Ben Shapiro’s Young, Radical, Stupid, Vicious skewers MLK Day hypocrisy—Don Lemon mocking King’s dream while Bernie Sanders repackages redistribution as morality—before framing modern leftist policies like reparations and transgender mandates as Quixotic delusions. Legal expert Janet Ellis warns the Federal Fairness for All Act would force public spaces to accept biological men in women’s shelters, calling it a First Amendment violation, while Leo Lesser exposes PayPal and Patreon’s alleged antitrust collusion to crush Subscribestar after deplatforming Sargon of Akkad. The episode ties corporate censorship to government overreach, arguing both suppress dissent under the guise of progress. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, yesterday was Martin Luther King Day and left-wing politicians and commentators fanned out around the nation to pay homage to the civil rights leader by promising to violate all his most deeply held beliefs.
In a speech to the National Association of Hate-Filled Scum for a Better Tomorrow, CNN's Don Lemon told the bloodthirsty crowd, quote, Martin Luther King had a dream that his children would live in a nation where they would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
And we must honor Dr. King's memory by making sure that nation is not the United States of America.
Here in America, we want to end the demonization of black people by learning to demonize white people so that we can bring racism to an end by continuing it forever.
Only then will Dr. King's dream come true by remaining false so that America can rise above the hatred of the past by sinking into the hatred of the future, unquote.
Possible Democrat presidential candidate and raving communist knucklehead Bernie Sanders delivered his MLK speech to a gathering of Our Lives Matter, but yours don't, saying, quote, Martin Luther King said, hate cannot drive out hate.
Only love can do that.
And I want to ensure we remember those words by completely forgetting them.
After all, if I can't get you to hate the people who make a lot of money in this country, then how can I convince you that stealing that money at gunpoint somehow suddenly becomes moral when we all do it together?
In fact, if I can't gin up mindless hatred by talking economic nonsense in a forceful voice full of conviction, you might begin to examine my actual ideas, and then I'm toast, unquote.
Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren also paid tribute to Dr. King by performing a Native American dance next to King's grave in the hopes he would stop rolling over in it.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky donkey, life is tickety boom.
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Ship-shaped dipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
You know, one of the things that made our founding fathers so great at founding stuff was their almost complete lack of idealism.
They had ideals.
They believed that government should be instituted among men to ensure their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But they were not idealists.
They understood that people in government could not be trusted to actually pursue those goals.
They knew that people are power-hungry, greedy, vicious, and generally stupid.
And so they built a system that would pit various power centers and interest groups against each other in the hopes that they'd all be so busy beating the crap out of one another, they would leave the people alone.
Thus, we would be able to preserve that precious liberty that A, ennobles human life and which B, nobody wants if they can get free stuff instead.
For more than 200 years, the founder's spirit of practical down-to-earth cynicism about human nature has slowed the natural tendency of government and government leaders to devour every right and resource they can get their grubby, stinky little hands on.
But at last, that system has made us so rich and so safe, so free and so protected from the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to that we have managed to raise a generation with no sense of realism whatsoever.
They are bright-eyed, attractive, idealistic, utterly ignorant, and support an idiot philosophy that has the potential to destroy every good thing this country has created, including the wealth and power that protects them from the consequences of their own stupid ideas.
It will be the political job of a new generation of cynical, nasty, unappealing conservatives to politically crush these lovable morons, and the time to get started is right now.
Revolution In Furniture Shopping00:02:08
First, however, we should talk about Joybird.
This is like a revolution in furniture shopping.
This is an online furniture shopping.
I have tried it.
I got a chair.
They believe that Joybird believes that you should never settle when it comes to your home furnishing, but should get the kind of things you want.
Now, I love my house.
I have a beautiful house.
Moving to LA, one of my consolations for having to move to LA from Santa Barbara, which was paradise, was having a lovely house.
And Joybird sends this incredibly great furniture that lets you turn your ideas into reality with hundreds of styles and options.
They have mid-century modern, contemporary classics, all of it customizable in an amazing array of fabric choices.
They have a wide range of kid and pet-friendly upholstery options available.
And each Joybird piece is made by hand with care and precision using high-quality hardwood and responsibly sourced materials to fit your exact specifications.
Plus, a limited lifetime warranty is included.
See how Joybird is revolutionizing online furniture shopping?
Create the furniture that brings you joy, that brings you joy today at joybird.com/slash Clavin.
Go to joybird.com/slash Clavin and receive an exclusive offer for 25% off your first order by using the code Clavin.
You will look at this furniture and you'll go, wow, how do you spell Clavin?
K-L-A-V-A-N.
