflower.
One was a pilgrim.
He was a great and godly man.
Three were absolute degenerates, mutineers.
One was the first guy executed for murder in America.
That's a true story.
Oh, yes, that's true.
That explains so much.
So I'm very interested in the Mayflower history.
They arrive.
They were delayed out of leaving Leiden.
They were delayed out of leaving England.
There were conspiracies to prevent them even from leaving.
They finally make it.
They are blown hundreds of miles off course.
They were aiming for New York.
They didn't even end up in Massachusetts Bay.
They ended up in this, after a little meandering, they ended up in Plymouth.
They arrive at Plymouth almost immediately within a matter of days.
An Indian walks out of the woods and says, Welcome, Englishman.
That's a great story.
I love that.
That's an unbelievable.
And because they arrived and all of the fields were cleared.
They were cleared for agriculture, but there was nobody there.
There were white human bones because there had been a huge epidemic that had gone on, wiped out whole tribes.
So Samoset was the Indian who came out and said, Welcome, Englishman.
His English was a little broken.
He then found another Indian who was being held prisoner by the sachem, Massasoit, who would go on to have a long relationship with the pilgrims.
That Indian's name was Squanto.
Squanto comes out, speaks beautiful English.
How did he speak beautiful English?
Because he was kidnapped from the Patuxet tribe.
He was brought to Spain.
We don't know how long he lived in Spain for.
He was a slave there.
There is one story that actually Catholic missionaries and monks smuggled him out, got him to England, but it's unclear how he made it to England.
He then lived in London, was talking with the pilgrims about the streets of London, lived in London for a while.
A good Englishman was able to send him back to Newfoundland.
His entire tribe had been wiped out.
Coincidentally, for the years that he was missing, his entire tribe, the Patuxets, were gone.
He was the last one remaining.
He makes it down.
Massasoit holds him as a prisoner.
The English arrive randomly on the shores.
He walks out and brokers an incredible diplomatic alliance between this guy, Massasoit.
This is such an amazing story.
And this is a God-touch country.
There's no question about it.
There's no question.
I mean, that is the simplest answer.
That is the one.
Sockham's razor, yes.
So there's this incredible providence.
They walk up.
The pilgrims have been starving.
I mean, they've been, a lot of them are dying.
Some are committing suicide, likely, and they find a bushel of corn, just a bushel of corn.
So the first act of the pilgrims in the New World was in fact an act of theft, but they quickly made it up to them.
They formed an alliance.
Bastard white man.
I know, those awful white men, you know.
They form this alliance with Massasoit, and it really helps out Massasoit.
It helps grow the Wampanoag nation.
They form a treaty to fight against some of the Wampanoags' enemies, and it really is beneficial to both of them.
This is the second point I like to remind people about Thanksgiving.
The Indians are people.
They're people.
They're men.
They have interests.
They have intellect.
They have will.
They have ability.
They are real people.
They're not little fairy creatures who were perfect or stupid or incapable.
They're real men.
And this alliance really helped both of these groups.
I mean, they were so close.
Edward Winslow, one of the pilgrims, saved Massasoit's life.
The chief sachem of the Wampanoags was on death's door.
There were reports he was already dead.
He comes in, scrapes his tongue, gives him a little medicine.
He pops back to life, Massasoit.
He tells the pilgrims about an attack that the Massachusetts were about, led by, I think, Elizabeth Warren, were about to wage on the pilgrims.
And Massasoit gives some troops to go help fight the Massachusetts, puts them off.
It was an amazing alliance.
That alliance lasted until 1675.
And it was because of a freak accident that it broke down.
Massasoit died.
He was still a good, good friend of the pilgrims.
His son, Alexander, the kids had Christian names.
They were very close.
His son, Alexander, died.
He had been held, not captive, but he was being questioned by the pilgrims over a deal, a land deal.
He died shortly thereafter.
There is no evidence that the pilgrims killed him, but that guy's younger brother, King Philip, also known as Metacomet, was certain that the Pilgrims killed him.
No evidence it happened, waged a brutal war, killed thousands of people, forever destroyed pilgrim and Indian relations.
It's very sad.
This brings us to the third thing I like to remember about Thanksgiving.
It's about gratitude, and we have no gratitude in the country anymore.
We have no gratitude for our forefathers.
We have no gratitude for the Indians who helped out our forefathers.
That first Thanksgiving was a Thanksgiving.
There wasn't a lot of food, but there were more Indians there than pilgrims.
You know, you know, it's funny.
I've been watching Michelle Obama.
She got flogging in her book.
And I don't like to pick on First Ladies.
I think that's a hard job, and you don't run for anything.
But I've been watching her flogging in her book.
And the thing about Michelle Obama is she's actually an admirable, she's lived an admirable life in a lot of ways.
She starts out really working class, you know, very working class.
Tough upbringing.
Tough upbringing, but she's got family.
She's got married parents who support her.
They got good values.
She goes to Princeton.
Princeton.
So she's actually like an admirable character.
The reason I find her unappealing is no gratitude.
That's right.
