Ep. 664 dissects Michael Cohen’s discredited testimony—where Trump’s alleged hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels (not a crime) and unverified Russia collusion claims were hyped as impeachable—while mocking media flip-flops on the Hanoi summit, where Trump walked out after Kim Jong-un demanded concessions without denuclearization. The episode pivots to Obian Ukiyosha’s Strings Attached, exposing how Bill Gates’ foundation and Western donors use aid to force abortion and "sex ed" in Africa, calling it cultural colonialism, then contrasts this with Trump’s Mexico City Policy, praised by Ugandan leaders as a lifeline. It ends by framing leftist outrage over Green Book as proof of their intolerance for non-woke narratives, tying polarization to ideological aggression against both Trump and African pro-life movements. [Automatically generated summary]
Michael Cohn's testimony before Congress yesterday was such a bombshell that it set off a smoking gun, which caused the walls to close and creating a tipping point that could lead to the end of the line where the I-word impeachment would explode like a bombshell that set off a smoking gun.
So smoking was the gun that was set off by the bombshell, TSA agents had to strip search Michael Cohn to prevent a tipping point that could lead to impeachment.
The I-word, the big mint, the three-syllable bombshell that could mean a tipping point that would bring us to the end of the line where we might find a smoking gun.
In an opening statement, Cohen said, quote, I sit before you today as a man who pled guilty to lying to Congress under oath to testify to Congress under oath that I am not lying this time, but lied last time, unless I'm lying this time too, in which case forget I said anything, unquote.
Cohen testified President Trump never thought he was going to win the election, but paid hush money to Stormy Daniels so he wouldn't lose the election he wasn't going to win, and then colluded with Russia to win the election he knew he would lose.
Cohen further charged that Trump told him to lie to Congress by never telling him to lie to Congress, which he took to mean he should lie to Congress so that Trump wouldn't lose the election he thought he could never win.
After the hearing, the news media agreed that the testimony had been a bombshell of a smoking gun that had caused a tipping point that would bring us to the end of the line where impeachment was waiting like a smoking gun or possibly a bombshell.
Meanwhile, President Trump spent his day trying to denuclearize North Korea and save civilization from extinction.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Earths are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Ship-shaped hipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
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So we always like to say here on the Andrew Clavin show that politics makes you stupid.
And one of the reasons it makes you stupid is because it forces you to make black and white choices in a gray world.
And if you get super passionate about those choices, instead of realizing the gray, you become simplistic.
You have to boil down these complex situations to simplistic yes or no vote.
And that's one of the things that makes the story of the Trump era so interesting.
One party, the Democrat Party, has been consistently radicalizing over the last few decades until they're now openly socialist.
They're hostile to America and American values and so dedicated to a mindless equality that they actually want to abolish the difference between the sexes, which is possibly the best thing about being a human being.
And they're even willing to let babies die if it will help eradicate that difference.
And the other party, the Republicans, seem to have been drifting along in the Democrats' wake, letting it all happen while making a lot of noise about not letting it happen.
Finally, half the electorate decided they wanted a change and sent kooky Donald Trump to the White House.
Trump is an enormous character.
Sometimes he's hilarious.
Sometimes he's grotesque.
He's certainly ill-behaved in ways that are bad, like when he cheats on his wife or lies or bullies his underlings, and ways that are terrific, like when he slaps the press around and bravely withstands the usual absurd accusation of racism to push a totally non-racist conservative agenda.
This means that patriots have had to make a difficult choice.
Will they put up with sleazy, insensitive Trump in order to get strong, effective Trump and prevent the locus of the left from devouring American prosperity?
That's an interesting story.
But it's hard to focus on that story because instead we have to spend all our time exposing the news media's relentless narrative.
Socialism is great.
Conservatism is racism.
Killing babies isn't really killing babies.
Orange man bad.
Yesterday was a hilarious example of how far the left and the media, but I repeat myself, are willing to go to keep that simplistic and absurd narrative alive.
And we'll look at that in a minute.
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So Trump walked away yesterday from the Kim summit, right?
He said apparently Kim wanted these huge concessions to have sanctions removed, but he wasn't going to give up much.
He just said he would disable one of his nuclear facilities.
And you know what that means coming from Kim Jong-un.
It means nothing.
We can't verify it.
Trump didn't like it, and he walked away.
Here's Trump explaining why he did it.
It's cut number one.
We spent pretty much all day with Kim Jong-un, who is quite a guy and quite a character.
And I think our relationship is very strong.
But at this time, we had some options.
And at this time, we decided not to do any of the options.
And we'll see where that goes.
But it was a very interesting two days.
