Orange Man Smart dissects Trump’s Hanoi summit optimism vs. skepticism from experts, exposing media bias in covering Cohen’s testimony over diplomacy while mocking North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship. It pivots to the Born-Alive Act, framing Democratic opposition as infanticide support, then slams LGBTQ+ activists for opposing Trump’s global decriminalization push in death-penalty nations like Iran. Kelly Shackelford of First Liberty Institute argues the Supreme Court should scrap the Lemon test in the Bladensburg WWI cross case, warning removal of memorial symbols could erase American heritage—while Brexit’s EU backlash and sports controversies highlight minority-imposed cultural wars. The episode ties partisan battles to moral decay, urging resistance against government overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un will be holding peace talks in Vietnam, or maybe that's an acid flashback I'm having.
Now, I don't remember ever using acid, so I guess it's really happening.
The eccentric president of the United States and the utterly insane supreme leader of North Korea will get together to discuss such issues as whose red button is bigger, where you can get a really good haircut, and whether it's better to call out journalists for bias or simply have them executed en masse.
According to sources in the American camp, the president plans to approach Kim with a proposal in which North Korea gives up its nuclear program, and in return, Trump refrains from bouncing Kim down the streets of Hanoi like a loony four-eyed basketball.
According to North Korean sources, Kim is planning to offer a counterproposal in which he becomes supreme leader of everything that ever was or ever will be, and in return, Trump gets to worship him by dancing in circles singing, there is no un like Kim Jong-un.
After that, both leaders plan to punch each other in the face and then roll around on the floor, clawing and scratching at each other while pieces of clothing fly in all directions and words like POW and BAM appear in the air above them.
Americans say they have high hopes that the Kim Trump summit in Hanoi will result in similar diplomatic gains to their first summit in Singapore last year, during which Kim promised to begin to think about considering reflecting on the possibility of one day wondering if perhaps he would be completely unwilling to dismantle his nuclear program.
And Donald Trump then declared victory and ordered a triumphant parade through Washington, D.C. to celebrate peace in our time.
If the summit is not successful, Kim plans to launch a first-strike nuclear attack on Los Angeles, which might possibly wipe out Tokyo, after which he will mysteriously disappear into the foundation of Trump's latest hotel in Moscow.
This should be fun.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Ship-shaped hip-sy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
So the post-midterm Trump continues to fly beneath the radar of everyone in the commentariat, except your genial host and me.
Protalus Insoles Solution00:02:46
Actually, those are both me, so I'm the only one who's noticed.
But since the midterm, Trump, I think, has come to understand that his obstreperous style, at its most obstreperous, while exciting his base, is not widening his support, which he's going to need to do if he means to win in 2020.
So since November, he's been less Trumpy, less combative, more presidential, and on point.
And if you don't believe me, just think how long it's been since he sent out some really crazy tweet like calling Kim Jong-un horse face or saying the nuclear threat from Stormy Daniels is over, or vice versa.
But the news media won't see this change because that would mean letting go of some of their hatred and outrage.
And that would mean abandoning their support of the Democrat Party, which they exist to serve.
So in effect, Trump has left them stewing in their own hatred without him, which means there's less Trump, but just as much rage and hate, which is giving the undecided public a chance to see that Trump's enemies don't just hate him, they hate the rest of us too, and capitalism, freedom, and little babies, and the American way.
They keep on screaming Orange Man bad, but right now, Orange Man is quietly outwitting them.
We'll take a look in just a sec.
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Mueller's Testimony On Trump00:14:59
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So Donald Trump is off to Hanoi.
Let me give you some examples of what I'm talking about about the way he's changed and the way he has got the left just exposed because he's withdrawn himself a little bit and given them more rope and more space in which to both hang themselves and make themselves look like idiots while they're doing it.
He's off to Hanoi dealing with crazy men.
Kim Jong-un is the second summit with the guy.
And here he is yesterday, or yes, the day before yesterday, he was meeting with the governors just before he left, and he's touting the trip.
We're going to accomplish a lot.
It's going to be a very good meeting.
Tremendous things are happening for our country.
I'm now, right after this meeting, I leave for Vietnam where I meet with Chairman Kim and we talk about something that, frankly, he never spoke to anybody about, but we're speaking and we're speaking aloud.
And I think we can have a very good, a very good summit.
I think we'll have a very tremendous summit.
We want denuclearization.
And I think he'll have a country that will set a lot of records for speed in terms of an economy.
Okay, so Trump talking like Trump, right?
It's going to be huge.
It's going to be tremendous.
It's going to be greatest.
No one's ever done it before.
Kim Jong-un, if he just give up his nuclear weapons, his country would come back and really set a lot of speeds, record speed.
He's always talking in superlatives and hyperbole.
That's Trump.
But what he's not been doing is he hasn't been focused on the Russian investigation.
