Andrew Clavin dissects the 2019 college admissions scandal, where elites like Felicity Huffman and Lori Laughlin paid $25M+ to bribe coaches and falsify credentials at Yale and Stanford. He frames it as systemic credentialism, linking it to political distrust—while praising FBI agents but criticizing "deep state" bias. The episode pivots to polarization, defending critiques of AOC’s media influence as factual, then tackles dating ethics, leadership flaws (citing Reagan), and religious coercion in Mormonism. Clavin concludes by framing end-of-life euthanasia debates as morally murky, urging prayer over policy. [Automatically generated summary]
Federal authorities have charged a large number of wealthy elites with bribing, lying, and cheating their way into top-notch universities in a scam going back approximately 250 years.
U.S. Attorney Sam Gullible says the FBI became suspicious when they realized that many supposedly educated elites didn't have the faintest idea what they were doing and despite their fancy clothes and overwhelming self-certainty were basically as stupid as blocks of wood.
In announcing the charges to a barroom full of former FBI officials, Attorney Gullible said, quote, all this time, we in the deep state have been breaking every rule of law and decency to keep credentialed elites in power.
And it turns out the credentialed elites had already broken every rule of law and decency just to become credentialed elites.
As a federal officer, it almost makes me feel a little guilty about all that Trump-Russia stuff we made up, unquote.
Among the charges leveled at the elites are accusations that they gamed the system to get undeserving elite students into places that had been reserved for undeserving minorities.
Special agent Lance Clueless told reporters, quote, instead of coveted places at high-profile schools going to someone like Elizabeth Warren, they could have gone to some dopey Native American who didn't deserve them just as much as she didn't, unquote.
According to the indictment, one mother convinced her son to pretend to be gay in order to get into Yale.
The crying young man told agents, quote, I kept telling her mom I don't want to commit sodomy, but she said, you're Asian, damn it.
Sodomy is the only way you'll ever get into a good school.
Let me tell you, it was nowhere near as much fun as it looked in the pornography she made me watch, unquote.
Agent Clueless told reporters, quote, exposing the corruption and dishonesty of undeserving elites could lessen America's trust in elites if America had any trust in elites, but as things are, it shouldn't make much difference.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Here's a winging, also singing hunky-dunkity.
Shipshawsy-topsy, the world is ippitty-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
You know, one of the biggest pitfalls of the commentary game is the temptation to make sweeping generalizations about every individual event.
It's very easy to see any given story as confirming your disgruntlement with some social change you don't like or some new technology you find threatening or some philosophy you disagree with.
It's easy to look at this new scandal in which wealthy elites are charged with committing fraud to get their kids into good schools and talk about the corruption at the top of America or the unfairness of the world.
And I will talk about some of those things today.
Exploring DNA Ancestry00:02:27
But more than anything, I couldn't help thinking when I heard this story what lousy, lousy parents these people were.
Did I mention they were lousy parents?
They were lousy parents.
I put a kid through Yale.
He wanted to get into that school so badly it obsessed him.
He worked like a dog.
He did everything right.
He did all the extracurricular stuff.
He got the grades, everything.
I was kind of relaxed about the whole thing.
The annoying little punk was a genius, so I figured he'd get into some good school somewhere, whether it was Yale or someplace else.
But a certain other parent he had, who shall remain nameless, loved that kid so much, she would have done anything to help him get what he wanted.
Anything except cheat, lie, and steal.
Why?
Because she loved him so much, she was willing to not cheat and not lie and not steal, to demonstrate to him and teach him the best way to walk through the world as a man, whether he got the first thing he wanted or not.
I don't know if this story makes a big point about our society as a whole, but I do know this.
Being a parent has a point.
Going to school has a point.
Working a job has a point.
When you forget that, when you act only for the success, only for the money or the power or the fame, you've forgotten everything that matters.
This story really gets me, and we'll talk about it more.
But first, let us talk about 23andMe.
I really like 23andMe.
I did it because I just, it was just fun.
It was just fun to find out who you are, a little bit more about who you are by finding out what's in your DNA.
23andMe allows you to go beyond ancestry to access more personalized insights about you based on your DNA.
With more than 125 genetic reports, you can gain insights about your health, traits, and more and more.
I found out, for instance, that I am the resurrected body of the Pharaoh Amenhotep, doomed to kill and kill until I find the bride who was stolen from me through eternity.
I just made that up.
But you can also find out things like, it does alcohol turn your cheeks pink as a glass of rosé.
You may have the alcohol flush reaction.