And I think actually it was a very productive two days.
But sometimes you have to walk.
And this was just one of those times.
Now, so this is typical in a negotiation, right?
We always knew that Kim Jong-un wasn't the guy who was going to come forward and say, oh, yeah, I'll denuclearize.
Trump has been depending on Kim to want his country to thrive economically.
But does he really want that?
Does he really want a kind of modern Western-style government?
If they have a modern Western-style government, if suddenly business takes off, if suddenly you have media that's free and you can watch, if suddenly they can reach us and look at their cell phones and all that, isn't the first thing they're going to think is, who is this crazy fat man running our country and making us all slaves all this time?
I mean, that's not exactly what Kim Jong-un is looking for.
Trump was depending on that.
He was trying to entice him with it.
Didn't work.
Trump walked away.
That's the right thing to do.
You know, it obviously is reminiscent of Reykjavik 1986 when Reagan walked away from the negotiations with Gorbachev and the press went nuts.
But let's just remember, because we started the week talking about this, let's just remember how the press was playing this before.
And always in the passive voice, you know, critics fear their fears are.
Experts say all these things in order to put forward the narrative that Trump was going to sell the farm in order either A, to distract us from the Michael Cohen hearings, which was absurd, or B, just because Kim would flatter him.
Here's NBC putting forward that narrative.
The U.S. could offer to negotiate a formal end to the Korean War.
They could ease minor sanctions against the regime, or they could establish a kind of bare bones diplomatic outpost in North Korea.
But some experts worry about a surprise, like last time, remember in Singapore, when the president unexpectedly announced the end of military exercises in South Korea after those talks.
There is some serious X Factor potential coming up tomorrow night.
That is when President Trump and Kim are set to meet one-on-one before that small group dinner.
A lot of folks wishing they could be a fly on that wall last year.
And they introduced that by saying they were afraid, experts fear, critics fear, that Trump is going to be flattered.
He's going to be flattered by Kim into giving the game away.
And this, remember, was the other thing.
Remember the Princeton professor who was on CNN?
He was tweeting this out as well, who said that the whole thing is just a distraction.
This is Julian Zelizer.
He's a history professor and obviously a CNN commentator.
And he had this exchange, which we played on Monday, I think it was, with a CNN commentator.
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 that's the fear, right?
The fear, that's the narrative that the press is putting forward, especially CNN, but also the New York Times, that he's such a dope.
Trump is such a dope.
He's going to give the game away.
He's such a narcissist.
He's going to give everything away.
And Trump walks away.
And Trump walks away.
So immediately, the narrative changes.
It's like you can't keep up with them.
They're running so fast to change the narrative.
Immediately, he's a terrible failure.
And you can always count on Jim.
Look at me.
I'm Jim Acosta to deliver the press narrative.
Here he is picking on Trump.
He's now the same place, CNN.
Same guys who were worried he was going to give the game away.
Now he proves that he's a tough guy.
He spits in Kim's eye.
That's a big problem.
So this is cut number four.
The president staked a lot of his presidency on something that is just much more difficult than reality TV.
This is not something that can be wrapped up in a season of The Apprentice.
And the president made some very strong statements showing his affection for this North Korean dictator.
Earlier on in the summit, he talked about having a very special relationship with North Korea and with Kim Jong-un, showing off the economic boom that has taken place in Vietnam as perhaps a roadmap for the North Koreans economically if they were to come back into the community of nations.
But at the end of the day, that just seems to be not enough for Kim Jong-un to put really his entire regime on the line to take that kind of gamble with the president.
It seems at this point he is just not ready to do that.
You're a mean, mad white man.
He is a mean, mad white man.
But you know, I like the fact that, first of all, Acosta, Acosta's always doing this.
He's declaring that Trump has bet his presidency on this success, which just isn't true.
I mean, Trump bet his presidency on two things, on the economy and the wall.
So far, the economy is going well, the wall not so well.
But this is something that has surprised everybody.
And it really, the fact that he has made as much headway as he has, the fact that Kim hasn't been shooting missiles over Japan, that's a kind of a major thing.
That's a good thing.
He did say, I have to give Acosta credit.
He said one thing that was true.
One thing that was true is that Trump has overplayed the personal relation hand with Kim Jong-un.
And if you want to hit Trump on something, hit him on this.
Hit him on the comment he made about Otto Warnbieve.
Remember the guy who was arrested in North Korea for virtually nothing, tortured, obviously, came back and died shortly after Trump got him home.
Here's Trump's comment on this.
The others came back extremely healthy.
But Otto came back in a condition that was just terrible.
And I did speak about it, and I don't believe that he would have allowed that to happen.