He hasn't been going after the press every two seconds.
You know, he's still doing all that stuff.
He's just toned it back a little.
Now, listen to CNN with Princeton professor Julian Saliser.
I'll set this up by saying that tomorrow, I think it is, yeah, tomorrow, Michael Cohn is going to go testify before Congress.
And there are all these articles saying, oh, he's going to bring proof, proof that Trump has done illegal things while in office.
I have no idea what that could possibly mean, but that's what they're all excited about.
Here is a CNN guy, I don't know who this is, interviewing this Princeton history professor, Julian Saliser, about Trump's trip, his summit with Kim Jong-un.
Both the process and the timing are of utmost importance here.
Look at the process the president went through or lack thereof with pulling the troops out of Syria.
There was no process.
The timing this time around is just as he's meeting with Kim Jong-un, Michael Cohen is on Capitol Hill.
He has two private meetings and one public testimony on Capitol Hill.
How could that impact the negotiations we see in North Korea?
What could we see the president give away?
You mentioned, of course, ending the Korean War.
Could it be troops and how could this impact?
Well, the fear is that he gets into a bad agreement to make big news and hopefully, in his mind, distract the public from what Michael Cohen is saying or what else is going on in the investigation.
And you could end up with a historic turning point where North Korea gets a lot of what it's looking for, international standing, new kind of diplomatic stature, because the president's worried about an investigation without denuclearization.
So that's what a lot of national security experts are worried about.
So the only reason the president of the United States might go and negotiate with the head of North Korea, this rogue state that's building nuclear weapons, is to distract you from Michael Cohen's testimony.
That's why.
This thing has been set up for weeks and weeks.
Michael Cohn's testimony is only a recent development, but this is the commentary on CNN.
And always listen, when journalists or commentators are talking in the passive voice, the fear is that Trump will distract people, will give Kim Jong-un all this stuff, all these concessions, to take people's minds off this testimony.
I mean, it's absurd.
It is absurd.
This is a guy from Princeton.
This is a professor from Princeton talking about this.
And he says, this is the thing that people, the fear is, this is the thing that security experts are working on.
If I had been interviewing him, I would have said, name one, name a security expert who has brought that up as a fear.
So that's the way they're doing it.
And they're so excited about, you know, they're so excited about this, but at the same time, about Michael Cohen, but at the same time, they're waiting for the Mueller report, which it sounds like it might come in soon.
I mean, there's been kind of these rumblings, but there's been a lot of that before.
It sounds like it might come in.
So now they're talking about, oh, we want to get our hands on this report.
And Rod Rosenstein from the Justice Department has pointed out that it's not always the right thing to do to release a report if there are no criminal charges brought.
Here's Rosenstein.
The Department of Justice is best served when people are confident that we're going to operate, when we're investigating American citizens in particular, we're going to do it with appropriate sensitivity to the rights of uncharged people.
And as I mentioned in my remarks, when we charge somebody with a violation, we need to be prepared to prove it by evidence beyond any reasonable doubt.
And the guidance I always gave my prosecutors, the agents that I worked with during my tenure on the front lines of law enforcement were if we aren't prepared to prove our case beyond reasonable doubt in court, then we have no business making allegations against American citizens.
All right, so this is a little bit of a tangent I'm going off on, but I'm just trying to show you that this is what they're waiting for.
Trump is off in this major summit.
It's an important summit.
And what they're talking about is this.
And Adam Schiff, Rod Rosenstein was making a good point.
When there's a grand jury and they're investigating you and they say, did you do this crime?
And they find out, no, you didn't do this crime.
Maybe things came out about your life in this grand jury investigation that you don't want people known.
It's not fair.
It's not fair if you are not a criminal person for them to release that grand jury report.
That's why grand jury reports are secret.
So you don't get burned if you're not going to be charged with anything.
That's what he's saying the way Trump should be.
No, no, no, says Adam Schiff, McCarthyite smear merchant who has been making these completely unfounded remarks and charges against Trump since the very beginning.
He has said, oh, I've seen evidence that there was collusion.
It's way beyond circumstantial.
He has never been asked by the press, not once, to produce any of this because he can't produce it because it ain't there.
And now he's saying if the Mueller report comes out and isn't released, he says he will subpoena Mueller to testify and say what's in the report.
If you take the position, and I think it's a flawed one, but if you take the position that the president cannot be indicted and the only remedy for improper, illegal, or other conduct is impeachment, then you cannot withhold that information from Congress or essentially the president has immunity.
So that cannot be allowed to be the case.
Bill Barr has committed in his testimony to making as much of the report public as he can.
And the regulations allow him to make it all public.
And we're going to insist on it becoming public.
And more than that, George, we're going to insist on the underlying evidence because there is certain evidence that is only in the hands of the Department of Justice that we can't get any other way.