Where is the gratitude?
When she said that thing is, this is the first time I've ever been proud of my country.
What about all the time that, I mean, she's a black woman who's the first lady, beloved of most of the people and all this.
Where is the gratitude?
She was talking to Oprah the other day complaining that the Obamas had to pay for their meals in the White House.
She said every criticism of her is because of racism.
This is a woman who has gotten further than virtually anybody in all of history.
She had all the breaks.
She got all the breaks.
I mean, all the breaks in the sense that she had the family, they were working class people.
Now it meets opportunity, of course.
Now he's saying she's not, she didn't work or anything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's just like, it's just a little bit of gratitude and grace, but everybody is taught this kind of resentment, like that they're oppressed.
It's supposed to make them feel like heroes.
It just makes them feel like bitter old men.
Well, that's exactly right.
It's this school of resentment.
You know, you see this in literature, you see it in history, and you certainly see this with our founding fathers.
These were good men.
These were incredible men.
Many of these Indians were very good men, too, in certain circumstances.
And sometimes sheer accident broke down some of those relations.
That's true.
But these are real people.
And to stand on the shoulders of these men and spit on them as though they were so awful and we can judge them from our perch is absurd.
You know, that first Thanksgiving was a tough Thanksgiving.
Half of the pilgrim, rather half of the Mayflower passengers, had died throughout that harsh winter.
There wasn't a lot of food.
There's actually a coincidence here.
Part of the reason for that was that they lived under communal socialist living standards for that first Thanksgiving of 1621.
Same thing with the Thanksgiving, the harvest feast of 1622.
By 1623, Governor Bradford said, we're not going to do this socialism anymore.
Bradford said, quote, that this communal living was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment.
For the young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense.
So they got rid of socialism.
Guess what happened?
All of the, you know, there was utter prosperity.
And so that third one, 1623, was a great feast.
And it was a feast to celebrate industriousness.
It was a feast to celebrate alliances.
It was a feast to celebrate the providence that brought them to this incredible land, this new world that led to this now the greatest country in the history of the world.
You know, it's funny, you think about really only, there's only two races in America that have ever been persistently treated as races, as different, right?
Everybody else, the Jews come in, everybody hates them.
But then it's like, all right, now you're Americans.
The Irish, the Italians, Irish, the Italians, right?
Everybody hates them.
But then it's like, join the crowd.
Blacks and Indians.
Right.
The Native Americans.
The Native Americans, you know, it is true they got screwed on deals with the government, but who doesn't get screwed on deals with the government?
That's why we hate the government, right?
The definition of the deal with the government.
But if at some point they had said, you know what, you can't beat them, join them, take the land, give me a house, that's it.
They wouldn't, there's so much poverty on those reservations.
There's so much alcoholism.
There's so much dysfunction.
You think, like, what's the benefit here that you're holding on to some ancient compact of land?
If they just said, okay, you're Americans, forget the rest of it, you know?
And there's so much misunderstanding on this.
I know that we like to pretend that Elizabeth Warren is the first Indian at Harvard.
The first Indian to graduate from Harvard was a Wampanoag in the year 1665.
Conflict Over Human Nature00:08:55
Yeah.
Predates the country by a century and a decade.
Yeah, Jefferson admired the Indians.
Of course.
I mean, and also there's a long tradition of Christianity.
Many of these Indians embraced Christianity when the Pilgrims arrived.
This persists to this day among the descendants of the Wampanoags, but you don't hear this.
You hear only an ideological, anti-Western history, revisionist history, and you don't understand how all of this came together.
It makes us think that when people are talking about the history of the Indians, the history of Thanksgiving, they don't care about the history of the Indians.
They just want any little sliver of history that will attack their own forefathers.
That is a bizarre psychological glitch.
And it does, unfortunately, seem to be getting worse among Americans.
It's strange, too, that the same people who feel that someone from Honduras has the right to just walk into our country and take it away, blame us for walking into the Indians' country.
Maybe the Indians should have built a wall.
That's right, you know.
People who come in, they're not even giving us beads.
You know, they're not even giving us...
I'd be happy to give up Manhattan at this point.
It is a really interesting thing.
I mean, if we could, racism will get into the human system any way it can.
So if like once like stone bigots are sort of outre, the left brings it back in through the back door.
You know, they just will not let that racism go.
That's exactly right.
Even at periods where we like to think that this racism was just always there.
But really it wasn't.
Sometimes it ebbs and flows.
There wasn't very much racism when the Pilgrims first landed.
In fact, there wasn't terribly much racism on certain islands where Christopher Columbus landed.
That racism developed over time.
Sometimes it ebbs, sometimes it flows.
But the left seems so insistent on bringing it back, on constantly harping on it.
They can't let it go.
They shall not let it go.
It is a shame.
I mean, truly, truly, I mean, I know I'm thankful.
I feel like I won the lottery of life being born here.
I mean, being born through, living through the time I lived through, which was one of America's greatest times.
There's always been this kind of conflict.
There's always been conflict.
There's always been upheaval and chaos.