Saturated and fat and weight report can tell you about how your genetics may impact your body's response to your diet.
See what your genes can say about your health traits and more.
Buy your health and ancestry service kit today at 23andMe.com slash Clavin.
That's the number, 23andMe.com slash Clavin.
Again, that's 23andMe.com slash Clavin.
You can find out a lot of things.
Like, how do you spell Clavin?
Pretending to Be an Athlete00:10:33
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
All right, we got the mailbag today.
We'll solve, oh my God, solve all your problems for the lousy 10 bucks a month that costs to subscribe 100 bucks for the entire year.
Let's talk about this.
This is an amazing story.
It really is.
About 50 people were charged in a scheme to buy spots in freshman classes at Yale, Stanford, other big-name schools.
Basically, they used this consultant guy named William Singer, who had a place called the Edge College and Career Network, but really what was also known as the key, and he would funnel money to coaches and to people, proctors at exams, and they would use these things to get their kids into school.
And they got tapes of them.
They got Singer talking to people, tapes of the parents, these elite parents, explaining, you know, these were people with a lot of money, but money wasn't the only thing they cared about.
Here's one of the tapes.
Yeah, money's all right, but it ain't everything.
Yeah, be somebody.
Look hard at a bunch of guys.
Nobody'll do anything you tell them.
Have your own way or nothing.
Be somebody.
Yeah, see?
All right.
You know, these elegant people, they acted like thugs.
They acted like gangsters.
Some of them were famous.
Felicity Huffman and Lori Laughlin.
Huffman's a good actress.
She was in Sex in the City.
Big, big Clinton supporter.
And she's married to William Macy from, you know, Fargo and Shameless.
He was not indicted, though they did catch him in a phone call talking with Felicity Huffman and this guy, Singer, talking about whether they wanted to use this service, this fraudulent service, for their younger daughter after they'd used it for their older daughter.
They ultimately decided not to.
I don't know if that's why they didn't indict Macy too, but he was obviously aware of what was going on with this stuff.
And the other is Laughlin.
She's from Full House and Fuller House.
And she's married to the fashion designer, Mossin Mossimo Giannuli, who was also indicted.
But here's, let's hear the U.S. attorney from Massachusetts, Andrew Lelling, talking about who these people were.
This is cut number three.
These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege.
They include, for example, CEOs of private and public companies, successful securities and real estate investors, two well-known actresses, a famous fashion designer, and the co-chairman of a global law firm.
Based on the charges unsealed today, all of them knowingly conspired with Singer and others to help their children either cheat on the SAT or ACT and or buy their children's admission to elite schools through fraud.
Singer's clients paid him anywhere between $100,000 and $6.5 million for this service, though the majority paid between $250,000 and $400,000 per student.
This case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud.
There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy, and I'll add that there will not be a separate criminal justice system either.
So these people are in real trouble.
One of my favorite stories from this is Felicity Huffman following Singer's instructions.
Felicity Huffman had her daughter seek permission to get extra time on the SAT, which is an option available to students with learning disabilities.
So basically pretending her daughter had a learning disability.
And when she received the permission, Mr. Singer instructed Ms. Huffman to have her daughter take the test in December of 2017 with a proctor who was in on the scheme.
So he was going to help her out.
But then it appeared that a different proctor from her daughter's own high school would be involved.
And Ms. Huffman emailed Mr. Singer, Rutro, her high school wants to use their own proctor.
I mean, they just, the morality here was kind of a little bit missing.
Laura Laughlin, the other actress, her daughter is like an Instagram star.
This is not something I know that much about.
Olivia J. Giannulli has over a million followers on Instagram.
And she got into school pretending she was on crew by taking a phony picture of her rowing machine.
One of these guys was a Gordon Kaplan, co-chairman at law firm Wilkie Farr and Gallagher, whose daughter was going to college, and he was explaining, Singer was explaining to him how the service works.
And Singer said there's a front door, which means you get in on your own.
The back door is through institutional advancement, which is 10 times as much money.
And I've created this side door.
And Kaplan says to him, to be honest, I'm not worried about the moral issue here.
I'm worried about that if she gets caught doing that, you know, she's finished.
If somebody catches this, what happens?
Mr. Kaplan asked Mr. Singer, who said that no one would get caught if he kept his mouth shut.
You know, here is Lelling talking about some of the things they did.
I mean, it's just amazing some of the things that they did.
You know, just remember, when you're doing, it's unclear how many of these kids knew what was going on.
It is unclear if the kids themselves knew what was going on, but some of them were posing for pictures.
Some of the pictures were photoshopped.