There were searches conducted, for example, of Roger Stone and Paul Matafort.
There's no other way to get the information that was seized except through the department.
And we can't tell the country fully what happened without it.
So as the Russian fantasy draws to a close, there's complete nonsense about Russian collusion, which isn't even a crime.
And they're starting to realize, oh, this is going to expose the fact that this was all a fantasy.
We wasted all this money, wasted all this innocent people, not innocent people, but people were caught up in this and indicted who wouldn't have been indicted if they hadn't committed the crime of being in support of Donald Trump.
That's the only reason they were caught.
It's the only reason the long arm of the law went after them.
So, but they are not.
The Democrats are not going to let this go.
But now it becomes, see, all along, people have been saying Trump would be doing a good job if he just wouldn't tweet so much.
He's taken that advice, but because they haven't noticed it, they're still out there.
It's like the curtain has gone up behind them.
And now we see that they're just going to keep these investigations alive for the sake of persecuting a president that they despise.
That's why they're doing it.
It has nothing to do with the good of the American people or the job they should be doing.
All right, we'll get back to Korea in just a second.
But first, let's talk about Mike Rowe.
I love Mike Rowe's work.
He's really good.
He has this wonderful way of discussing American values and American history without being partisan, very approachable thing.
He's got a new podcast out called The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe.
And it's really, first of all, it's cool because it's very short.
Each one of them is 10 minutes or less.
And he tells a story that has a lot of meaning and a lot of, it speaks to American values, speaks to American history.
It kind of reminded me of Paul Harvey's old show, The Rust of the Story, The Rust of the Story.
But The Way I Heard It is America's number one short form podcast.
And it really, I mean, the one I was just listening to yesterday, it really caught me up in this story.
And then it had a little twist, which I guessed about, I would say about two-thirds of the way through.
I caught on to what Mike was doing.
But he has a really pleasant way of being, and it's just really interesting stuff, stuff I hadn't heard before.
Go to microe.com slash podcast today.
Listen and subscribe to The Way I Heard It.
That's M-I-K-E-R-O-W-E dot com slash podcast.
Again, mikerow.com.com slash podcast.
It's a good show, the way I heard it with Mike Rowe.
So he's in Korea.
Now, here is from The Guardian, right?
Socialist newspaper, William M. Arkin, who is a reporter with impeccable left-wing credentials, right?
It's for The Washington Post, the L.A. Times, but he's also a good journalist.
He does a good job.
He's talking about what Trump has accomplished in this first, in his first summit with Kim, which people made fun of because afterwards, Trump tweeted, oh, the threat of nuclear war, the nuclear threat from Kim is over, from North Korea is over.
So that wasn't true, but a lot of things did happen.
Here is this essentially left-wing journalist, and he's talking about why, he says, no one quite knows why Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, slowed its public and overt testing because they haven't done these nuclear tests that were driving everybody crazy before, where they'd shoot rockets over Japan and things like that since the last summit.
No one knows, nor why Donald Trump's bluntness and boasting that his nuclear button was bigger seems to have worked.
This is a left-winger, right?
This is The Guardian.
But consider this.
Trump largely inherited practices initiated in the Obama years.
You always know when they say Trump's doing something Obama did, that he's getting it right and they can't stand it.
Military moves that were meant to threaten and coerce North Korea in light of its diplomatic failures into this near autonomous skid towards conflict blundered Mr. Trump, right?
It wasn't his style.
It was just he blundered into it.
It did look grim for a few months, the two threatening strikes on each other, missiles flying and speculation even emerging that the United States might move nuclear weapons back into South Korean soil.
Say what you will about Trump, but after some very bad years of active nuclear testing and missile shooting, disarmament on the Korean peninsula has already occurred.
Things are quieter, and two leaders who previously weren't talking ever now are.
So this is, you know, the Japanese in South Korea are nominating Trump for a Nobel Prize.
That'll never happen.
But let's, this is what pretty much what Mike Pompeo said.
He was talking to Jake Tapper.
And this is basically his claim for what Trump has done.
This is cut number three.
We started when the Obama administration had a policy, which was essentially test, pray, and cower.
Let them test missiles, let them test nuclear weapons, pray they stop and cower when the North Koreans made a threat.
They did sanction also.
Not remotely what this administration has done.
And they didn't build out a coalition, an enormous global coalition we built out through the United Nations to put that pressure in place to allow us to begin to have what have been real negotiations over the past now six or seven months.
I'm hopeful that when President Trump and Chairman Kim get together, they'll make a big step towards realizing what Chairman Kim promised.
He promised he'd denuclearize.
We hope he'll make a big step towards that in the week ahead.
So what would a big step be?
What's the kind of pledge that they need to do?
I mean, last summit, it was nice, and the remains of U.S. service members were brought back to the United States, but there wasn't any concrete step in terms of denuclearization.
Concur.
