Andrew Clavin dissects Trump’s border speech—20,000 exploited migrant children, 300 weekly heroin deaths, and a wall framed as neutral security—while exposing media bias: CNN fact-checking Trump’s stats but ignoring Schumer’s past fence votes. Legal analyst Jenna Ellis warns of judicial hurdles if Trump declares a national emergency, while sanctuary states like California face constitutional challenges. The episode ties border chaos to welfare dependency, abortion consequences, and leftist moral posturing, ending with Ed Buck’s unpunished role in meth-related deaths, exposing systemic failures on both sides. [Automatically generated summary]
President Trump spoke to the nation last night and the reactions from the press are still pouring in.
NBC's Chuck Todd, for instance, reacted by hurling himself to the floor in convulsions while frothing at the mouth and speaking in a deep, raspy voice, what appeared to be nonsense until it was recorded and played backwards, whereupon it was recognized as a dialect of ancient Babylonian, which, when translated, meant Satan has unleashed his mighty power on the earth and I am his servant.
Todd stopped reacting to the president's speech when a priest sprinkled holy water on him, then he burst into flame and the black shadow of his soul leapt from the ashes of his carnal form and plummeted downward through the floor, never to be seen again.
CNN's Jim, Look at Me, I'm Jim Acosta, reacted to the speech by standing on the White House lawn and speaking directly to the CNN audience, a man named Joe Findersmith, who was waiting to board a plane to Seattle, which had been delayed.
Acosta warned the audience about the president's remarks, saying, quote, pay no attention to that man in the Oval Office.
Instead, just look at me, for I am Jim Acosta.
Other men lie, but Jim Acosta does not lie.
And therefore, look at me, for I am he.
Yes, I am Jim Acosta, unquote.
Elsewhere on Skin, Don Lemon also gave his reaction to the speech, staring into the camera with a soulful look in his tearful eyes and saying, quote, oh, how well I remember the ever-so-beautiful speeches of Barack Obama, his mellow tones, his graceful rhetoric, how he would hold my head against his chest and comfort me, saying I should not worry about the troubles of the world, for he would handle them all with dignity and purity of spirit.
And yes, these were just my fantasies, but how I miss them now that Trump is in office and everything is dreary, unquote.
More anguished press reactions to the speech can be expected to come in throughout the rest of the year.
Good morning.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-dunky.
A Problem Persisting00:15:16
Ship-shaped tipsy-topsy, the world is ipped-easing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
So last night, we got a close-up look at a genuine crisis in America.
Donald Trump laid out his arguments for a barrier on the southern border.
Democrats laid out their arguments for pretending to give a damn about border security while letting in people they hope will become future Democrat voters.
Then the journalists took over, and they lied and distorted and spread confusion.
They disgraced their potentially noble profession and widened the divide between Americans in an effort to support the causes of the left.
That is a genuine crisis in this country.
I have no problem with America having two parties, the Republicans speaking for the Americans they represent and the Democrats speaking for communists, illegals, and clueless buffoons.
But when a media ostensibly tasked with informing us becomes instead the corporate communication arm of a single party, it distorts the debate, it protects dishonesty and corruption on the left, and it spurs fury and overreaction from otherwise sensible and patriotic Americans on the right.
That's a worse crisis than the one on the border, and I think we should begin to think about building a wall around Manhattan.
We will begin thinking about that in just a moment.
But first, let us talk about calming comfort blankets.
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It really does.
It must work because I never sleep, but I've slept much better since using it.
So before the speech last night, the media was in a panic.
They were talking about they weren't going to put it out there.
It was no fair that Trump should, the president of the United States, should be allowed to speak to the nation without being filtered through their brilliant minds and opinions.
They were just spreading panic.
They were spreading panic by saying Trump was going to spread panic.
My favorite interchange, I mean, just unbelievable, was Jim, look at me, I'm Jim Acosta saying this to Kellyanne Conway.
Pay attention to me.
Pay attention to me.
I meant after that, the one after that.
Can you promise that the president will tell the truth tonight?
Will he tell the truth?
Yes, Jim, and can you promise that you will?
I will.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you, God.
I'm not the one who's going to be able to do that.
Am I allowed to mention God to you?
I've got a lot of problems like you do.
Jim, I know that's achieved.
Make sure that goes viral.
This is why, by the way, this is why I'm one of the only people around here who even gives you the time of day.
Can you guarantee that?
And let me get back in your face because you're such a smart ass most of the time, and I know you want this to go viral.
A lot of these people don't like you.