It just wasn't to his advantage to allow that to happen.
Those prisons are rough.
They're rough places.
And bad things happened.
But I really don't believe that he was.
I don't believe he knew about it.
Did he tell you that he did not, did Kim Jong-un tell you?
He felt badly about it.
I did speak to him.
He felt very badly.
He knew the case very well, but he knew it later.
And, you know, you've got a lot of people, a big country, a lot of people.
And in those prisons and those camps, you have a lot of people.
And some really bad things happened to Otto.
Some really, really bad things.
Why are you on the other side?
He tells me.
He tells me that he didn't know about it.
And I will take him at his word.
So Kim Jong-un was shocked to find out that he's a tyrannical dictator.
You know, it's like he had no idea.
He had no idea he was tyrannizing his country and torturing people.
That's the kind of thing that Trump does that makes people like me who support a lot of what Trump's policies, it goes right up my spine.
I don't want to see him doing that.
I don't want to, you know, I know why he does it.
I know that's the way Trump thinks.
He thinks, if I can keep my relationship good, it's all about my relationship with Kim Jong-un.
And if I can keep that good, I can make headway.
That's the way he deals with people.
That's the way he thinks of people.
If you attack him, he rips you to pieces.
If he thinks he can get somewhere with you, he compliments you.
And, you know, he is the president of the country.
You do not want him doing that.
That's what makes this story so complex and interesting.
That's what makes the Trump story so complex and interesting.
But how can you keep that complexity in mind and argue about that when you have guys like Jim look at me, Jim Acosta, putting forward a narrative, which I'll show you in just a minute.
But first, we have to talk about blinds because I know blinds are the most fascinating, fascinating thing that we all think about.
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You have to spell Clavin right.
And I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, how, how, how?
Oh, how can I spell Clavin?
It is K-L-A-V-A-N.
No Ease in Clavin.
I just make it look this easy.
So Jim Acosta, you can count on him.
Jim, look at me.
I'm Jim Acosta.
How Dean Saw Trump's Narrative00:10:49
He delivers the ultimate narrative of this negotiation.
It all had to do with Michael Cohen.
Here he is.
So it's strike one in Singapore.
He didn't get a deal with Kim Jong-un.
Now it's strike two in Hanoi.
Once again, no deal to denuclearize North Korea, something that he staked a lot of his legacy, a lot of his presidency on.
And Jim and Christiana, in the backdrop of all of this is what happened back in Washington up on Capitol Hill at the House Oversight Committee when the president's former fixer really just blasted away at his former boss, accusing him of being a liar and a cheat and a criminal, basically, and so on.
And what was a bombshell hearing up on Capitol Hill?
The president presumably will be asked about that as well.
He has been steering clear of that conversation here in Hanoi.
Not tweeted about it?
Really uh, in the aftermath of Michael Cohen's testimony uh and, and so this will be really the first comments coming from the president about all of this uh I what, I?
I find that just to be kind of remarkable that the president was able to hold his uh, his twitter uh, to a bare minimum here in Hanoi.
That is something we don't see very often.
The president, but he kept his powder dry, so presumably we're going to hear the president weigh in on all that as well.
As you know, if you're listening to this show, you know that Trump has been doing that a lot since the midterms because he catches on.
He's got a very good instinct for politics and he has dialed back his twitter, but he did talk about uh, Cohen.
This is what he said.
There's a cut to.
I think having a fake hearing like that and having it in the middle of this very important summit is really a terrible thing.
They could have made it two days later or next week and it would have been even better.
They would have had more time.
But having it during this very important summit is sort of incredible.
And he lied a lot, but it was very interesting because he didn't lie about one thing.
He said no collusion with the Russian hoax and I said I wonder why he didn't just lie about that too, like he did about everything else.
I mean, he lied about so many different things and I was uh actually impressed that he didn't say well, I think there was collusion for this reason, or that he didn't say that.
He said no collusion, and I was uh getting a little impressed by that.
Frankly, could have, he could have gone all out.
You know, Trump's narrative is exactly the opposite of CNN.
Cnn's narrative was that Trump staged this summit with Kim Jong-un to distract from the Michael Cohen testimony.
Trump's narrative is that they staged the Michael Cohen testimony to distract from the summit.
Which of those is more plausible?
It's actually Trump's narrative.
That's the more plausible.
I don't even know if either of those happened, but just putting it forward, if we're going to have stupid one-sided narratives, i'd rather have one that I can believe.
I mean, you can't set up a summit in time to uh distract from a hearing which you could reschedule in any way you want.
To me, the Cohen story was a bust.
I mean, to me, what I saw of Cohen was a bust.