Look, we've got work to do on the denuclearization pillar.
We've got remains back.
We've had testing stop.
Those are all good things.
Tension along the border is reduced.
If you ask the military leaders, frankly, on both sides from South Korea and North Korea, tensions are reduced.
Things have happened, right?
It's true.
They haven't done a thing.
And all the our intelligence agencies are saying that he'll never get rid of his nuclear weapons.
We don't know that, but that's what they're saying.
But tensions have been reduced and they're talking all good things as long as Trump, you know, people are worried Trump's going to give stuff away, but let's see.
We'll see what he does.
Now, Pompeo basically talks about this tweet, this tweet after the last summit when Trump said the nuclear threat is over and Tapper starts to grill him about it, which by the way, I'm not hitting Tapper on.
It's perfectly fair.
It was a silly tweet.
And it's the right thing to do as a journalist to grill him on it.
But listen to the exchange.
We do know the history.
We know the history of the North Koreans making promises, making commitments, lying, taking American money when President Clinton said, we've got this resolved back in 1994.
This administration's not going to do that.
We have charted a different path.
Frankly, we've been criticized for taking that path, where we work, we negotiate, and then the two people who can actually effectuate the denuclearization of North Korea and a brighter future for the North Korean people will gather for a second time.
We have economic sanctions in place.
We know the standard for relieving those sanctions.
And I'm very hopeful that we'll make a substantial step towards achieving the full denuclearization in a verifiable way in North Korea.
The South Koreans, the Japanese have been great partners in this, and we're very hopeful we can get a good outcome.
Do you think North Korea remains a nuclear threat?
Yes.
But the president said he doesn't.
It's not what he said.
I mean, I know precisely.
He tweeted.
There is no longer a nuclear threat for North Korea.
What he said is that what he said was that the efforts that had been made in Singapore, this commitment that Chairman Kim made, have substantially taken down the risk to the American people.
It's the mission of the Secretary of State and the President of the United States to keep American people secure.
We're aiming to achieve that.
Okay.
I mean, that's just a direct quote, but I want to move on.
No, he doesn't.
He doesn't want to move on.
I'm not hitting Tapper.
He did the right thing.
But all I'm saying is they haven't noticed that those tweets have not been forthcoming.
Name the latest one.
I mean, they'll come again.
I'm not saying Trump has that much discipline or that much control, but he does have this strategy that he has been using since the midterms of cutting it back a little bit and letting his actions speak for him and letting the left go out there and make the fools of themselves they've been making of themselves with their leftism.
You can hear the press worrying about it.
Gays, Votes, and Memorials00:14:55
Yesterday, an amazing, perfect example, Ben Sasse proposed a bill that would protect unborn, it would protect babies after they were born.
It would add protections to babies who were born alive after an abortion.
So it's like you try to kill the kid, but the kid escapes.
It's like those refugees, you know, who come on and they put set one set from Cuba.
If they set one step foot on American soil, they're free.
They've got in.
This is like these babies get out.
We're trying to say, oh yeah, now you can't kill them anymore.
They're born, right?
You made all your arguments about that they're not really alive in the womb or whatever the crazy argument is.
But now you can see them.
They're right in front of you.
You can't kill them now.
You can't leave them to die.
And the Democrats shot this down.
Only three Democrats voted in favor of it.
And of course, it was the guys you would expect, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Doug Jones of Alabama, guys who've got to go back to their constituents.
Everybody else voted against it.
Here is Cocaine Mitch McConnell putting the Democrats on notice.
He's using this to do exactly what it was meant to do.
It's harrowing that this legislation is even necessary.
It was even more disturbing when last week a Democrat governor was unable to clearly and simply state that, of course, of course, these newborn babies have human rights that must be respected.
I've been a co-sponsor of Senator Sass's legislation, and I hope that none of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle invent any reasons to block this request later today.
That would make quite a disturbing statement.
If they do inexplicably block Senator Sass's effort, I can assure them that this will not be the last time we try to ensure that all newborns are afforded this fundamental legal protection.
I mean, Cocaine wants to bring the Green New Deal for a vote.
They are doing exactly what they should be doing.
They're exposing the Democrats.
And remember, all the Democrats running for president voted against this bill.
Let the baby die, say the Democrats.
That's what they're saying, and there's just no getting around it.
That is what they are saying.
There's no getting around.
My favorite moment in this, my favorite moment, Chuck Schumer gets up and he says this bill, quote, is carefully crafted to target, intimidate, and shut down reproductive health care providers.
By the way, there's no reason to let a baby die after it's been born.
Zero reason, no reason.
It can't be the health of the mother, can't be anything except you don't want the baby.
Okay, so he says he claims the bill, Chuck Schumer again, quote, would impose requirements on what type of care doctors must provide in certain circumstances, even if that care is ineffective, contradictory to medical evidence, and against the family's wishes.