Also, please go on to Amazon and order the novel of Another Kingdom or the Audible book starring Michael Knowles.
It's available now.
And if you save the receipt, you will also get free gifts.
I will tell you how to do that later.
But please do go on and order it.
It really will help with the entire trilogy.
You know, speaking of novels, I've reached this point in life when I'm rereading the classics.
You know, I've gone back and I'm looking at the books that I read when I knew nothing.
And I want to reread them and see what they're like now that I know everything that there is to know, as those of you who listen to this podcast understand.
And I'm rereading now, I'm rereading Don Quixote, which is one of the greatest of all novels, if not certainly among the greatest of all novels.
Crafting a Just State00:14:30
And obviously, you probably know the story.
Don Quixote is this guy who reads a lot of chivalric novels and he finally goes nuts and starts to believe that he's a knight living in a chivalric novel and whatever he sees he turns into part of his story.
So if he sees a windmill, he thinks it's a giant and he fights with windmills, etc.
And a lot of people know this.
A lot of Americans know this from the Man of La Mancha, which is the musical, a very good musical.
But the Man of La Mancha is essentially a liberal musical in the following sense.
It essentially postulates that by seeing the world incorrectly, Don Quixote ennobles the world, that his vision lifts the world to a higher plane.
So when he sees a kitchen slut named Aldonza and he calls her the Lady Dulcinea, this somehow uplifts Aldanza to strive toward being the Lady Dulcinea.
But the novel is not like that at all.
That's a very American left-wing version of this story.
The novel is not like that at all.
In the novel, Don Quixote is just a crazy man, and the fact that he sees the world wrongly gets him and everybody around him into terrible trouble.
It's not that his values, his chivalric values are wrong.
It's the idea that he's living in the world that in the world of chivalry.
It's the idea that he sees the world wrongly.
It's not that he's wrong to have values.
It's that he's wrong to see the world as a place where those values can be put into operation in a useful way.
That is the left today.
It's not their values.
It's not that they want equality.
It's not that they want people to have health care.
It is the fact that they do not understand how the world works and what people are like.
They think that by moving all the power and all the money to government, suddenly everything's going to become fair.
And it doesn't occur to them to look around and see, oh, all of history tells me that's not true.
Why?
Because human nature.
Has human nature changed since it began?
Never.
Not once, not a little, not even this much.
It has sometimes been shaped by good philosophies like Christianity and sometimes been marred by bad philosophies like socialism, but it has not changed at all.
So yesterday, in honor of Martin Luther King Day, I saw the leftists going about honoring Martin Luther King.
And for me, a leftist honoring Martin Luther King is like a bigot honoring Jesus.
It's like those guys, you know, like the Ku Klux Klan or whatever, who go out and they say, you know, Jesus, we want Christianity, we want white Christian culture.
And you go, well, wait, you can't have that.
That's actually a contradiction in terms.
You can't have white Christian culture.
You can only have universal Christian culture because that is one of the ideas of Christian culture.
And so when I see these people going out and saying, you know, we need to honor Martin Luther King by having affirmative action or by treating black people differently than white people, I think, wait a minute, wait a minute.
That may not be as hateful as the Klan, obviously, but it's still really, really dumb.
So the smartest thing, the smartest thing I saw, let me begin with this.
The smartest thing I saw yesterday was the actor from Black Klansman, John David Washington, a talented actor.
I told you what I thought about the movie, good movie ruined by Spike Lee's fury at Donald Trump.
But Washington is, John David Washington is the son of Denzel Washington, and he was on TV and they asked him, well, they asked him this.
Here it is.
Dr. King would have been 90 years old this year.
What specifically in his message do you think is most relevant today, the times in which we find ourselves?
You know, content of character, not color.
You know, I think, again, this continued to speak inclusion and community and evolving of self and spirituality and philosophies.
I just really feel that he was all about bringing people together and finding a common language of coexistence.
Now, you think about that, and I agree with all of that, and I don't know anything about John Washington's politics or his point of view.
I'm just talking about what he said right there.
First, if you talk about inclusion, that assumes that there's something worth being included in.
It was a sin when black people were excluded from the American idea and from the American way of life.
That was a genuine wrong and a genuine sin.
But to want them to be included includes the idea that what they were being excluded from was worthwhile.
The American way of life was worthwhile.
And the sin was that we were excluding people on the basis of their skin color, which is just plain wrong and against the American way of life.
It is against the American philosophy.
So to say we must look past skin color and look beyond any kind of tribal glitches that are in the human mind and include people is to also say that this system is worth being included in.
This is as opposed to an interview between two people whose philosophies I disagree with very strongly, Tana Hisi Coates, the writer, and Alexandria, Occasional Cortex, or Occasion Cortez.