But if they knew, and now that they have found out, I mean, what have these parents taught their kids?
What have they taught them?
It is an amazing, amazing thing that they would do this.
Let's hear Lelling describe some of the scams.
This is cut number five.
To facilitate the scam, Singer counseled parents to take their children to a therapist and get a letter saying that because of purported learning disabilities or other issues, the child needed additional time to complete the ACT or the SAT.
Once the companies that administer those exams had agreed to the extra time, Singer arranged for the child to take the exam individually with one of the proctors he had bribed, or one of the administrators he had bribed, either at a location in Houston or a location in California.
Beyond the SAT and ACT scam, parents also paid Singer money that he then used to bribe coaches and administrators to designate their children as recruited athletes for various schools.
In return for bribes, coaches would use slots that their schools had allocated to them.
So I'll go back.
I mean, so you're calling your kid disabled, basically, so they can get more time on the SATs.
They're having proctors fix the SAT scores.
And, you know, the New York Times, a former newspaper, had article after article saying, don't you think for a minute that this justifies the meritocracy, that we should say, instead of these people being corrupt, we should just take people in on merit because they want to protect their affirmative action things, which are also, which also don't work.
They let kids into these schools where they can't make it, especially in the sciences.
They let them into engineering schools where they're going to fail.
It's much better for people who can't make these big schools to go into engineering schools where they can succeed because you'll get hired if you get through the program, whereas if you drop out, you won't.
And if you come out and you're not very good at what you haven't learned anything because you couldn't keep up, then you're just not going to be a very good engineer.
These things don't help anybody.
Meritocracy, though I have a broad idea of what meritocracy means, it might be harder to fight your way out of a slum school than it is to get through a private school.
I can understand that.
That's not a problem.
But letting people in because their skin is a certain color, because they're a certain sex, those are the kinds of things that I think hurt people just as much as this kind of fraud.
You know, I think that it speaks to this idea that the thing itself, getting the thing itself, is what makes it important, instead of what you're going to get out of that thing, that these things have no point, that parenting has no point.
I wouldn't tell my kid if my kid were black.
I wouldn't tell him, you know, you got to get in because you're black.
We'll use that.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
You know, once they set those systems up, of course, parents will use them.
You can't blame parents for doing that.
But any system that gets in the way of some sort of meritocracy is going to lead to corruption of some sort.
It may not be corruption like this, but this is about credentialism and how tough it is to get these credentials and how important they are and how much they raise your pay.
I mean, if there were no food, we'd all be fighting, like in Venezuela, because of socialism, we'd all be fighting each other for food.
If credentials are hard to come by and they're valuable, then they're going to fight people.
People are going to fight over credentials and they're going to do it any way they can.
Let's let Lelling talk a little bit more about some of these athletic scams because one of the ways they did this was not just cheating on the test, but pretending these kids had athletic abilities that they didn't have.
This is cut six, I guess.
Singer worked with the parents to fabricate impressive athletic profiles for their kids, including fake athletic credentials or honors or fake participation in elite club teams.
In many instances, Singer helped parents take staged photographs of their children engaged in particular sports.
Other times, Singer and his associates used stock photos that they pulled off the internet, sometimes photoshopping the face of the child onto the picture of the athlete and submitting it in support of the applications for these children to elite schools.
In one example, the head women's soccer coach at Yale, in exchange for $400,000, accepted an applicant as a recruit for the Yale women's team, despite knowing that the applicant did not even play competitive soccer.
It's kind of amazing, sticking the kids' heads.
I can see my kid calling him up.
How come you didn't do that for me?
You didn't stick my head on an athlete's body.
You know, it is truly amazing.
It is truly amazing.
It always gets me.
Corruption always gets me when I pause for a minute and just imagine the mindset of the person doing the corruption.
I mean, Felicity Huffman, William Macy, these are people who are privileged in more than just an accidental way.
These are tremendously talented people, so they're privileged in that way.
They're blessed.
Let's not call it privileged.
They're blessed with talent.
And they're blessed with the fact that they succeeded, whether it was the work ethos, anybody who ever succeeds in the arts, and I have done this, you know, there's some luck involved.
You know, there's timing involved, luck, something comes along.
And yes, it's true that the people who really have talent, they do tend to rise over time, but some of them have other problems.
Like they're not appealing.
They're not attractive.
They don't hit.
They're not there at the right time in the right place.
You know, these are really lucky people.
System Rigged Perception00:04:39
And what was it?
What was going through their minds when they thought, oh, yeah, we'll fake this thing.