But the country has never, I don't think anybody on earth has ever been as free as an American at this moment.
And that's really.
They're as free, as open to having justice available to them, as prosperous, as able to educate themselves and better themselves.
It is unbelievable.
We are living in the point.
00000001% of fortunate people in the history of the world.
It really is true.
And what do we do?
We complain.
It's good to see you.
I'm glad you're back.
Good to see you, me too.
All right, it's time for Our Crappy Culture.
Speaking of the founding, I have been rereading the Federalist Papers.
I read the, you know, like kind of a selection of the great Federalist papers just about, I don't know, 10 years ago, before that, read the entire Federalist Papers a long, long time ago.
So I thought, you know, with all this chaos going on, I just want to remind myself of what the country is, how it started.
And the thing about the founders, I mean, when you talk about a God-touched country, the fact that those men, that people like Madison, Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, that they were Hamilton, that they were in the same building at the same time, only, only the big chess hand of God could have moved those pieces into place.
Just unbelievable wisdom.
And chief among their wisdom was the nature of human beings, what human beings are like, the nature of power.
There was no romanticism about it.
There was no romanticism about what people would do, how governments fall apart.
They studied, they studied the Greek democracy, they studied the Roman Republic, they studied any republic, anything that looked like British Republic, anything, the British monarchy, anything that looked like a republic.
They studied it to see how things fell apart.
And the thing about the Federalist Papers that gets me more than anything is the language.
It was written to convince people to sign on to the Constitution.
So it was popular newspaper writing.
The language is so complex that even I, who have a very big vocabulary, am constantly looking up words.
I constantly have to read the sentences again.
They wind around.
They're very beautiful sentences, but very complex.
Just the idea that people, that that was how you got to voters then, instead of just repeating the same three words over and over again, is amazing.
So I'm reading one of a couple of the Federalist papers that were written by Madison.
And he talks about how they're going to protect, how they're going to protect the government from becoming a tyranny, how they're going to keep the government from being a tyranny because it's the nature of power to expand itself.
And he talks about the fact that we want to keep this federal system, the states involved, because if you have more citizenship, if you're a citizen of a state as well as of the country, then there'll be rival interests fighting off against each other.
And that was what they wanted to do.
But he says this thing in a kind of offhanded way.
He's talking about how a number of governments, state level, federal level, will protect our freedom.
But he says this, besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
So he says, besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.
And he points to this and he says other nations, because they are tyrannies, fear arming the people, but we want the people armed.
He goes on to say, we want the people armed because we want the states to know that they can form militias to fight the federal government if worse comes to the worst.
Now, obviously, that is the worst, but still, it's an important break on our freedom.
This brings me to Eric Swalwell.
It says rep Eric Swalwell, I think it stands for reprehensible or repugnant or something like that.
Maybe he's a member of Congress in California.
No, he is a member of Congress in California.
And he started talk tweeting about confiscating people's guns.
People should not own assault weapons, as they now call them, which doesn't mean anything, but whatever he thinks that is, people shouldn't do it.
So somebody says, so somebody, a conservative tweeter, tweets back, Joe Biggs.
He tweets, so basically, Representative Swalwell wants a war because that's what you would get.
You're out of your effing mind if you think I'll give up my rights and give the government all the power.
And Representative Eric, or reprehensible or repugnant or repulsive, Eric Swalwell tweets back, it would be a short war, my friend.
The government has nukes, too many of them, but they're legit.
I'm sure if we talked, we could find common ground to protect our families and communities.
So give up your guns, or we'll nuke you.
That's what he's saying.
Now, I'm willing to say that he was joking, but I think the joke was revelatory of the angry leftist dreams that leftists dream.
You know, I think that this is the kind of thing that they dream about.
And when he was challenged on this, he said, don't be so dramatic.
No one is nuking anyone or threatening that.
I'm telling you, this is not the 18th century.
The argument that you would go to war with your government if an assault weapons ban was in place is ludicrous and inflames the gun debate, which is what you want.
Well, first of all, this is nonsense.
You know, we know, I mean, look, we've been fighting in Afghanistan for, what is it, 17 years at this point?
We can't beat them.
We couldn't beat the Vietnamese.
Believe me, you're not going to nuke New York.
It's really Swalwell who's talking nonsense.
And he's talking it because this is the way he thinks of the people.
And when he talks about this is not the 18th century, there is one thing that hasn't changed.
What hasn't changed is human nature.
And so I want to just end with this also from Madison, also from the Federalist Papers, where he says it may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.
But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
In other words, because human nature is corrupt, because we are fallen, because we are sinful, government will be all those things.
And then with probably the most famous line from the Federalist Papers, he says, if men were angels, no government would be necessary.
If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this.
You must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on the government, but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
Swalwell's treat about nuking Americans if they will not surrender their guns to him proves, proves that human nature has not changed a bit.
Clavinly Goodness Show00:00:47
Hang on to your guns.
Short Clavin Week, so be here tomorrow to suck up all the Clavinly goodness you can.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show, and we'll see you then.
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.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.