I call her that because she's an ignoramus.
I don't think she's stupid, but she knows nothing.
So they had a conversation at this kind of left-wing event called the MLK Now meeting.
And you know it's a left-wing event because it was hosted by Jameli Hill, the ESPN reporter who had to leave ESPNF.
She called Donald Trump a white supremacist.
The point to me being not that she isn't allowed to think Trump is a white supremacist, although that's nonsense, but why wasn't she talking about sports?
I'm going to get to that interview, which really was amazing in just a moment.
But first, let me talk about Lightstream.
You know, we all do this.
We spend money with our credit cards without really acknowledging that it is in fact money.
It is actually money on those credit cards.
And then one day, after the holidays or whatever, the bill comes due and you look at it and you think, oh, no.
and then you're in debt to a credit card company that can charge you rates, really high rates, I mean usurious rates.
But if you go on Lightstream, you can get a really good rate, a rate as low as 6.14% APR with autopay and get a loan to pay off the credit card debt, a credit card consolidation loan from Lightstream.
I have gone on their website.
I have tried it.
It is so easy to use.
You can get a loan from $5,000 to $100,000 and even get your money as soon as the day you apply.
The application is 100% online.
There are no fees.
And my listeners can save even more with an additional interest rate discount.
The only way to get this discount is to go to lightstream.com slash Andrew.
That is L-I-G-H-T-S-T-R-E-A-M dot com slash Andrew.
This is subject to credit approval.
Rate includes 0.50% autopay discount.
Terms and conditions apply and offers are subject to change without notice.
Visit lightstream.com slash Andrew for more information.
So let's take a look at this just to examine the philosophy of these people who aren't thinking clearly.
It's not that they're evil, although I think some of the results of their ideas would be evil.
One of the things that Tanahisi Coates believes in very strongly is reparations for black people, which is an injustice.
It is an inherent injustice.
It is immoral to ask people who did nothing to pay people who suffered, who did not suffer the crime that you are repairing them for, that you are giving them reparations for.
Coates' idea is that bigotry has deprived them of economic value so that we have to pay them, the country has to pay them that economic value back.
He doesn't seem to notice the fact that we have never done that with other people who suffered bigotry, like the Jews, like the Irish, like the Italian.
They all suffered bigotry.
And yet, those people moved forward.
Why?
Because they weren't treated any differently than anybody else.
It took a longer time for America to get the message, which they had to get, that black people too have to be treated like everybody else.
But once they get that message, you should not need reparations to move forward.
So listen to this question that he asks AOC about racism and reparations.
Let's cut one.
You find people who are very aggressive about defending the state as an actor, as an evener in their lives, but don't want certain other people to actually have access to those benefits.
And so I wonder, it strikes me that the task of the movement today, and people are actively trying to tackle this, is to craft one that argues for a better world, that argues for a state that actually does try to make for just outcomes, but not just outcomes for certain people.
How do we escape, for instance, the perils of what overtook us during the New Deal, which actually in many cases opened up a wealth gap as much as it made for our middle class?
How do we forge that strategy?
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I think the first thing that we need to do is realize that there's a balance between this more universal struggle for racial, social, and economic dignity, but at the same time, not erasing the individual stories of different communities.
Now, Tanya Keese Coates is not a dumb guy, and AOC really is just a buffoon.
She really doesn't know what she's talking about.
But he starts out talking about there are some people who believe that the state should redistribute wealth, but they don't want it redistributed to certain people by which I guess he meant people of color.
First of all, he's right about that.
There are such people, but they're not talking sense.
So that's not a license for him to talk nonsense.
If the state should be redistributing wealth, which means stealing money from people who earned it, and decreeing that the state now has the power to figure out where to spend that, who to give that money to, which I believe is wrong, inherently wrong, then it should be given to everybody.
Of course, it should be given to people of all colors.
But then he goes on to say that we get in this situation like the New Deal, which actually increased disparity of wealth.
And that, of course, is what socialism always does.
That is what government redistribution always does.
Why?
Because they say they're going to go after the billionaires, but the billionaires can always avoid taxes.
So then eventually they go after people who sound like they're rich to people who have less money.
So I've heard Hillary Clinton say, people who earn over $250,000.
Well, let me tell you something.
You live in New York City, you live in LA, $250,000, you have two kids, that's middle class.
I know it sounds like a lot of money if you're living out somewhere where everything is cheaper and you're making $50,000 and you're living a good life, but there are different situations in different places.
So that is not rich.
I mean, somebody who's making that money still has to work, which is what I consider to be rich is when you never have to work again.