This is what Chuck Schumer said.
So Ben Sass, who proposed the bill, gets up and answered him.
Listen carefully to what happens.
Madam President, I just listened to the senior senator from New York, my friend from the gym and the minority leader, deliver some summaries of what he says is in the bill before us.
And he implored this body, he implored people watching on C-SPAN to read the bill and they would find that all these terrible things are in the bill.
I see that the minority leader has to leave the floor now, but humbly I would urge him to come back and show us where any of what he just said is in this bill, is in this bill.
What he said wasn't true.
I rise today for a simple purpose, Madam President.
I want to ask each and every one of my colleagues whether or not we're okay with infanticide.
This language is blunt.
I recognize that, and it's too blunt for many people in this body.
But frankly, that is what we're talking about here today.
Infanticide is what the Abortion Survivors Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is actually about.
Are we a country that protects babies that are alive, born outside the womb after having survived a botched abortion?
That is what this is about.
It's unbelievable.
Schumer ran away.
He ran away, Saskatchewan, and says, none of those things are in the bill.
None of those things you said are in the bill.
It's true, by the way, none of those things is in the bill.
And he runs away.
It's like, run, Chuck, run.
After you.
They want to keep their babies alive.
Run for your life.
Unbelievable.
And of course, Trump, now here's Trump using tweets.
Trump tweets, Senate Democrats just voted against legislation to prevent the killing of newborn infant children.
The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they don't mind executing babies after birth.
This will be remembered as one of the most shocking votes in the history of Congress.
If there is one thing we should all agree on, it's protecting the lives of innocent babies.
There's Trump using tweets to kick his opponents in the face instead of putting his foot in his own mouth.
And again, Trump could blow this tomorrow.
He has a, you know, he can get out of control.
He can lose his discipline.
But right now, this is what he's doing, and it's working.
He's showing people all that's on television, all you can see.
While they're talking about Michael Cohen, while they're talking about the Russian investigation, oh, how we're going to keep it alive.
And it's not just because they don't find anything doesn't mean there's nothing there.
They're talking about that.
But all we can see, and we can all see it, is this is who the Democrats are.
I got one more example that I have to give because it's so, so amazing.
Trump's administration is continuing the Obama policy of advocating in favor of decriminalizing homosexuality around the world.
All right.
This has been a thing that Obama was doing, but now he's got ambassador to Germany, Richard Grinnell, who's openly gay.
I think Trump calls him my beautiful ambassador.
I think that's what he calls him, Richard Grinnell.
And he is in charge of this.
He's heading this push to decriminalize homosexuality around the world.
The gay community, or that's not true, the gay activist community, the gay leftist community, the identity gay community.
Let's not tag all gays with being leftists, with being a part of this.
But these active gay leftists, right, they're against it.
They are against it.
So help me.
They hate Trump so much.
They're against it.
Here's Out Magazine, a gay magazine.
You got to listen to this.
I just, I can't pass over this.
The Trump administration is set to launch a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in dozens of nations where anti-gay laws are still on the books.
What's the next line in Out magazine?
Hooray?
No, no, no.
On its surface, on its surface, the move looks like an atypically benevolent decision by the Trump administration.
The details of the campaign belie a different story, which is bad grammar.
But anyway, the details of the campaign, he means to say, tell a different story.
Rather than actually being about helping queer people around the world, the campaign looks more like another instance of the right using queer people as a pawn to amass power and enact its own agenda.
I know that's what I do.
I use those gay people.
I say, here's a gay person, and now I have power because I was nice to a gay person.
The most telling, this is unbelievable.
The most telling detail of the report is that Trump's plans center on homophobic violence in Iran, who NBC News calls the administration's top geopolitical foe, the plan where they also hang homosexuals.
They hang you for being gay.
It's not a question of like, can you get married?
It's a question of can you live?
No, okay.
That's what happens in Iran.
All right.
So they say homosexuality has been illegal in Iran since the theocratic 1979 Islamic Revolution.
And by at least one Guardian account, since the exit of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2013, enforcement of anti-gay laws has softened somewhat.
They just hanged the guy for this.
It's not true.
So what they're saying is this is colonialism.
This is colonialism.
It's just forcing, it's anti-Muslim colonialism.
And they say this is just, it's just like after the shooting in the Pulse Gay Bar in Orlando, Florida.
It says after that deadly shooting, Trump used the 49 deaths as a way to galvanize support for an anti-Muslim agenda rather than find a way to support gay people in pushing for immigration restrictions and a Muslim ban.
In other words, we have to defend these lovely people in Iran, the chief state sponsor of terrorism on earth, who hang gay people.
We have to, we'd rather defend them than defend Trump.
And let me tell you something.
It's not just Trump.
I know I keep saying this, but it's not just Trump.
It is everything that Trump represents and everyone who supports him.