I was reminded of an old Marlon Brando picture where Marlon Brando played a secretly homosexual husband to Liz Taylor, and Liz Taylor said, How would you like it if a naked woman dragged you out into the street and beat you in public?
That's what I was watching Kellyanne Conway slap around Jim Acosta.
But after all the panic and all this, the press finally caved in and out of the mercy and goodness and generosity of their hearts, allowed us to hear the words of the president of the United States whom we had elected to lead the country.
They thought we had elected them, but in fact, we had elected the president.
And Trump was basically very calm, very direct, and really fair.
Let's just look at a little bit of the Trump speech because it was just, it was like nine minutes long.
And he came out.
First of all, he said, there is a crisis at the border.
This is cut three.
This is a humanitarian crisis, a crisis of the heart, and a crisis of the soul.
Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States.
A dramatic increase.
These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs.
One in three women are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek up through Mexico.
Women are children are the biggest victims by far of our broken system.
This is the tragic reality of illegal immigration on our southern border.
This is the cycle of human suffering that I am determined to end.
So just remember that because I'm going to come back to it.
That Trump said the crisis is, and this is what's happening, that now these families are coming over from Honduras, from Central America, these broken countries, and these families are coming over, and the children are coming over, and they're being abused, and they're being harmed, and we don't have any place to put them, and the children are being separated from the parents.
That's the crisis that he's talking about.
That's why he says it's a crisis.
He went on to talk about the idea.
See, this is the other thing, because the Democrats will not distinguish between legal immigrants who America has historically and continually welcomed, and illegal immigrants who are, by definition, criminals.
And he made this distinction.
This is cut number one.
America proudly welcomes millions of lawful immigrants who enrich our society and contribute to our nation.
But all Americans are hurt by uncontrolled illegal migration.
It strains public resources and drives down jobs and wages.
Among those hardest hit are African Americans and Hispanic Americans.
Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl.
Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90% of which floods across from our southern border.
More Americans will die from drugs this year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War.
It's a problem.
I mean, he's being absolutely direct.
He's being absolutely factual.
There's nothing, there's no panic here.
He's just telling you what is going on.
We all know this has been a problem, and it was a problem way before Donald Trump became president of the United States.
This is a problem.
It goes back to Teddy Kennedy, basically, opening the borders, telling us everything.
You know, the Democrats constantly saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, just give us amnesty now and we'll deal with security later.
And they never did.
I mean, this really goes way back, even to Ronald Reagan, who fell for this.
And finally, he talked about the idea of a wall.
Now, the thing that he's asking for is asking for a lot of humanitarian aid.
He's asking for more money, which is definitely needed for the people who process all these guys coming in.
But he talked about the wall.
And this to me is one of the stupidest Democrat arguments that a wall doesn't work.
You know, there are walls around prisons to keep people out.
There are walls around your house to keep people out.
And here's what Trump had to say about it.
Some have suggested a barrier is immoral.
Then why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences, and gates around their homes?
They don't build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside.
The only thing that is immoral is the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized.
America's heart broke the day after Christmas when a young police officer in California was savagely murdered in cold blood by an illegal alien who just came across the border.
The life of an American hero was stolen by someone who had no right to be in our country.
Now, you know, again, factual, calm, telling you the truth.
People are being killed by illegal aliens.
And it is, you know, how can I put this?
Obviously, any murder is a tragedy.
Anytime someone is taken away, life is ended by violence.
It's an awful, awful thing.
But it does add a certain kind of sharp shock to it when you realize that just by enforcing the laws, just by enforcing the laws, you might not have lost a loved one.
If they had just enforced the laws, that's, you know, really, I think deep down that's all Americans want.
They want to know what the law is and will we enforce it.
And that's the problem.
And it's all Trump is talking about.
Now, you know, some conservatives are saying, well, why didn't he do this before?
I think that's a perfectly good question.
But when he performs like this, this is the time for, I think, conservatives to support this guy.
He is making a rational argument.
He is saying something completely logical, completely necessary.
And I think this is the time to just say, yeah, he should have done it before.
He should have done it when he had both houses.
He didn't.
A lot of that has to do with what was going on in the House.
Never mind, here we are in this fight now.
Politics, smart politics means supporting a president who has been supportive of our agenda, the conservative agenda.
That just seems to me simple, basic, intelligent politics.
So now let's look at the reaction from the Democrats.
I'm hysterical.
I can't stop when I get like this.
I can't stop.
I'm hysterical.
I'm a double-daughter.
All right.
So that's the usual reaction from the Democrats.
Actually, it was hilarious.
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer stood next to each other with these long, grim faces.