The billionaires always get away.
And what happens in socialism is the middle class disappears.
And then you have the powerful and the rich who become the same people because the way you get rich under socialism is knowing the powerful.
And then you have the poor who keep getting told, hey, it's great because your health care is free.
I mean, just look at Cuba.
It could be Cuba.
You could have health care there.
Yeah, it's 1920s healthcare, but it's free.
And that is the mistake he's making even as he speaks.
Her answer, her answer, what she essentially says is we need to get beyond racism, but we still need to think of ourselves in terms of race.
That's what she says.
And it's an amazing thing, this kind of wealth of ignorance that she brings to the political field that has made her a star.
It is the ignorance, which becomes viciousness after a while, that makes her a star.
You know, she had this moment with Stephen Colbert, where she's on with Colbert.
Well, listen to what he says to her.
For you and some other freshman members of Congress, you're getting a fair amount of pushback privately and publicly from more established members of even your own party saying, wait your turn.
You know, go slow.
Don't ask for so much so fast right now.
You're new.
Wait your turn for everything and don't make waves.
Now, I want to ask this question in a respectful manner, knowing also that you're from Queens.
So you'll understand this question.
On a scale of zero to some, how many do you give?
I think it's zero.
I'm sure that's right.
I mean, what we need is a comedian and a woman who knows nothing and cannot think straight running the country.
That's what we need.
You know, Stephen Colbert has really become kind of a boil on the public conversation because if that's a little mixed metaphor.
But the thing is, you know, he had Kirsten Gillibrand on and he holds her hand and how is she going to save it?
You know, Kirsten Gillibrand is an Albany hack.
That's who she is.
She's an Albany hack who changes her opinion with the wind.
She comes out of Albany, which is one of the most corrupt political cultures in America.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
He doesn't know who he's talking to.
And the same thing is true with her.
Does it occur to him to ask why CBS, a huge corporation, is allowing them to go on there and tout socialism?
Because CBS knows that the rich benefit under socialism because they're the people who know power until the system collapses and then everybody loses everything.
Just demonstrating, just demonstrating that idealism, which is always held up to young people as a good, is in fact the path to viciousness.
By the way, this is true for right-wingers too.
When we talk about the borders and you got people who won't vote for anything unless they get exactly what they want, that kind of idealism is stupid too.
Politics in a democratic society works by compromise where everybody gets something and everybody loses something.
Idealism is what has gotten us to this stalemate, this stagnation.
Idealism is not a good thing.
It is almost always the result of ignorance about how things work.
Ideals, obviously good.
We should be moving toward ideals, but we move toward ideals in a world, in the world as it is.
And in that world, we know that it's the rich people who create wealth.
It's the rich people who hire other people and create jobs.
And it's the government, when you centralize power in the government, you just create evil because people, when they get power, just want more power.
Never, ever works.
It has never worked anywhere.
That's why they always talk about Scandinavia.
We need socialism like in Scandinavia because nobody knows what the hell is going on in Scandinavia.
Fairness Act Controversy00:16:43
Let me talk about Bowl and Branch Sheets.
You know, I love my Bowl and Branch sheets because I'm awake all night.
I never sleep, and therefore I need incredibly comfortable sheets.
They want me to tell you that bowl and branch sheets are so comfortable, they will help you sleep.
How would I know?
I have no idea.
I lie on those sheets and I think, wow, I'm so glad I have such attractive comfortable sheets because I'm awake.
I am awake to know those sheets all night long.
You know, what makes them unique is that each sheet is crafted from 100% organic cotton.
That means bull and branch sheets not only feel incredible, they also look amazing.
And since Bowl and Branch sells exclusively online, you don't pay that expensive retail market.
That's half the price for twice the quality.
Try them for 30 nights and see for yourself.
If you're not impressed, you can return them.
You will get a full refund.
Go to bullandbranch.com today and you'll get 50 bucks off your first set of sheets plus free shipping in the U.S. when you use the promo code Clavin.
That's 50 bucks off plus free U.S. shipping right now at bullandbranch.com, spelled B-O-L-L and branch.com, promo code Clavin, Bolandbranch.com, promo code Clavin for $50 off.
You will love them as you lie awake asking yourself the big questions like, how do you spell Clavin?
It's K- Am I ever going to get tired of this joke?
No, never.
Thank you.
I just wanted to make sure.
K-L-A-V-A-N.
We have the wonderful.
Janet Ellis, I'm tired of introducing you.
It's like, you know, it's like introducing part of the family at this point.
What's the name of it?
It's the Dobson, what's it called?
The Dobson Policy Center.
Dobson Policy Center.