These are the people they hate.
I got to play this one last clip of Bill Maher.
We have a guest coming up, but just before that, Bill Maher talking about the Red Stacey, quoting that thing that I have played a number of times of Hillary Clinton saying, I won all the good places.
I won the nice places where people are good.
It was the people who don't like black people that I lost to.
Bill Maher says, that's exactly right.
Listen to this.
The blue parts of America are having a big prosperity party while that big sea of red feels like their invitation got lost in the mail.
And they still use the mail.
They turn on the TV and all the shows take place in a few hip cities.
There's no real housewives of Toledo or CSI Lubbock.
There are no red carpets in Wyoming, and no one ever asks you, who are you wearing?
Because the answer is always Target.
There are two Americas and it seems like one is where all the cool jobs are, where people drive Teslas and eat artisanal ice cream.
We have orchestras and theater districts and world-class shopping.
We have chef Wolfgang Puck.
They have chef Boy R.D. That's it right there.
That is it.
That's everything right there.
It's like they tell themselves they're cool.
They make movies about themselves.
They make television shows about themselves.
They say, look how cool we are because all these movies are made about us.
But it's them making the movies about themselves.
I've been all across this country.
People out in the middle of this country are far, far cooler than Bill Maher every single day.
But the thing is, you can't love freedom if you don't love the people who are going to be free.
You can't love freedom if you don't love the people who are going to be free.
And that is the whole problem.
It's not Trump.
It is not Trump.
The orange man is bad because you're bad.
All right, we got a guest coming up, Kelly Shackelford, who's going to talk about a really amazing case before the Supreme Court.
I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, but that means that you should come over to dailywire.com and subscribe, A, because I want your money.
B, because that will get you in tomorrow's mailbag.
Remember, go to the Daily Wire site, hit the podcast button, hit the Andrew Clavin podcast, hit the mailbag, ask me anything you want.
answers guaranteed 100% correct.
All right.
Kelly Shackelford Esquire is president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, the largest legal firm in the nation dedicated exclusively to protecting religious freedom for all Americans.
Kelly is a constitutional scholar who has argued before the United States Supreme Court, testified before the U.S. House and Senate, and has won a number of landmark First Amendment and religious liberty cases.
Are you there?
I am.
Oh, hey, how are you?
Thank you for coming on.
Well, happy to do it.
So we're talking about a case about a World War I memorial.
First, let me ask you just a little bit about this Liberty, the First Liberty Institute.
Do you do this pro bono?
I mean, do you take on these cases?
We do.
Yeah.
We do.
It's really actually fairly unusual.
If you were to look at the nonprofits that are out there, whatever their issue is, whether they're left-wing or right-wing or whatever, they do the same model, which is sort of raise as much money as you can and then hire the attorneys and then do the cases.
That's really not our model.
Our model is there's all these people of faith who went to law school because they wanted to stand for what was right.
And 30 years later, these are the best litigators of the best law firms in the country.
And they've done honorable work, but they've never gotten to do a case for their faith or for the country.
So we go and we find those people and we say, look, if we give you everything you need, are you willing to give your time on one of these cases?
And they're like, man, I've been waiting 35 years.
You know, sign me up.
And so we get teams on our cases that you could never pay for.
They're dream teams.
And as a result, it's 18 years in a row, I guess, now.
We've won over 90% of our cases each year.
High, high win rate because we get the best of the best and we're fighting for principles that our founders put in place and they're in the law and the Constitution.
And so we should win.
That is fantastic.
First Liberty Institute.
You know, I have to tell you, I've never heard of you.
And I've always wondered when I see the ACLU, why don't we have guys like that?
It's good to know you're there.
So that's great.
So Kelly Schacofer, one of the cases that you're dealing with now is this case that involves a World War I memorial.
Can you describe what the issue is?
Yeah, this is the Bladensburg World War I Memorial.
It was put up almost 100 years ago by mothers who lost their sons in World War I and the American Legion.
And it was put up on American Legion land.
And then years later, decades later, this is right outside of Washington, D.C.
And it was to honor the 49 men in that county who had died in World War I.
And, of course, right outside of D.C., they're building roads.
So as they did the roads, they weren't going to do anything to the memorial.
I mean, this is a veterans memorial that had been up for 40 years, but they had to take control of the land to control the roads and everything that was going on.
So all of a sudden, it's government land.
Then go another 40 years forward and the American humans come along and say, hey, wait, why is this cross on government land?
And they filed a lawsuit saying this violates the establishment clause.
You have to tear down this cross.
And we wanted the district court.
At the Court of Appeals, really, we had two Obama-appointed federal judges and one Clinton-appointed judge.
One of the Obama judges in the oral argument said, why don't we just cut the arms off the cross?
Won't that take care of all the problems?
It can stay there and yet nobody will be offended.