Uh, he's.
You know, he didn't say anything new.
Uh, he did say that he'd never been to Prague.
He reiterated, under oath, that he had never been to Prague, which was a key part of the Steel dossier, which all know was the dossier that the FBI used to get a Fisa warrant so they could spy on the Trump campaign.
And he said he was supposed to have gone.
What was he supposed?
To visit Prague in 2016 and meet with Kremlin officials to discuss making non-traceable payments to hackers.
So it was all this kind of big wiki leaks thing.
Uh, they made a big deal over his producing checks uh, which he said were paid to him to give hush money to Stormy Daniels and another woman.
We don't know if that's true or not, since he was on retainer, but all he did also tell these obvious lies.
He said he didn't want a job in the White House, which the actual indictment, the federal indictment, for which he's going to prison said he did want a job in the White House.
A lot of this is coming out of Lanny Davis, who we know is, of course, a big Clinton intimate and, you know, may be harboring a little bitterness uh, about the Clinton.
Uh, defeat by Trump.
But here is Cohen's final statement, which is just?
It's just overflowing with dishonesty.
And again, you know, one of the hits on the Republicans here was that they didn't undermine any of the substance of what he said.
And I think it's absolutely probable, you know, Trump denies it.
I think he's lying.
I think Trump paid off Stormy Daniels.
Why he paid off Stormy Daniels?
I don't know.
I mean, probably he thought he could keep it from his wife.
I doubt that anybody was going to not vote for him because he slept with a hooker.
I thought he was living the dream.
He had a stripper spanking him.
I mean, isn't that why we're here?
So, you know, I don't know why he was paying her off, but if it wasn't with campaign finance money, it's not a crime.
It's just kind of sleazy.
But here's Cohen's final statement, probably written by Lanny Davis, with just overwhelming dishonesty coming out of him.
I've acknowledged I have made my own mistakes, and I have owned up to them publicly and under oath.
But silence and complicity in the face of the daily destruction of our basic norms and civility to one another will not be one of them.
I did things and I acted improperly at times at Mr. Trump's behest.
I blindly followed his demands.
My loyalty to Mr. Trump has cost me everything.
My family's happiness, friendships, my law license, my company, my livelihood, my honor, my reputation, and soon my freedom.
And I will not sit back, say nothing, and allow him to do the same to the country.
Indeed, given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.
And this is why I agreed to appear before you today.
So he agreed to appear before him today because he had to, or else he was going to go to prison for a lot longer time.
That was part of his plea agreement that he was going to say all this stuff.
The idea that Trump, there would be no peaceful transition of power, so Michael Cohn is flying.
You know, he should have worn a cape.
He should have worn a cape to the hearing.
He was flying to the rescue of American democracy.
You know, I used to hear this from people on the right when Obama was president.
He'll never leave office.
And I thought Obama couldn't wait to get out of office because all his programs had failed and he was making them.
Now he can just sit around and talk about what a great president was instead of everybody seeing in front of them what a terrible president he was.
Who, what's Trump going to do?
He's going to wedge a chair over the door to the Oval Office.
Which branch of the military is going to defend him, is going to keep him in the Oval Office?
What is Michael Cohn saving us from?
Now, just think about that for a minute.
Think about the kind of dishonesty that he exhibits.
Listen, again, the worst thing that came out about Donald Trump was that he associated with a guy named Michael Cohen, like Michael Cohn.
I mean, that is the worst, but that's already the thing we know to be the worst thing about Donald Trump, the way he's lived his life, the way he's done his business.
But listen now to Michael Cohn.
Here is George Stephanopoulos, and we spliced two different quotes together, but this is George Stephanopoulos talking about Michael Cohn, and then from another place, George Stephanopoulos, talking about himself.
And Chris Christine, and you've known Michael for a while.
I've known Michael for a long time as well.
There's no question we're seeing a humbled Michael Cohen before this committee today.
A lot of the anecdotes, a lot of the personal anecdotes have the ring of truth.
Making sure we are always accurate, especially with these attacks coming in on the press, we have to make sure to go above and beyond to ensure that everything we do is accurate and fair.
When organizations reach this level of corruption that ABC News has now reached, they don't care if you know that George Stephanopoulos is a Clinton hack.
They don't care.
They just don't care.
It's just like, what are you going to do about it?
Huh?
Huh?
Come on, what are you going to do about it?
He's sitting there saying that Michael Cohn has the ring of truth.
If Michael Cohn, Michael Cohen may have many things, but one of them is not the ring of truth.
And NBC promoed the guy by saying that he was like John Dean during Watergate.
Listen to this.