She is, of course, a constitutional lawyer.
We bring her on whenever we have any questions, almost about anything, but certainly about constitutional law.
You wrote a piece.
It's good to see you, by the way.
You wrote a piece about the Federal Fairness for All Act.
And you are opposing this.
And I'm thinking, Jenna Jenna, how can you oppose fairness for all?
It's fairness.
It's for all.
What is wrong with the Federal Fairness for All Act?
Well, this is exactly why legislators title things like that.
So that you think, why not?
It's fairness for all, right?
But essentially, it's being voiced as a grand compromise between LGBT beliefs and carving out exceptions for the religious community.
So what this would do essentially is take someone's belief, not an immutable characteristic, we're not talking about sex and the biological difference between men and women, but a belief that if a man decides he subjectively feels like a woman, then he can take advantage of a service or a public accommodation like in Alaska currently.
A women's shelter is being coerced by the government, and they're in the middle of a lawsuit, for having transgender women in the same facility as biological women who often have been abuse victims, victims of sex trafficking, and don't want to sleep next to a biological man, and nor should they be required to.
I mean, it's an element of public safety.
And so really the bottom line, and that's just one example, is that the Fairness for All Act, which is being contemplated in Congress, is not really about fairness.
It's about the government compelling you and I and every public accommodation, which could include universities, it could include churches, to be compelled to go along with LGBT beliefs.
So would you actually, for instance, under Title IX, would you not be able to say we're not going to let a man who says he's a woman play women's sports?
Would you not be able to ban him from the women's team, which I just find so unfair to women athletes when they let essentially men compete against them?
Would you not be allowed to do that?
Right.
So that would become the tension.
And that's where a lot of these lawsuits are right now, where this looks like, and the legislation hasn't actually been released yet.
Proponents of it are talking about it conceptually, but haven't released language.
They're keeping it under wraps.
But what it looks like is that it would change the provision of the Civil Rights Act in the public accommodation and employment section to basically mirror what's going on here in Colorado with the very famous masterpiece cake shop case and that similar situation.
And so we don't know really the extent of this, but the danger, Drew, is the fact that the LGBT agenda is all about making sure that every American, whether you are Christian, regardless of what your belief is, but especially if you are religious, to have to embrace and celebrate someone else's subjective belief regarding their sexual orientation or gender identity.
And so it does have real world practical consequences.
And I mean, I'm going, where are the feminists here?
Because, you know, women who are biological women and want to have so-called women's rights and all of this, for men to be able to compete in sports, for men to go into restrooms and locker rooms with women.
I mean, this is just, it's a danger and it's something that we need to protect against, not only from a religious freedom base, but from a basic right of privacy and protection standpoint as well.
You know, there's also another aspect of this.
And I know you and I kind of come from different places on this.
I'm much more open to gay people and the gay lifestyle.
I live in West Hollywood.
I mean, it would be absurd not to be.
But I do worry that the gay activists are after our freedoms and are actually hostile to our freedoms.
And it really is disturbing to me.
And one of the things that really bothers me about this is when they start to talk about pronouns.
Here in California, in our legislature, they now have banned the use of gendered pronouns in committee meetings.
This is actually true.
They actually did this.
And it seems to me when you have laws like you now have in New York forcing people to use the gender pronoun that a person wants, you're essentially violating their right to free speech.
I mean, I use the gender pronoun that reflects my idea of reality, not the idea of reality of the person I'm referring to.
I mean, if somebody thinks he's an alien from the planet Saturn, I don't have to call him an alien from the planet Saturn.
If somebody thinks he's a woman, I don't have to call him a woman.
Isn't that a violation of the First Amendment?
I mean, couldn't you knock that down on First Amendment grounds?
Absolutely.
It should be.
And it's a violation of free speech and free exercise of religion.
And look at the viral video that happened just a few weeks ago about GameStop, where a very, a clearly biological man went in and wanted to be addressed by ma'am and went all off on the young associate there and the employee who was simply trying to be polite.
And so again, this isn't about tolerance being a two-way street for the LGBT agenda.
It's about compelling and coercing you and I to have to buy into their belief, to have to treat them as they wish to be known as.
And it's based on a completely subjective belief.
Because let's be clear, biological sex is immutable.
There is physical evidence by design.
It's chromosomal.
It can't be changed whether or not someone believes it can or not.
And when we're talking about the law, morality and the moral code is always implicit in any law that we designate.
And so we're always talking about whose morality are we actually enacting here.
And the Founding Fathers understood and recognized that our rights are pre-political.
They come from God, our Creator.
And so the freedom of speech and free exercise of religion can't just be carved out for exceptions, like the Fairness for All Act would say.