They look like that painting, that famous painting, Grant Wood, American Gothic with the guy holding the pitchfork.
This thing went nuts on Twitter.
They were trying, the Huffington Post, I think it was, was trying to say like, oh, the people loved them.
The people loved them.
They looked like, I mean, it's very hard.
It's very hard to respond to the president.
It is very hard to respond to the president.
You know, you remember when they took Marco Rubio apart for drinking water during his speech?
But they're never going to touch these guys.
But let's just look for a minute.
Let's take a look at what Pelosi had to say for a sec.
We all agree we need to secure our borders while honoring our values.
We can build the infrastructure and roads at our ports of entry.
We can install new technology to scan cars and trucks for drugs coming into our nation.
We can hire the personnel we need to facilitate trade and immigration at the border.
We can fund more innovation to detect unauthorized crossings.
The fact is, the women and children at the border are not a security threat.
They are a humanitarian challenge, a challenge that President Trump's own cruel and counterproductive policies have only deepened.
So, you know, give us our voters.
We want our voters and we want to play up to the Hispanic community.
You know, but listen, this is not my problem.
It is not my problem that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are out there selling their side of the story.
There's a left and a right in this country.
They have a right to play to their voters.
If that was all it was, if all we saw on television was Donald Trump making his case and Chuck and Nancy making their case, I would say, all right, well, I disagree with Chuck and Nancy, but fair enough.
You know, they have their voters.
Let them speak to their voters.
Let them argue over the middle and see who convinces whom.
I think yesterday, I think Trump would have been the winner in that debate.
But that is not what bothers me.
It is not a problem that there are two parties.
It is not a problem even that the Democrat Party is being radicalized.
Let them be radicalized.
I think they'll make themselves marginal, but that's just part of the political process.
What is a problem are these massive corporations, ABC, CBS, NBC, the CNNs of the world, the New York Times of the world, their fact-checking was disgraceful.
I mean, here's CNN fact-checking the Democrats.
Hold on one second, because we fact-checked the president.
Let's be fair on both sides.
Did anything stand out to you what we heard from Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer?
I didn't hear any factual errors.
I missed about the first 30 seconds, but the rest of it, you know, it was standard political rhetoric.
And I think the thing about the president that's so different is that in these kinds of addresses that are thoroughly vetted, written by teams of speechwriters, he still will include, you know, 567 misleading, dishonest claims.
Really, this is the kind of thing they were saying.
For instance, Trump would say, well, heroin, 90% of heroin, comes in through the southern border.
And the New York Times would say, yes, but fentanyl comes in from China.
He didn't say fentanyl came in through the southern border.
They're just making stuff up.
I mean, the Times was embarrassing.
Anything they could ding him on, the one thing you could ding him on was that he said Mexico was going to pay for the wall and now it's kind of got, you know, it's got a little bit fuzzy how that's going to work.
He said we'll make the money back in the new NAFTA deal.
Okay, fair enough.
A little bit of political verbiage there.
But really, everything he's saying, what else?
The Washington Post said that Trump said 266,000 aliens were arrested in the past two years.
But that number is misleading.
Why?
Because this figure includes all types of crime.
That's why it's misleading.
I mean, this is what they were saying.
Politico, their fact-check was it's not a crisis because the flow of people are down.
But that's, remember what he said.
He said that it's the flow of families that's up, and that's what constitutes the crisis.
Also, the fact that the flow is down after this has been going on for 10 years, after millions of people have come in and that now 400,000 more are coming in, that's still a problem.
And finally, the New York Times said when Trump said that Chuck Schumer had supported a wall many times, the New York Times says, well, that needs context.
Let's give that some context.
Let's look at what Democrats have been saying about the wall from Cut 10.
Mexico does nothing to enforce its borders.
The bill before us will authorize some badly needed funding for better fences.
I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier.
I don't oppose building a fence where you need to do it, where the border is poorest.
I just don't have a problem with that.
Until the American people are convinced that we will stop future flows of illegal immigration, we will make no progress.
Federal vs. State Sanctuary Policies00:15:02
So, I mean, look, if they reported this factually, and the argument took place, we would just be having the argument.
But instead, you have conservatives are furious because they have this constant barrage of a blanket of corporate misinformation.
It drives them crazy.
It also is conducive to corruption on the left because they know nobody's going to call them out.
They know that they're protected by the press.
It is damaging to the country.
I'm a First Amendment absolutist.
I don't think the government should do anything to fix this.
But again and again, I have to keep saying this, the press, out of pure integrity, should just reform themselves.
I want to end before we're going to get to Jenna Ellis and talk to her about some of the legal aspects of this.