Reminders today of another historic hearing.
John Dean was back on the witness stand today.
In 1973, former Nixon White House legal counsel John Dean testified for days before the Senate Watergate Committee.
I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency.
It's not a perfect parallel.
Dean was on the inside at the White House and revealed Nixon's personal involvement in a cover-up.
John Dean's testimony was the moment where Richard Nixon went from being a president with a problem to being a president who might very well be driven out of office.
We don't yet know if Michael Cohen's testimony is going to have the same effect.
It's not a perfect parallel in the sense that there's no relationship between them, but they both did testify in front of Congress.
John Dean was the ultimate Nixon insider who came forward with all this information, which was later borne out by the tapes.
This guy, you know, what has he done?
What evidence has he produced?
What crimes have been committed?
I mean, even again, paying off Stormy Daniels, not a crime.
Talking, even talking to Roger Stone about WikiLeaks with Stone says it didn't happen, not a crime.
It's all of this kind of amorphous stuff, orange man bad stuff, which Jim Jordan says is simply a way to get to impeachment, this kind of crazy impeachment deal.
We're going to talk about a little bit more, and we have a guest coming on, Obi-Yan Uju Ikiyocho.
We're going to stay on so you can watch that, but that's no reason not to subscribe.
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David's Radical Denial00:03:25
And I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking it's been a long time since the last ad.
I forgot how you spelled Clavin.
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
There are no E's.
You know, David French, who is a guy I really like and admire, he's a guy who actually left his family to go to Iraq.
He's a guy who has fought for free speech, but he's a never-Trumper and he is an evangelical.
And he tweeted out yesterday.
He said, the porn affairs, Trump's porn affairs and the hush money payments by themselves are enough for me to never ever vote for Trump.
And that's just one thing of many.
I remember the days, like way back in, say, May 2015, when that would have been a consensus evangelical position.
And I am not questioning David's morality, you know, the fact that he's a moral person.
I don't even understand what that means.
I don't understand the morality behind that statement that you wouldn't vote for him because he messed around with a stripper.
He did all these sleazy things.
We all know this.
This is part of the interesting story of the Trump era.
We all know this, but we also know that the other side is openly socialist.
They are all talking about this Green New Deal, which is simple socialism.
Is simple, which is socialism, which is simple slavery.
They're all talking about it.
They are voting every Democrat, but every Democrat but three, every Democrat but three voted for, voted against a bill that would protect babies who had escaped abortion and lived.
Just let them die.
That's basically the Democrat policy.
They are this radical.
It's not just crazy right-wingism to say they're this radical.
They are.
They have left the reservation.
They do not like America.
They never say a nice word about this country.
It's always the country.
If it would just become a socialist country, it might kind of be good.
All of our past, anything when you say, let's make America great again, all they can think about is racism.
No one's denying the racism, but no one's also denying that America had great days.
And, you know, there's not a person, a free person walking the world, walking the earth, who does not owe that political freedom to America in some way.
Not one.
There's not one free person walking the earth who does not owe his political freedom to America in some way, either bringing down the Soviet Union, defeating the Nazis, defeating the Japanese, all these things that America has done because they were the engine of freedom, because they were the place of hope.
The reason people are breaking into the country, the reason we're having all this argument about the border is because people want to be here.
No one's going the other way.
No one's swimming from Florida to Cuba, risking sharks and risking danger and risking death.
They're all coming in one direction.
And the left has lost that plot.
It has lost that idea.
So we all know that Trump is this guy.
We all know he's this guy.
Nobody's denying it.
But this is a complicated situation.
And it does seem to me that when I say politics makes you stupid, it makes you stupid in just these ways.
It makes you think like, well, you know, here's a guy who did these sleazy things, and he did, I think, he did these sleazy things.
I can't vote for him.
And you're keeping yourself clean, but you're letting your country, I don't know, go spiraling down into a very, very dark hole.
I would like it if David would come on and talk to me about this.
I think he might.
I'll ask him.
We will ask him if he can.
We're going to stay on so you can hear our guest, but please come to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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Strings Attached: Abortion in Africa00:12:56
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Obian Uju Ikiyosha.
How did I say that, Uju?
Is that a good one?
That's great.
That's great, Andrew.
She is an internationally acclaimed pro-life speaker and strategist, the founder and president of Culture of Life Africa, an initiative dedicated to the promotion and defense of the African values of the sanctity of life, beauty of marriage, blessings of motherhood, and the dignity of family life.
She's got a new documentary out, which I've seen called Strings Attached.
You can watch it now on Amazon or Vimeo, and you can purchase DVDs at www.stringsattachedfilm.com.