They are fundamental, and we have a pre-political right to exercise them, not just have an exception when the government wants us to.
You know, it's really sad because there really are, I've always thought this thing, this alphabet soup of LGBTQ, on and on and on, is unfair because there are very different categories of people involved there.
And I just know that there are plenty of gay people like the log cabin Republicans who really oppose this kind of oppression, who are not looking to oppress people and force them to accept their beliefs.
It really is only a segment of these guys, and they're the guys because the press supports them who get all the information.
This bill has not been put forward yet, right?
It's being contemplated, but there are other similar SOGI provisions.
I mean, even here in Colorado, there's a bill coming up next week that would change the nature of sex education to require teachers and public school administrators to not in any way have what they're calling language that might be harmful and to actually advocate for sexual orientation and gender identity and compel them to speak.
So this isn't just on the federal level.
You're right, this hasn't yet been introduced.
We're still watching this very closely.
But these types of SOGI law or sexual orientation gender identity laws are being embedded all over the country and in other places in federal Congress.
So we need to make sure that we understand where these provisions are and that we're very clear as to the stance of our constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms.
Jen Ellis, it's always great talking to you.
You're here so often we're going to start charging you rent on the screen, but it's a pleasure.
It's good to see you.
Great to see you, Teacher.
Thanks.
It's almost time for our next episode of the conversation tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific.
I, myself, will be answering all of your questions.
And as you know, I guarantee my responses will be correct and will change your life on occasion for the better.
As always, this episode will be free for everyone to watch on Facebook and YouTube, but only subscribers can ask the questions.
Once again, subscribe at dailywire.com to get your questions answered by me tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific, and join the conversation.
And if you don't make it into the conversation where your questions will be read in the mellifluous tones of Alicia Krauss, you can send them in tomorrow to send them in today, and I will answer them in the mailbag.
How do you do that?
I will answer them in my own mellifluous tones, which are nowhere near as nice as Alicia's.
But you do that by going on dailywire.com, hit the podcast button, hit the Andrew Clavin podcast, hit the little mailbag, and ask me anything you want.
As I say, all my answers are correct.
I mean, it's kind of obvious at this point, isn't it?
All right, we got another guest coming up in just a moment.
Come over to dailywire.com.
We got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, but come over and subscribe.
It's a lousy 10 bucks a month for a lousy 100 bucks.
You get the whole year and the famous leftist tears tumbler.
And you get to ask questions on both the conversation and the mailbag.
So all your problems will be solved.
I should mention that the Oscar nominations have come out, and this is very important because nobody cares.
It's just like, like, there's nobody...
There's nobody to host the Oscars anymore.
And nobody sees the movies.
The best picture.
Can I find the list?
Uh-oh.
I'm not sure I have the list.
All right, I'll go and look at the list.
The best picture was Black Panther was one.
Every subject was about race almost.
It was Black Panther and the green book, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favorite Black Klansman, A Star is Born, Roma, which I haven't seen, and Vice.
I mean, Vice, that's a political nomination.
That's ridiculous that it's Vice.
Almost guaranteed, almost guaranteed that that's going to be Black Panther because it actually made money.
It was a decent movie.
And I cannot see them giving it to Green Book because it's been politically been politically controversial.
Maybe the favorite, which was so far my favorite picture of the year, the best picture I saw, but really nobody's going to be watching.
Nobody's going to be hosting.
Maybe nobody will be in the seats.
It may just be an empty theater.
This is a really interesting story.
Leo Lesser is a tech lawyer, and he's preparing to file a complaint against PayPal and Patreon for colluding to shut down a competitor.
He is also the host of the YouTube channel, YouTuber Law, and you can find his videos there.
Leo, thank you for coming on.
It's good to see you.
Oh, thank you so much.
I'm honored.
So explain what has happened.
It's happened really at Patreon that got you so excited about this.
What is happening that people may not know about?
Right.
So we've seen for at least the last year and a half a lot of different people getting deplatformed, removed from various platforms.
And I've discussed that topic many times.
And as far as the law is concerned, lots of company acting similarly is evidence, but not sufficient to really prove any sort of illegality, any sort of collusion, any sort of illegal behavior.
What happened here that was different is you have the deplatforming of Sargon of Akkad.
And then a lot of attention.
Is that right?
By Patreon.
Sorry.
By Patreon deplatforming him, basically canceling him, I believe, without any notification of any sort.
Anyway, then the result was because there was a lot of pushback from the audience about it, a lot of emphasis, a lot of PR, kind of free PR, was placed on an unknown competitor.
I never heard of it.