But before I do that, I want to just take a look at this thing that our friends at Campus Reform.
I love these people.
They put out a video where they went out and read to college students things that Democrats had said about immigration, but told them it was Trump saying them.
Then they got the reactions as if they had heard from Trump, and then they told them that it was really Democrats saying it.
Here's just a clip.
It's divisive.
I think America is a land of opportunity, place for inclusion.
I just really think it's kind of hateful speech in general.
It's just a negative message.
Like when he talks about illegal immigrants, it's just one rude, like to talk about people like that kind of underlies a lot of things about like discrimination and people and their prejudices and things like that.
So I feel like that stuff is touchy to talk about.
There are racial biases kind of sort of deep embedded in there.
In a word, I'd say it's more jingoist.
Well, I think his demeanor, it's overall, it's just unacceptable.
I think just the way that he's referring to people across the wall is very dehumanizing.
So rhetoric like that is not helpful?
No, not at all.
What if I told you these were from Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton?
How about that?
Really?
Really?
Oh, wow.
I mean, yeah, Democrats and Republicans have said things about border control.
That's interesting.
I didn't think that.
That's interesting.
Future journalists of America.
If Trump said it, it's mean.
If somebody else said it, it's just interesting.
Trump did a good job last night.
He laid out his proposals.
He explained them.
He did an excellent job of communicating.
The Democrats did what they do.
I thought they whiffed, but like, you make up your own mind.
But it's the press.
The press covered itself in shame.
It has been doing this not just since Trump was elected.
It was doing it when George W. Bush was elected.
It did it when Mitt Romney and John McCain were running for president.
It is just an embarrassment.
It is an embarrassment that these powerful corporations are distorting the news and keeping Americans at daggers drawn, which they would not be if they could simply discuss the issues among themselves.
Jenna Ellis, I don't have to introduce Jenna Ellis.
At this point, she's part of the family, but I will anyway.
She's a director of the Dobson Policy Center and a contributor to the Daily Wire and the Washington Examiner and the excellent federalist.
Her book is The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution: A Guide for Christians to Understand America's Current Constitutional Crisis.
How are you doing, Jenna?
I'm great, Drew.
Glad to see that you still have the Ted Cruz beard in your hands.
Ted Cruz has the Andrew Clavin beard.
I'm sorry.
I just true.
Yes.
In the Twitter poll, I think it got a 79% approval rating.
So that was a really great thing.
That's why I die.
I'm just governed by popular opinion.
So one thing that Trump didn't do last night is he didn't declare an emergency.
Sources say he's still out about that.
I was kind of glad he didn't.
What's your take?
I've heard legal scholars say that he won't get away with it, declaring an emergency and just spending the money.
What's your take about it?
Well, I agree with you that I think it's a good call right now that he hasn't declared a national emergency, but he absolutely could.
And the difference right now in our court system between whether or not someone in Congress or the executive branch is actually able to use their constitutionally vested powers depends on an activist court.
And we've seen that over and over and over again.
And so this really, the bottom line to this is not whether or not President Trump actually has that power, but whether or not an activist court, especially in the Ninth Circuit, is going to try to stop it.
But eventually that would get to the Supreme Court, would it not?
I mean, it's, and John Roberts has always been kind of pro-executive power, although he did slap at Trump when Trump talked about an Obama judge.
Yeah, and I think it will go to the Supreme Court.
And what will be interesting is to see if the kind of vitriolic messaging between Justice Roberts and Trump and that relationship will kind of override Justice Roberts' just opinion and his faithfulness to originalism.
I think that we saw that with the Obamacare decision in terms of siding more with liberals on that.
And so it'll be interesting to see what Justice Roberts does.
But if we're looking at just a faithful application of the Constitution, the rule of law, and all of the delegation that Congress has provided to the president, and that's the president, regardless of whether that's Obama or Trump.
In 1983, the Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision actually held that where Congress delegates authority to the executive, they can't try to then block the policy that is enacted and the actions undertaken just because they don't like how a president acts in furtherance to that delegation of authority.
And so what we're seeing is that the Democrats really, and their messaging last night was so evidential of this, that they just don't like Trump, but the policy and how he decides to use his powers is why we have elections.
And he is the president, regardless of whether people, you know, hashtag not my president.
So answer me this too, because this is something I'm really confused about.
Yesterday, I think it was, the new governor of California, Gavin Newsom, said, we are now going to be a sanctuary state.
All are welcome.
In New York, the mayor of New York City says they're going to give free health care to everybody regardless of their status.
If the federal law is that people who come in here illegally can be deported, why can a state say that this is a sanctuary?