Like nobody would be offended that they desecrate a war memorial.
As you can guess, they voted two to one.
And the Clinton judge voted with us and said, we have veterans memorials with religious symbols.
We don't tear down veterans memorials.
But it was a two to one decision.
And the Supreme Court granted a certiari in the case.
And so it's going to be argued Wednesday morning, February 27th, 10 a.m.
And this is about not just this memorial.
I mean, this is crucial because what it would mean for this memorial, but not four miles away is Arlington National Cemetery.
If this precedent stays, they have to go into Arlington and tear down the large freestanding crosses in Arlington.
And they have to go probably in every community of every state in this country and do that as well.
Brexit's Coercive Consequences00:08:28
So it's a very significant case for the future of the country, not only for those reasons, but because there's a lot of talk about changing the approach, the test they've been using and everything that's creating all this confusion and chaos.
And we're trying to encourage them, we need to go back to the Constitution and away from these things that are really causing a lot of difficulty in this area that are unnecessary.
Let's talk about that for a minute because obviously, emotionally, this is very offensive and the idea of tearing down all these crosses is kind of horrific.
But let's leave that aside, all the emotion aside for a minute.
Just talk about the law.
Sure.
The establishment clause, how does the establishment clause affect this case exactly?
Well, what it says, for those who don't know, is Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
What that means, we think, is something very different from what it's come to be applied.
So, what's happened is over the last 70 years, tests have been created by justices on the court, like the lemon test, which is actually aptly named.
It's a very poor test.
What you'll find is the court uses it when they want to strike something down under the establishment clause, and then they ignore it completely when it would lead to a different result.
And so, for instance, they had a recent case, town of Greece, where the question is, can you have prayer to open city council meetings?
Well, the problem is if you want to strike that down, you have a problem because the founders were opening their meetings with prayer when they passed the First Amendment.
So, but if you apply the lemon test, you strike it down.
So, they just didn't apply the lemon test.
They just ignored the lemon test.
And this is the problem there.
And all that is based upon sort of a concept of a strict separation of church and state and those types of things you hear about, none of which are in the Constitution.
But they create, if you're a local municipality or whatever, you're not sure what you can do.
And anytime you touch religion, maybe it's a violation.
Then, guess what you do?
You just shut everything down and you become, you essentially create the government being hostile to religion, which was never what the founders wanted.
And so, what we're saying is, look, what's the real purpose of the establishment clause?
The founders, I think we all know this, didn't want there to be a national church.
They didn't want to be forced to support the church, and they wanted the free exercise of religion.
And so, the establishment clause is about we don't want an establishment of one religion.
And therefore, what we've offered the court said, let's go back to what the founders meant, what the Constitution says.
And the test should be a coercion test, because that's what they were after.
If the government is coercing anybody with regard to their religion or setting up or establishing just a direct establishment of religion, those are violations.
But if there isn't coercion, then we don't sort of engage in a religious cleansing where we go across the country and look for religious symbols that we can tear down.
The founders would have had no problem with religious symbols.
I mean, they had a chaplain to open up their meetings that they paid out of the treasury.
In God We Trust is on the currency.
I mean, there's all these things that make clear that they had no problem with that.
They just wanted freedom.
And so, the issue of compulsion or coercion is where we're trying to get the court to go.
And the Solicitor General's office agrees with us, and they're arguing the same argument tomorrow as well.
One of the tricks that the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations that are against America civility and liberties use is they go into these kind of smallish places and they threaten people who in no way can afford to defend themselves, school districts and things like that, who just do not want to take on the cost of a lawsuit, and the people back down.
Is it possible that the Supreme Court will deliver a decision on this case that will make that harder to do?
I think it's very possible.
I think over six justices have said this area of the law is in hopeless disarray.
It's a mess.
Justice Thomas was the last one to say that.
They know they have a problem.
It's even somewhat embarrassing.
Scalia wrote a really, if you want, probably one of the funniest concurrences you'll ever read in your life is his concurrence in Lamb Chapel, where he refers to the lemon test as some sort of late-night ghoul that shuffles abroad and they bring it out when they want to scare the school children and strike something down.
And then they leave it in the grave.
He said, we put our pencil through the creature's heart six times in different decisions.
And it's funny because he's mocking the fact that they've created a mess and they know they've created a mess.
And I think they know they want to clean it up.
And we now have five justices who are committed to originalism, are committed to an approach of the written word of the Constitution, which really that hasn't happened since the 1920s.
And so I think we're going to start seeing opinions that go back to what the Constitution says and what it really means.
And I think this is a prime area for that to be done.
And it will be a good thing for the country.
And as you say, for all these communities.
We do come in at First Liberty Institute.
When they get threatened, we come in and offer to represent the counties, cities, et cetera, for free.
We've done that over and over again and stopped a lot of these sort of scare tactics.