And again, obviously, these credentials have become too important.
But before getting on, I mean, when you think about the big ideas here, and like I said, it's very tempting to just go after things that you don't like and say that's the big idea.
But the one thing you can say that is true of this beyond question is that it certainly, certainly, these headlines play into the idea that the elites are rigging the system.
You know who got this right?
Take one guess who said something true about this.
Go ahead, one.
I dare you.
You'll never get it right.
Don Lemon hit this on the nose.
Here is a quick cut of Don Lemon.
This is before he gets off into his own thing and starts saying ridiculous stuff.
But here is a moment when some, like, yes, stopped clock is right twice a day.
Here is a moment when Don Lemon hits it right out of the park.
It is shameful.
Shameful that this is an America.
This is an America that can be deeply unfair, where hard work doesn't necessarily pay off.
Where if you have money, you can buy anything because just about everything is for sale, including integrity for sale.
Where a whole lot of people have real good reason to believe the system is rigged against them.
Listen, this is what Donald Trump tapped into.
And in a lot of ways, guess what?
He was right.
I'd like to just play that in his dreams at night.
Donald Trump was right.
Donald Trump was certainly playing into a perception that people have that the system is rigged.
And you know, on the conservative side, you say, well, this means that the elites want to take over everything and they want to take it.
But it works both ways.
It works for both the right and the left.
But when you talk about the system being rigged, there's another story going around that's kind of not getting any play for some strange reason.
The Washington Examiner reporting on some transcripts from FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
Remember Page instruct the lovers who wanted to create some way of getting at Donald Trump and were basically run out of the FBI system because of all their bias against Trump.
Newly released transcript from Page's private testimony, this is from the Washington Examiner, in front of a joint task force of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees in July 2018, sheds new light on the internal discussions about an investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails.
This goes back to the FBI's mid-year exam investigation.
She basically told them, Page told the committee that the FBI did not blow over the idea of charging Hillary Clinton with gross negligence.
Responding to a question from John Ratcliffe, the Republican from Texas, Page testified the FBI, including James Comey, believed Clinton may have commitTedros negligence.
She said, we in fact, and in fact, the director Comey, because on its face it did like seeing, well, maybe there was a potential here for this to be the charge.
And we had multiple conversations, multiple conversations with the Justice Department about charging gross negligence, but the Department of Justice put a stop to that.
The Justice Department's assessment was that it was both constitutionally vague so that they did not actually feel that they could permissibly bring that charge.
In other words, they kept saying maybe we should charge Clinton, Hillary Clinton, with gross negligence.
And the DOJ, Loretta Lynch, the DOJ, kept saying, no, no, no.
Now, this is a president, Barack Obama, who's, as I've said a million times, whose Attorney General Eric Holder said, I am his wingman.
He is my boy.
That's what she said.
I've got to be there to protect my boy.
Loretta Lynch, I mean, I used to call her, I can't remember what I used to call her, a casually corrupt or a casually sinister, casually sinister Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
You know, she was obviously, obviously working for the president to do the president's bidding.
They talk about this.
How many stories have you read?
How many stories have there been about what Trump might do?
He might fire Mueller.
He might get in the way.
He might obstruct justice.
All these stories.
But we know they did this with Hillary Clinton.
We know she was guilty of gross negligence.
And when we see that somebody gets off because she's an elite, because she's powerful, because she's well connected, when a guy in the Navy who accidentally takes a picture home that he took goes to prison and you and I would go to prison for 10 years, when we see that, we start to think, well, wait a minute, you know, what is going on here?
The problem with this, okay, is it's Don Lemon is right.
Corruption And Double Standards00:05:20
It not only contributes to the rise of a guy like Donald Trump who says the system is rigged, vote for me, and I will be your guy in the White House, okay?
And he has been in a lot of ways.
In a lot of ways, he has spoken for the people who elected him.
He has tried to keep faith with the people who elected him.
But it also accounts for somebody like Alexandria Casional-Cortex.
It also accounts for this numbskull socialist who rises up.
The socialists, the communists, and to me they're all the same.
They always take advantage of corruption.
This happened in China during the Chinese Communist Revolution.
The people who were in place were corrupt.
And when the people are corrupt, the system that they represent is completely disgraced.
And so if you want to be free, if you want people to have freedom, if you want them to support capitalism, it's no good to have a corrupt system.
It's no good when the market crashes in 2008 because of corruption, both by the left in terms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and in terms of Wall Street and business.
And they both say the same thing.
Let the government give us money.
Let the government bail us out.
Everybody was saying it's a left and the right.