Why are they, I mean, if, for instance, a state said, well, we're not going to have gay marriage in our state, we're not going to recognize it.
We're not going to permit it.
The law would come in and say, no, you have to.
It is now federal law because of the Supreme Court decision that this is a right that gay people have.
They couldn't disobey that.
Why should California be allowed to disobey federal law?
Well, so this goes into a separation of powers question that isn't just a separation on the federal level between the three branches of government, but a separation horizontally as well between the federal, the state government, and by the way, the individuals.
We always forget that part, that there's also powers not given to the state or the federal government that are reserved to the individual.
But the Obergefell decision actually was completely unconstitutional because defining marriage is actually given to the states, where sanctuary city policy goes directly against the Constitutional's vestment in Article 1, Section 8 of immigration rules and legislation to the federal government.
So it becomes a difference of whether or not this is a state versus a federal question.
And marriage issues, health care issues, education issues, so many things that the federal government has stepped into actually do belong to the states.
So on the state funding of health care, states can choose to spend money, their own money, however they choose, unless there is a competent constitutional law to the contrary.
If they start spending federal money, they would probably risk losing it.
But sanctuary city policy goes directly against the federal government's vested power to determine immigration policy.
So that's why that is unconstitutional.
But probably spending state money on health care would not run afoul of the Constitution.
Is there any remedy that the federal government has when California says we're now a sanctuary state or a city says we're now a sanctuary city?
Is there anything the federal government, I mean, they're not going to come in, I assume, and arrest the governor.
What?
Are they helpless?
Well, no.
I mean, and this is why the sanctuary cities and that whole issue needs to go before the Supreme Court.
And we need to argue the separation of powers and say this is a federal government question.
And also Congress needs to legislate.
I mean, here we have President Trump, who is really the only one that is caring about comprehensive immigration reform, not just on a national emergency imminency question, but providing for the rule of law comprehensively to address these questions that we've all been talking about for over a decade.
And so Congress is really the one that needs to act.
They need to have a clear federal law that is against sanctuary city policy.
And even if that's challenged in court, we do have a conservative majority that hopefully will faithfully apply the Constitution and say states, no, you can't.
And then that way hold them in some kind of contempt, foreclose federal dollars for sanctuary cities.
I mean, there are other remedies that are punitive and that can force the states to comply with federal law.
That's the design of separation of powers.
And that's why the Constitution provides certain powers to the federal government that are good for the general welfare, meaning the entire nation.
Because if California allows a sanctuary city, that's going to affect me in Colorado.
That's going to affect people in any other state.
Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Jenna, it's always great to see you.
Thank you very much.
That was really clarifying.
I appreciate it.
Thanks, Drew.
Great to see you.
I'll see you soon.
All right.
Sounds good.
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Mailbag.
We only play that because we hope it causes car accidents.
From Craig, dear knower of all things culture, how do we make personal responsibility cool again and respectable again?
I see so many people that want to blame everyone else for their bad decisions.
My opinion is that when you're 18 and you're making your own decisions, you have to deal with the repercussions.
I look forward to hearing your answer.
Thank you, sir.
You know, let's not get too romantic about the past.
Taking responsibility for yourself is like forgiveness.
It's something that everybody's in favor of until they have to do it themselves, you know.
The problems we have in this country are that government has been very good at cushioning people from the effects of their own actions.
And that's a very comfortable situation for people to be in.
You know, we have, I mean, I keep bringing this up, and one day I'll bring in an expert to talk about it.
Some of the things that have happened since the Great Society, the Great Society was this absolute outpouring of government largesse for people in theoretically in need, for people in poverty.
Since that time, the statistical poverty rate has not changed at all.
The same number of people are in poverty, but poverty is not poverty anymore because of these government transfers.
People get enough money from the government to not feel the effects of poverty the way they would if they were left on their own.
So essentially what you have is poverty being eliminated by government transfers, but it also eliminates the need for work.
And that's why you have so many people who are on welfare who don't work, who don't feel that they need to work.
Under Clinton, because of Newt Gingrich in the Republican Congress, there was welfare reform that upped the work requirements and therefore upped the kind of responsibility that people have for themselves.
Barack Obama basically destroyed that very quietly under the radar, kind of destroyed that.
And so it becomes profitable to be on welfare again, to be taken care of instead of taking care of yourself.
All of which is to say, people respond to stimulus.
The people who on their own take responsibility for themselves are the few and the far between and usually the very successful.
A person who says, I made a mistake, it's my business, I'm going to eat the consequences and then I'm going to learn from it and go forward.