Uju, it's great to see you again.
It's great to speak with you, Andrew.
I need to come to California at some point so that we'll actually, I'll be in studio.
Really?
I know, I know.
You promise, but you never show up.
Thanks for having me on.
It's a pleasure.
It's good to see you.
So tell us about the documentary.
What is Strings Attached about?
Yeah, so Strings Attached is a documentary that I decided to make because I had for a number of years I had gone to Africa to do some pro-life work, but not really pro-life work in the sense that most people are used to.
I became aware as an African living in the United Kingdom, I became aware of this bigger picture where a lot of people were coming from countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western countries really to African nations bringing aid and all kinds of things.
But I just saw a pattern that was always being repeated where these donors were then demanding particular things, especially on issues like abortion, on things like comprehensive sexuality education.
And in fact, the person that ticked me off to this bigger picture was the wife of Bill Gates.
She didn't mean to, but she was doing this huge project in Africa.
So it's the kind of thing that they come to Africa to do, where they say they're coming to do sexual and reproductive health and rights, and they come into African countries and there's an open door for them.
There's a red carpet for them.
And then they decide to do whatever they please with all their money.
So I had gone to Africa so many times working on these issues, trying to get the Africans to be aware of this bigger picture.
And then I started hearing these stories from just women, ordinary women I was seeing in towns and villages that I was going to, in cities, from one African country to the other, who were telling me, you know, we've suffered this and that because of this Western nation that came or this Western donor.
And one day I decided, you know, I'm going to take a camera and go into these countries and capture it.
So that's really the story of strings attached.
It's how Africa and African nations are getting a lot of gifts, but these are really gifts with strings attached.
So the strings attached, in other words, are there's gifts and aid, but they come along with sexual liberation and birth control and abortion.
Is that the idea?
Why is called that?
Okay.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yes.
And now, and this is, I mean, one of your arguments about this, as you make in the film and in your book, Target Africa.
Is that the name of the book?
Yes, yes.
That's right.
Which I also read.
I mean, one of your arguments is this is essentially a kind of cultural colonialism.
This is people who come from one culture telling another culture how, what they have to do to be righteous.
Absolutely, Andrew.
And, you know, and on the issue of contraception, I am very willing to speak and discuss with anyone because as far as I'm concerned, it's something that we can make our case and tell people exactly what the issue here is.
It's not so much, you know, the morality of contraception.
It's the fact that there is absolutely no dignity, even for the poorest person in Africa, that, you know, someone like Bill Gates or Melinda Gates will come into their home, in a sense of speaking, with condoms and contraception, and thereby being the third person in their sexual relations with their, you know, with their husband or whatever.
And this is happening in such a massive way.
It's audacious.
They come in and they're bringing in billions of dollars worth of IUDs and things like that.
But that's not the only issue.
It doesn't end there.
It also extends to the fact that when they throw these things at all, these pharmaceutical products, they walk away, they go to their beautiful mansions in the United States of America.
And then we have to deal with women who are suffering things like side effects without any recourse to anything.
You know, they can't sue anybody.
The other time, some people came in with no plant, which had already been phased out in most of these Western countries.
And they were giving it to these rural women in some African nations.
And these women spent years suffering all kinds of problems.
I think there is also like a human rights problem here, if you come to look at it.
But then also something like abortion, where many of us agree that abortion, it's reprehensible in any country whatsoever.
Then what more when somebody's coming from a country where abortion is legal to a country where abortion is not legal and they're then forcing this ideology of abortion and trying to get the Africans to embrace this kind of ideology?
They're selling it to children, they're selling it to women, but most Africans reject it.
And still, because of the amount of money they have, it's just not a balanced discussion.
The dynamics are just not in our favor because they come in with billions of dollars and we don't stand a chance.
So, this is happening at the government level.
In other words, they're saying to governments where abortion is illegal, they're saying if you don't loosen these laws, you don't get the aid.
Yes, yeah, yes.
And they'll deny it, Andrew, but we know because I go to the United Nations every year, even if they don't say it in those exact words, they do the naming and shaming.
You know, they do exactly what they did to Ireland: they do something like a commission, a commission, where it's just a handful of people at the UN.
And then they name the country and say, You're making your women suffer because you're not, you know, you won't decriminalize abortion.
Things like that.
Some of the organizations, you take a real big, hard swing at an organization called Maria Stopes, if I got the name right.
I mean, these are Marie Stopes.
So, tell us who that is.
Okay, so Marie Stopes International is an abortion organization, actually, well-known abortion organization here in the United Kingdom.
So, the UK will have about 200,000 abortions a year.
So, Marie Stokes would perform about 70,000 of those abortions.