Most people never heard of it called Subscribestar, a company that was just started maybe a year before that had the facility to be a competitor to Patreon.
Suddenly they were in the news because it provided an alternative platform for Sargon, but potentially other people that were upset with Patreon.
Within days, PayPal then moves to shut down all credit card processing at Subscribestar and a day later, Stripe as well.
Wow, really?
So wait, just so I'm sure I got this right.
They took off a conservative, Sargon of Akkad.
They took him off Patreon.
He went and got to another platform.
And so PayPal, which is not connected to Patreon, they cut them off.
They cut off the other subscribers.
Exactly.
So to me, that was a telltale because the way the law looks at it, and a lot of people see things that are parallel and they see there has to be a connection.
The law doesn't see it that way.
It asks in an antitrust case, they look for what's called a plus factor.
Think of it as something that would connect otherwise parallel lines.
And the law usually looks at it and says, will a company do something that doesn't otherwise make any sense?
It's against its best interests.
It just doesn't really make any sense for it to do.
It's not something that it would otherwise do.
And in this case, a move against Subscribestar by a company called PayPal, when Subscribestar is brand new, never really hosted any substantial number of creators or of audience.
So it didn't have any sort of expressive profile.
You couldn't say it's the home for the right or the home for the left or home for the extremist.
It didn't really do much to be.
There's the argument that you could say that maybe Gab in the past that was also killed off by PayPal when they removed their payment processing, that maybe Gab, because it was on for longer, had some expressive content because it already allowed people on.
Subscribestar was brand new.
So were other people, I mean, Dave Rubin, right, was leaving Patreon in protest.
Was that not true?
Yes.
Well, a number of big names were complaining about it.
At that point, he didn't.
At that point, he announced, obviously, his displeasure.
Peterson, I believe, as well, they didn't leave until, I believe, just a few, maybe a week ago or so.
Sam Harris, probably the biggest name to have made the move almost immediately, and more and more people were expressing their displeasure.
It just happened that this tiny company that really was growing at best, you know, organically, didn't really have much in terms of growth, suddenly was just the beneficiary of attention and PayPal moves.
And in this world where PayPal controls about 65% of the worldwide processing of transaction, in the United States, more like 73.
If you put together with Stripe, together they control some 85% of all transaction.
It's a move that can be devastating.
Companies can be killed very easily if you don't have PayPal effectively or Stripe because we all been to websites.
We see enter your credit card or pay by PayPal.
We trust PayPal.
PayPal's Dominance Threat00:07:04
I have nothing against the service itself.
There's a certain level of trust.
So people, companies, small businesses, it's not really unique to this.
Small businesses, they can't get their hands on a PayPal account are a real disadvantage.
So PayPal is essentially saying, we don't want to support patriots who support the Constitution.
They're saying they don't want to support conservatives.
Don't they have a right to say that?
They absolutely have the right to say it.
Every company, look, 200 years worth of legal history gave companies equal rights of free speech to individuals.
I can understand how it developed historically and I can understand what they say.
I don't have to agree that the resultant logic makes too much sense because it's still an artificial entity that has the same rights as individuals and it's not tied to the owners, to the operators, to the shareholders.
It's pure rights of an artificial entity.
But nonetheless, absolutely.
Companies have a right to free speech.
They're allowed to associate or disassociate with anybody they want to.
What is not permitted is collusion that then hurts the marketplace.
Whether or not it's monopolies acting to undermine the marketplace because they are in possession of certain essential facilities that other companies rely on or when companies collude together to keep out competitors.
And when I saw that, to me, a PayPal move against Subscribestar makes zero sense.
It's a client.
So arguably it makes them money.
It has no expressive value because it's brand new.
You couldn't say, you know what?
It's our expressive right to disassociate with them.
Well, disassociate with what exactly?
At least make a statement.
What is it that's so reprehensible, a brand new company that otherwise really never engaged in anything?
To me, that creates a triangle.
What's called a group boycott.
Two companies that together possess market power.
We're talking PayPal and Patreon.
You can add Stripe to it if you want to.
Moving to exclude a competitor, which is Subscribestar.
That's illegal.
It's called a group boycott.
And is Subscribe when Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris, when they left Patreon in protest, did they also go to Subscribestar?
Everybody talked about it, but everybody truthfully was cautionary.
We've been bitten before in the sense that about a year, maybe a year and a half after another individual, another YouTuber was kicked off and moved to an alternative payment platform called Maker Support.
A lot of people encouraged people to go there and very quickly that was shut down.
Now, it wasn't understood at the time why was it shut down?
Why did PayPal remove payment facilities from that company?