But a lot of these people don't want any trouble and they just fold.
They pull down the cross.
They take the steeple off their city seal.
You name it.
And we would lose who we are as a country if we didn't defend the religious heritage and symbols.
It's not a religious cleansing society.
I mean, we have secular symbols and religious symbols.
It's okay to have secular monuments and religious symbols that are part of monuments.
That's very normal for a country that has the history that we do.
Yeah.
And meanwhile, I mean, you've got senators questioning judge candidates on their religion, which is a complete violation of the Constitution.
That's right.
Kelly Shackelford from First Liberty Institute.
Listen, I hope you'll keep in touch with our guys.
Let us know what you're doing.
I'm really interested in what you're doing.
It sounds like a great organization.
I appreciate your coming on.
Happy to do it.
And if anybody wants any info, want to see the briefs, anything on the case, they can just go, you spell it out, firstliberty.org, and it has everything on the Bladensburg Cross in the case.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Let me end with a little bit of a final reflection on what's going on in Britain, which is just really, really interesting.
You know, Theresa May, first of all, Brexit has set their politics on fire.
Their political parties are falling apart.
11 members of Parliament have left the Labour Party because of the anti-Semitism there.
People are leaving the Conservative Party because of they don't want to be involved in Brexit.
People are now dividing in Britain, not along Labor and Conservative, but along Remain and Brexit, whether they're going to leave the European Union or whether they're going to stay, that is kind of defining their politics.
Theresa May has now given Parliament a chance to delay Brexit, saying if they don't get a deal on Brexit, they can vote to delay it, and she will let that happen.
And what really this is, what's so interesting about this is the reason it's so hard to leave the European Union is the European Union won't let them go.
That's why.
The European Union is essentially a bunch of trade deals, right?
It's a bunch of things that says you can deal with France.
But it also comes along with the right of Brussels to pass all these regulations on all these countries who do not want those, who might not want those regulations being passed on them.
So if what the EU said to them is, yes, you can leave and we will remain, you know, we'll keep the necessary deals in place.
You'll lose some privileges because you're giving up some things that we want, like unrestricted immigration and things like that.
But you're still going to be allowed to land your planes here.
You're still going to be allowed to trade your goods with us and all this.
If they would say that, then Brexit wouldn't be such a problem, right?
But it's because they're not saying it, because they're tyrants, because they're tyrants that they won't let them go.
And so Brexit is a disaster for the very same reason that Brexit is necessary.
I mean, that is the paradox.
Brexit is a disaster because of the same reasons that makes it necessary, namely the EU is a tyrannical, grasping organization that once it has you in its clutches and they forced a lot of those votes on people, but once they've got you in their clutches, they will not let you go.
And that's the reason you want to leave.
So, you know, all I can say about this that really, really strikes me is we have to remember all the time that inertia is always on the side of big government.
Government's Inevitable Growth00:02:53
It is in the nature of government to grow.
It is in the nature of government wherever there are options to be had.
It wants to be in control of those options.
It does not want you in control of those options because you're eating chef boy RD, you know, and we know what that's like.
It does not want you in control of those options.
It wants to be in control of those options.
It doesn't matter who's in charge, by the way.
It doesn't matter conservatives, Democrats.
It does not matter.
The government itself, the state itself, has the purpose of growing and taking over all areas of options.
So inertia is always on the side of growing government.
In order to stop it, you have to fight.
In order to stop it, you got to be obstreperous.
You got to be loud.
You got to be Orange Man.
You got to be Donald Trump.
You got to be somebody who doesn't care what they say about you, doesn't care that they call you racist every day, who doesn't care that they call you sexist and homophobic and call you all these names.
You have to be that way because the inertia on both sides, right and left, is always on the state growing.
It is always on the side of the state growing.
And people get tired.
And as people get tired, their rights slowly disappear.
And it's easy not to fight for InfoWars when they take his free speech away.
It's easy not to fight for all the crazy people who are out on the fringes, but those fringes come closing in awfully, awfully quickly because it is in the nature of the state to grow.
It takes a fight to keep it away.
People always say to you, say to me, like, why are the Democrats so much better at government?
Because government growing is what they do.
It is conservatives who are fighting.
The Democrats are just riding the tiger.
They're just riding the beast into taking over all your rights.
All right, tomorrow, mailbag, be here.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
is The Andrew Klavan Show.
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The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, the Democrats have shot down a bill that would have protected infants born alive after abortions.
So what that means is that the Democrat Party has now come out officially, totally, completely in favor of infanticide.
That is what happened.
And we're going to talk about that today.
Also, two biological males just won a track and field championship in Connecticut.
Almost everyone thinks that this is crazy.
I mean, almost, there is almost no one who is in favor of this sort of thing.
Yet it continues to happen.
Why is it that we've allowed, how is it that we've allowed a small minority to impose its will on the majority?