So, they're doing a good, let's say, a good third of the abortions in the United Kingdom every year.
So, Marie Stopes International, however, is not really known for their 70,000 abortions in the UK each year.
They are known for the millions of abortions that they are performing in developing countries, and a lot of which are in Africa.
They come in, they set up shops, and they say they're a reproductive rights organization.
They say they're coming to do family planning and they go into these villages where no one sees them.
There's absolutely no oversight, there's nothing.
And they start performing illegal abortions.
I have seen this so many times.
I've been up, I've spoken to so many of their staff in African countries.
I have interviewed them, and they are a terrible organization.
They've been sanctioned in some African countries, they have been investigated in some African countries, they have been suspended in some African countries.
But what is most egregious, I think, about Maristos is that they get their funding mainly from governments.
So, how is it that a Western country gives money to this British organization to go into an African country and perform abortions?
And it will surprise you to know that America, for eight years of the Obama administration, or most of the eight years, America, every American taxpayer was actually funding this British abortion organization called Maristos without even knowing it.
Now, how do you feel about what Trump is doing?
You know, we were talking before you came on, I was talking about the fact that some evangelicals attack Trump because of the way he's lived his life and he hasn't been a faithful husband and he's been, you know, he plays fast and loose with the truth and all these things that we know are true about Donald Trump.
And yet, he's been pretty good on this issue, hasn't he?
From day one, from day one, from day one of President Trump's administration, this was back in 2017, January.
He signed, he signed an executive order which was going to reinstate the Mexico City policy, which is not really about Mexico, but which is about abortions everywhere in the world, especially developing countries, that to ensure that America will not fund any abortion organization or any abortion promoter or performer.
So, he took out all that money from them and they gave it to other organizations that were, you know, providing real health care.
So, it's not like he removed all that funding.
He redirected it, but he took it away from organizations like Marie Stopes International that had been funded by the Obama administration for many years.
He also took it away from an organization like International Planned Parenthood Federation.
You know, so that's Planned Parenthood, really, their mother organization.
And since then, people have been screaming.
They say he's racist, they say he's racist.
But I tell you that the Mexico City policy that President Trump reinstated was very much in line with the African way of life.
It was very much in line with African beliefs as far as abortion is concerned.
I was just in Uganda last week because this particular documentary, Strings Attached, was screened in parliament last week.
And I was surprised, Andrew, because an MP took the microphone during the open session and she said, I just want to say it here in the open, but President Donald Trump.
Is a godsend.
These were her words.
I didn't talk to her, didn't?
She said this and i'm so glad because I just saw the video yesterday, so we're going to share that also online.
This mp, this member of parliament, said, uh, people have been saying all these bad things about president Trump, but he's actually a godsend uh, because this was about, you know, an event about abortion we were talking about.
So the Africans recognize it for those who actually understand what the issues are.
So i'm really sorry, you know about the other things, about his life and all of these things that you said, and it's true.
I I really second that.
But uh, as far as uh issues like abortion and even comprehensive sexuality education is concerned, i'm really very grateful for the way he has uh gone and his administration have been to the White House a number of times.
They have uh, at every point in time, listened to our plea.
They have listened to me.
The strings attached has been partly screened at the White House as well.
That was last year march, where uh members of of the of the administration viewed some parts of it, you know, and and that was really very encouraging.
Do you think uh, do you think you have a chance of uh, of beating back this movement from the people like the Gates, the BILL AND Melinda Gates Foundation.
Do you think you have a chance of winning this?
The BILL AND Melinda Gates Foundation and people like them, the FORD Foundation, the Hewlett AND Packet Foundation, are private foundations, so let's just say someone can do with their money what they want.
I think that's their defense, but I am ready to fight to the very end uh, every government in the West that is bringing this kind of neocolonialism to African countries.
And let me just say it here, I will be speaking at the European Union in two weeks, exactly two weeks from from now, and I have been asked to come and air my you know, and just air the problems and just say exactly what my issue is.
And I am going to say it at this uh European, this is the EU Parliament in Brussels.
I will be saying this, the you know this exact thing that i've just said here now that uh, you know, whatever western nation is out there giving money to these uh abortion organizations to come to Africa uh it's uh, it's an act of aggression.
I think you know I can go that far it is an act of aggression because the Africans believe uh, most of these African countries believe that that you know, even the baby in the womb is a citizen in their country that your country does not not believe that anymore.
It's your fault.
It's not our fault, has nothing to do with us but some African countries I have to stop here.
These are our citizens.
Yeah well, i'm gonna.
I'm gonna be watching for your speech to the EU.