So people don't want to jump so quickly because when you start moving your supporters around from place to place and it gets shut down, you tend to lose support as they get lost in the shuffle.
So nobody moved quickly.
Obviously, I think that Sargon moved to that platform.
The platform saw a large intake from individuals supporting him, but it really was the PR, a lot of attention.
A competitor, if that would have continued, that's a viable competitor to PayPal.
You know, it's funny here, though.
Essentially, what we're talking about.
Sorry, to Patreon, compared to Patreon.
But essentially, what we're seeing is, I don't know why I call it a conspiracy, but a movement by powerful corporations to shut down the speech of conservatives.
But that would be legal, essentially.
You're making a different argument.
You're making the argument that they, yeah, they can shut down the speech, the free speech of conservatives, but they can't collude to destroy a competitor.
Exactly.
There's a couple of things.
People always complain, why am I focusing on a small problem when the problem is really much bigger?
And I hear you.
But the reality is, if today you ask me, are you allowed legally to discriminate against people based on their political expression?
The answer is yes.
The law does not forbid it.
Now, it's up to each company to determine where they want to go and what they want to do with that power.
But discrimination is not forbidden against political association and political expression.
There are ways, if people are inclined to, to fix that from a federal level.
But what's going on here is more what I'm focusing on is, well, at least let people have alternative.
If you don't want them to speak on Google, on YouTube, on Facebook, on whatever platform, because those are the companies on specific intent and this is what they would like, that's one thing.
You can deal with it in another context.
But a move, a concerted move against potential platforms, whether or not it's social platforms that get shut down, money-making platforms like SubscribeStart that get shut down.
You know, you remove their domain name, you remove their server hosting.
You know, that's something different.
That's something the law can handle and does every single day.
The Federal Trade Commission deals with those items all the time.
And that's why when I saw that, I said, okay, it's a small solution to a far bigger problem, but maybe we can prevent there be concerted effort against potential alternatives.
Yeah, no, it's like putting Al Capone away for tax evasion.
I like it.
Exactly.
Leo Lesser, a tech lawyer, really interesting.
He has the host of the YouTube channel, YouTuber Law, and you can find his videos there.
Leo, thank you very much for explaining that.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
You know, I actually think, I mean, I've said this before, as Jeremy Boring, the God King of the Daily Wire, has explained, that some of these platforms are abusing their brief, which is to act as publishers, which is to act as platforms, and they're acting as publishers, which means you can sue them.
But in this case, too, I really do believe, since our right to speak comes not from government, but from God, and the only thing that what the Constitution, the Bill of Rights is saying is the government hasn't got the right to interfere with those rights.
I do not understand why companies this powerful, if PayPal has 70% of the market online and you can't run a service without it, I'm not sure why they should be allowed to shut down free speech.
They're not supporting the opinions of Sargon or Dave or any of that.
They are basically just allowing a site to exist which allows them a place to go.
I mean, this subscribestar is not saying, oh, we're conservative.
They're saying we believe that everybody has a right to raise money on a system without being cut off for their speech rights.
We really have to rethink this, I think, because these companies, Google, Facebook, PayPal, they're so powerful that essentially they're getting in the way of rights which government is forbidden to interfere with.
Corporations Gain Power Over Speech00:02:07
And I'm not sure that corporations that powerful, remember corporations do become power centers.
The left was always right about this.
Corporations become power centers that can only be controlled by government.
I'm not sure why corporations this powerful should have the right to shut down speech, like what they're essentially doing.
It really is dreadful.
It is dreadful considering that some of the people involved, I mean, guys like Dave and Jordan and Sam Harris are certainly no danger to the United States.
In fact, I think they're a great asset to it.
All right.
I got to say goodbye.
I'm going to be back at 4 o'clock, 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern on the conversation.
If you subscribe, you can ask me questions there.
If not, if we don't get to your questions there, get them in the mailbag.
The mailbag is tomorrow.
Go on dailywire.com, hit the podcast button, hit the Andrew Clavin podcast, hit the mailbag, and ask me anything you like.
My answers are guaranteed 100% correct.
I will see you this evening.
And again, tomorrow, I'm Andrew Clavin.
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.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
And our animations are by Cynthia Angulo.
Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to talk about the latest attempt by the left to smear the Covington Catholic students.
We know what they did with the incident on Saturday, but now they've come up with a new accusation that is even worse, even more dishonest than the first one.
We've got to talk about that.
Also, Notre Dame is going to be covering up murals of Christopher Columbus because they're very offensive to some of the students.
We'll talk about why that is not only cowardly, not only dumb, but also completely counterproductive, and it will not accomplish anything at all from any direction.