That's the guy who usually makes it in life.
And he's the guy who says, well, everybody should do this, but he doesn't understand that he is actually the exception, not the rule.
Most people respond to stimulus.
And so if you want to make personal responsibility cool, you'll never make it cool because nobody wants to do it when it comes to them.
You can make it sound cool, but the minute it comes to them, it's like, you know, help me out.
It's like a kid.
It's like the kid who wants to borrow dad's car.
It's like, dad, I'm big enough and old enough to drive the car myself.
Then when he dings the car, it's like, dad, can you pay for the ding in my car?
That's the way most people behave.
So what you need is systems that basically say, yes, you know, government will help you out, but only so far and only if you do this, this, and this.
And those are the kinds of things, this kind of stimulus that make people take care of themselves.
As long as they know, as long as people know that they are not going to be punished for their own decisions, as long as they know that they can kill the baby they had because they didn't take care to use birth control or because they didn't take care to stay abstinent, they're going to be irresponsible.
People respond to stimulus.
That's the way it is.
And I don't think there's anything you can do culturally to change that except preach it openly and point out the fact that the successful people almost always are the people who take responsibility for themselves, the people who go up the ladder are.
From Leslie, let wisdom reign.
You've been promoting your upcoming book, Another Kingdom.
Is there a difference between the book and the podcast of it, such as extra scenes, content, more words?
Yeah, you know, first of all, I had a chance to rework Another Kingdom after the first, especially after the first podcast.
There are some things I fixed.
It's not a big difference.
Praying and Pre-Ordering00:09:53
If you order it, if you order it from the publisher, if you buy it on, pre-order it on Amazon, you will be able to get all kinds of goodies, including a prequel that I wrote myself that has never been published anywhere else.
And you can get that exclusively.
Buy it, pre-order it on Amazon, and then in a week or so, they will set up a way that you can just save the email showing that you pre-ordered it on Amazon.
And I'll show you in a week or two how to get all the goodies that they have.
So there's a lot of extra content, a video, they've got maps, they've got things you can put on your phone.
They've got a lot of gifts that you can get if you pre-order the book.
So please go on and pre-order it.
Also, if you can afford it, pre-order it just to support the book.
It would be really helpful.
The book is, I think it's really powerful to have an actual book.
Knowles is going to do the audio book.
You can pre-order that as well.
And so it's just really helpful to have that support and to push the book up the list, which helps to sell it to people who are not listeners and who don't know who I am and don't know the book is coming.
From Kristen, can you talk about your approach to prayer?
Do you treat it as meditation?
Pardon me.
Are you listening for an answer?
In what form?
Do you tell God all your problems or the problems of people you love?
I was raised Catholic and I'm in the process of recovering my faith, but I feel like I never learned the mechanics of how to pray.
You know, you might want to look at my book, The Great Good Thing.
I do talk about how I first started to pray and I just tried everything.
Like, can you pray for a new car?
Can you pray to win a million dollars?
What can you pray for?
What are you allowed to pray for?
My feeling is this.
You are in a conversation and a relationship with God.
God is God.
You are you, but you are in a conversation and a relationship.
I would bring to God anything that you would bring into a relationship that you want to discuss or that bothers you.
Obviously, you're talking to someone from whom no secrets are hid, as we say in the church.
And so there's no point in lying.
There's no point in being pious.
There's no point in pretending you're any better than you are.
You don't have to confess every minute that you're talking, but just simply talk in the most honest possible way.
Maybe there's something you want that you feel that you shouldn't want.
Maybe there's something you've done that you feel guilty about.
Maybe there's something you've done that you shouldn't have done, but you feel good about it.
Whatever it is, there's just no point in lying.
So I don't listen to anybody about this.
I don't listen to anybody telling me what I can pray for, what I should pray for, what they think God wants, what they think.
I don't listen to anybody.
I just do it.
Now, added to prayer, I think this is really important.
I do a lot of reading of the Bible, especially of the Gospels, but a lot of reading of the Bible and a lot of reading of people that I consider wise talking about God so that I don't confuse God with other things that happen to be in my mind.
One of the first things you're going to find as you start to pray is that other images of God get in the way.
Maybe it's your father.
Maybe it's your mother.
Maybe it's some guilt that you feel about something that you think is coming from God, but is really just coming from you and your past.
Whenever I feel myself raking myself over the coals for something that I did wrong, I know that's my voice, not God's.
God wants you to recognize when you do something wrong.
He doesn't want you to torture yourself.
That is the other side.
That's why they call Satan the accuser when you start to do that.