That sounds really interesting.
the film is strings attached you can watch now on amazon or vimeo and purchase the dvds at www.stringsattachedfilm.com Uju, it's so good to see you.
I hope you'll come back.
And if you are in California, you have to drop by.
I'll make that happen.
Thank you so much, Andrew, for having me on.
All right, bye-bye.
Yeah.
You know, in the backstage this week, was it this week?
I think it was.
It all blends together.
But I mentioned the fact that I'm a gamer, that I play video games, and I got a lot of mail.
Oscars Controversy00:04:22
I want to talk about that more, but I can't do it this week.
Hopefully, if the news allows, I'll talk about it more next week because I have a long, long history with video games.
I was there at the beginning, and they have meant a lot to me, and I've watched them develop over time.
So I have a lot to say about that.
But right now, we started this week talking about the Oscars.
I want to finish the week talking about the Oscars, about the fact that Green Book won the best film.
And I thought Green Book was a watchable, likable film about a driver, a white driver, and a black pianist, a jazz man, who travel in the South during segregation days and form an unlikely friendship, as we say in Hollywood, an unlikely bond.
This really bothered the left.
This film bothered the left because it showed a friendship between a white man and a black man.
It showed a white man kind of teasing the black man into letting go of some of his stiffness, trying to get him to try fried chicken and things like this.
And it just drove the left mad.
And the fact that that one drove the left mad.
Here is the New York Times.
We'll travel to Knucklehead Row, the opinion page.
Actually, you know what?
This wasn't a Knucklehead Row.
This was on the front page of the New York Times, an article on the front page attacking the Academy for giving this award to Green Book.
So listen to what they say.
Something seismic was happening during the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night.
The Hollywood establishment, excoriated for its longtime exclusion of women and minorities, recognized African-American production design and costume virtuosos for the first time.
Asian American filmmakers were honored.
A movie about a gay rock star collected four trophies.
Let me just pause here for a minute and say this whole Oscar so white controversy was nonsense.
About as many black people have won Oscars as there are percentage-wise black people in America in the modern era, certainly.
This was brought up when Will Smith wasn't nominated and his wife got angry about it and she made these remarks and the press picked it up.
It has nothing to do with the actual numbers.
So they're praising the Oscars for being woke, for being bullied into wokeness.
They're praising them for that.
And then they say, but then came Green Book in a choice that prompted immediate blowback from, among others, the director Spike Lee, who threw up his hands in frustration and started to walk out of the theater because he lost, not because of the issues.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave the Best Picture Oscar to a segregation era buddy film.
While admired by some as a feel-good depiction of people uniting against the odds, the movie was criticized by others as a simplistic take on race relations, both woefully retrograde and borderline bigoted.
It was the ultimate Lucy pulling away the football moment for those who had hoped the Film Academy was going to reveal itself as a definitely progressive organization, that the 2017 selection of Moonlight, a sliver, a little sliver of a film, as Best Picture, that that wasn't a fluke, that the efforts to diversify its membership had been transformational.
Albeit, it says still 69% male and 84% white.
In other words, no quarter given, no other opinion is allowed in the arts.
This is the New York Times bidding for a monopoly of the culture.
Not just, oh, there are a lot of leftists in Hollywood making culture, but it shall not be allowed, that a film that does not agree with the woke agenda of the left, which is now the New York Times, does not agree with that, shall not be allowed, that these awards shall not be allowed.
This is a vote that's taken.
This is the people in the Academy voting for the film they thought was best.
This was certainly the most likable of the films that was nominated.
I didn't think it was the best.
I thought the favorite was a better film, but not anywhere near as likable.
This was a typical Hollywood, as they say, a buddy film.
That this did not put forward the fact that we should hate each other, that intersectionality should rule our lives, and intersectionality, which is just racism, that's all it is, that this kind of leftist racism should not be embedded, monopolizing the culture, is intolerable to the left.
And it's a fascinating thing that they didn't say, well, we disagreed with this choice because of this, this, and this.
They said, no, this ruins everything.
This sets everything back.
We thought we had you bullied into submission and we lost.
That is the goal of the New York Times and the left.
But I repeat myself, that is their goal, complete monopoly of the culture.
We shouldn't allow it, but I feel like I'm talking to myself when I say that.
The Clavenless weekend is upon us.
I'm sorry.
I got to let you go into the dark and chaos of that nighttime, that nightmarish world of the Clavenless Weekend.
We will be back on Monday if you survive.
Doubtful, but if you make it, we'll be here.
The Andrew Klavan Show00:00:49
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Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, President Trump walks out of the North Korean talks, and Michael Cohen's testimony gives everyone what they want.