So you want to make sure part of prayer, I think, part of prayer is clarifying that you are reaching God.
And yes, you do get answers.
The answers sometimes come as clearly as if a voice had spoken them in your head.
I don't hear voices, but sometimes it is as clear as that.
Sometimes you simply wake up the next morning and you find that you now know the answer and you can bet that it comes from above.
I don't treat it as meditation.
Meditation to me is a silent pursuit.
I speak out loud.
I go into a place where I know nobody's listening in on me and I speak out loud so that I'm using clear sentences so I can hear what I'm saying so I'm thinking as clearly as possible.
And that's the way I have found it is the best way to pray.
I hope that's helpful.
Okay, from Richard.
You may have answered this question before.
Why do leftists get so angry when challenged by conservatives?
It seems rational discussion with a person who has leftist views is almost impossible.
Could it be that they know their positions are unworkable?
You know, I personally think that the left, because their positions have been shown wrong, I mean, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, almost all of their positions have been shown wrong.
The damage that socialism has done to the economies of places like England and France, that it's still doing to places like France, has just shown them to be wrong in every possible way.
But because of that, I think a lot of their leaders have attached leftism to morality and righteousness.
And so we on the right want to be left alone to be free.
And then when you act freely, then you have to deal with morality and what you're doing and whether it's right.
And we feel that that should come from our associations, from our religion, from our God, from our friends, from our relations who help us find the way forward and do what's right.
What the left has done is they have conflated their righteousness with their politics.
If you were righteous, you would be for health care for all.
Well, I can think of a million reasons why I'm not for health care for all and I don't think it's righteous.
But you could argue that it was more effective.
You could argue that it was more American.
You could argue that it was better, it would have better outcomes.
But it doesn't make you more righteous to vote for that.
And so when you argue, I have found this repeatedly, when you argue with a leftist, you are not just challenging their policies, you are also challenging their virtue.
And I believe that even more than sex, even more than greed, the sense of yourself as a virtuous person is one of the prime motivations of life.
Why?
Because none of us is virtuous, not no, not one.
All of us are sinful, all of us are broken, and all of us want to protect ourselves from the feeling of shame.
And we do that by cloaking ourselves in virtue.
If you listen to the way people talk, really listen to it, listen to your friends, not just people on TV, listen to your friends and your relations.
I would say like 75% of what they say is meant to convey to you that they're a good person.
They're not.
You're not.
None of us is.
Once you accept that, you don't have to get angry when people challenge your policies.
You only have to argue about policy.
But if your virtue is tied up in your politics, you get very angry when people challenge it.
From Noah, hi, Andrew.
I just finished listening to your Bishop and Weiss detective novel series.
I'm curious, how did Weiss and Bishop end up?
Did Weiss ever get married?
Did Bishop continue working for Weiss?
You know what?
The books, they live entirely in those books.
Anything that happens to them outside of those books happens in your imagination, so you figure it out.
From Matthew, I love your show and the insights you have to offer.
What's your favorite song and why?
You know, I don't have a favorite song.
I have many songs that I love.
I love the American songbook.
I love the lyrics of Cole Porter and the Gershwins and All of those, Johnny Mercer, all those people, the songs that are typically associated with Frank Sinatra and those guys.
That's the kind of music that I absolutely love.
I find that music since then, the lyrics are not as good.
The simplicity and poetry of them is not as good.
The kinds of songs I tend to like tend to be a little bit melancholy.
I've always, I've said this, I'm sure, a lot.
I have always found life to be very beautiful and very sad at the same time.
And when a song conveys that, I love it.
So I think of songs like The Autumn Leaves, if you've ever heard that, I think that's Johnny Mercer.
Every time we say goodbye, which I believe, I'm talking off the top of my head here now, but I believe that's Cole Porter.
I'll be seeing you, songs like that that are very beautiful and yet very kind of melancholy.
Those are the songs that really always appeal to me.
Let me do one more before I run out.
Well, here's one is from John.
What do you think of Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin's idea to create a donation subscription platform like Patreon where nobody gets kicked off for being conservative?
I think it's a great idea.
I think people should definitely be doing, creating these things ourselves.
We should stop waiting for the left to do these things and kind of reform themselves and stop censoring us and we should take over and do this stuff ourselves.
I think it's just so, so important.
Let me see if I can find this one other one I wanted to get.
Yeah, here it is.
From Noah.
I've been recently, I've been interested in writing and I was listening to Stephen King's on writing, which is a really good book, by the way, in which he says that he doesn't overly pre-plan a story in terms of theme, plot, and the like, whereas I talk about heavily outlining things and thinking things through and doing character studies, which of these is the right way to go or is just the way you work best.
Yes, I think it is just the way you work best.
I love to plan things out because it leaves me free to just do the writing that I want to do.
There are some writers, including Stephen King, Ruth Rendell, who I think recently died.
She was a wonderful mystery writer.
She wrote some spectacular mysteries under the name Barbara Vine, which I think was actually her real name.
And she said she never outlined anything.
She just wrote, started, sat down and wrote and finished.
She used to write like a book every three, four months.
It was amazing.
And they were such high quality books.
Here is what I have found that, I mean, Stephen King is such a wonderful storyteller that his stories just grab you and take you in.
Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell, excellent mystery writer.
One of the things I found is that people who don't outline repeat themselves a lot because people only have naturally a certain number of stories to tell.
I find that by outlining, I can say, oh, I've told this story already.
I'm going to tell a different one.
I'm going to change this before.
I've used that technique before.
I'm not going to do it again.
I can plan it out.
When you write naturally without outlining, I think you tend to go back to the well a lot.
Ed Buck's Dilemma00:04:09
So that's something I have found.
I have found like the stories of even writers I admire, like King and Ruth Rendell, sometimes they get kind of repetitive and they tell the same story again.
I think outlining helps with that.
But who can knock the success, not just commercially, but the success artistically of guys like Stephen King and Barbara Vine?
I would never do it.
So it's really what works for you.
I got to end with this story that has been bugging the hell out of me.
It's a little bit of a grim story to end with, but it has been in my mind for a long time since the first time it came up.
And now it's come back again.
And I don't think I mentioned it before.
It's happening here in LA.
A big-time Democrat donor, Ed Buck, a white guy in his 60s, for the second time, has had a homeless black man die in his home of a drug overdose.
The first time, it was a guy named Gemel Moore, Jemel Moore, who died of a meth overdose in his home in July of 2017.
And now it has happened again.
And a lot of the advocates for gay people are saying, you know, this guy haunts the streets.
He finds homeless or poor black people.
And he gets his kicks by addicting them to meth.
And that is what has resulted in these people's death.
Now, the first time this happened, nobody, they investigated, but nobody was prosecuted for it.
This is a guy who has paid, given over more than $500,000 to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the mayor, Eric Garcetti.
I know that, what's his name, Adam Schiff, my congressman in West Hollywood.
He hangs out with them a lot.
And look, I'm not accusing him.
I'm just saying.
All I'm saying is that a black homeless guy who sells his body, who has to sell his body, is surely among the least of us.
He is surely somebody to whom we are responsible, not to approve of his life, not to, you know, set aside our moral feelings or anything like that, but to give him justice.
This is a guy who is completely outside of the health and wealth of our community.
And some of the stuff that came out about this first guy who died, Gemmo Moore, he had a diary that he kept, a journal, and it is said that he wrote in this journal, I've become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that.
Ed Buck is the one to thank.
He gave me my first injection of crystal meth.
He says, I just hope, this is what Moore said.
He said, I just hope the end result isn't death.
If it didn't hurt so bad, I'd kill myself.
But I'll let Ed Buck do it for now.
And he ended up dead in Ed Buck's house.
This is the city of Harvey Weinstein, where everybody turned their eyes away while Weinstein abused women and men because he was a powerful, wealthy Democrat donor.
There can be no doubt that that is part of why Harvey Weinstein skated for so long.
This guy, Ed Buck, again, I'm not accusing him.
I'm just saying that the city should investigate.
They should make sure that justice is being done here for these people who are so, you know, they're so helpless, so outside of the realm of power.
You know, it may not be very often that my interests and the interests of a left-wing gay magazine like The Advocate intersect, but they do intersect here.
Let's remember, these are Democrats, these people in LA and Hollywood, these are the people who are lecturing us about Donald Trump all the time.
If a homeless black guy has been treated in such a way that resulted in his death and nobody pays because the guy responsible gives a lot of money to the Democrat Party, you're answerable for that.
You will be answerable for it here and you will be answerable for it elsewhere.
These guys, these homeless black guys who end up dead, they deserve justice.
They should get justice.
Really, really important and should be important both to the left and to the right.
All right, we will be back tomorrow for the final day of the Clavin Week, which means you're hurtling headlong into the Clavinless weekend.
You do not want to miss a moment of Clavin-y goodness be there.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
Andrew Klavan Show Introduction00:00:48
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Adam Sayovitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, President Trump gives his primetime address on the border.
Schumer and Pelosi respond by telling you to take out the garbage.
And Jim Acosta of CNN journalism is all over everything.