Give money to people who can't afford to pay back their loans.
And the Wall Street people were saying, give us money because we're too big to fail.
When people see that, when they see that the game is rigged, it means that the guy who comes along who is honest in what he's saying, because maybe because he's a fanatic.
You know, that's the thing about the socialists and communists.
They tend to be fanatics.
But they're honest in the moment before they get power.
They're honest.
They're saying, this is what we want to do.
We want to tax the rich 90% or whatever it is.
We want to take away your freedom, but we'll do it right because the way it's happening now doesn't work.
Corruption, when the elite are corrupt, when they don't deserve the things that they have, you can't defend the system and talk.
You can talk theoretically all you want about capitalism, but if people see it's not working for them, they're going to go for something else.
You can talk all you want about globalism.
They can sit around at the National Review and say, globalism, free trade.
If you're out of work and Felicity Huffman is buying her kids' way into a school you can't go to, what does globalism mean to you?
What does free trade mean to you?
What does capitalism mean to you?
This kind of corruption, I mean, good for the FBI.
At least, you know, the FBI at the top level has been as corrupted as anybody, but good for the agents who, as I've always said, are working just kind of do their job.
You know, it really is interesting.
You know, Nancy Pelosi, the other day had this interview in the Washington Post where she said, I'm about to make news.
I'm not for impeachment.
And she said, impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path because it divides the country.
And he, meaning Donald Trump, is just not worth it.
So immediately, some of the people on the right reacted just the same way that some of the people on the left reacted just the same way that we reacted on the right when John Boehner said he wasn't going to impeach Obama.
They said, we on the right said, wait a minute, then he can do anything he wants.
And the people on the left are saying this now, and a lot of the people on the left are pushing back against what Pelosi said.
Here is Al Green from Texas and AOC.
This is a Fox compilation.
I intend to bring impeachment to a vote, and I will do so because the president has been acknowledged by leaders and others that he is not fit to hold the office.
I think this is a conversation in the caucus.
And I know a lot of members in the caucus have a different opinion, but that's why we caucused.
See, so everybody can see the political thing that's going on here.
They can see that Pelosi and the wiser, older heads in the party don't want a repeat of the Clinton impeachment debacle where the people felt that Clinton had done wrong, but they felt that the Republicans overstepped their bounds.
They also don't want to bring back the McGovern debacle.
Remember, when Nixon was elected, the left overreacted and they put this leftist McGovern in place, and he was wiped off the map in the elections, and that's what they're afraid of.
But the other thing is, is Pelosi is losing control of her party, and she's fighting to get it back.
She's laying down the law.
Because if they're not going to impeach virtually everything they've been doing, all these investigations, all these subpoenas they're sending out, all these things where they're sending out like kind of blanket subpoenas without any kind of crime attached to them, all of that is exposed for the thing that it is.
But Pelosi is willing to go there because she wants to hold on to the party.
And the party is going.
You know, I saw a guy on TV the other day saying, you know, the party has actually gotten more moderate.
A lot of moderates got elected in 2018 to the Democrat Party.
It's not true.
The moderates got elected instead of the blue dogs.
The blue dogs are the conservative Democrats, or the supposed least conservative Democrats.
The moderates are to the left of them.
And then to the left of them are the people like Occasional Cortex.
So they've actually become more and more radical.
And that's because we're divided, so divided like this with guys like Trump and people like AOC, who in a lot of ways, I mean, I like what Trump is doing, but in terms of like not knowing what's going on, AOC and Trump are a lot the same in that regard.
And we're turning to these people because the people we trusted to be the elites, the people who said they were the experts, have failed and have shown themselves to be corrupt and have shown themselves not to care about the actual lives of the people going on.
Party Politics Predicament00:15:34
This is the bad thing about this.
I mean, the individual parenting is unbelievable to me.
The individual corruption is gobsmacking.
It just makes you blink that people with so much privilege, so much money, actually stoop to doing this in front of their kids, to their kids.
It's a horrible thing.
But more than anything, it shows us an elite class that has lost the plot of what they're supposed to do.
Because being an elite, just like being a parent, just like having a job, just like all the things that we do, going to school, being an elite has a point.
It has a purpose.
If you're not fulfilling that purpose, you're just wasting space.
Tonight, tune in to our next episode of Daily Wire Backstage, the March Madness Edition.
Daily Wire, God King, Jeremy Boring, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, and me.
We'll all be talking about politics, culture, and providing the answers to life's most challenging questions.
Although they didn't tell me they were going to be life's challenging questions.
Jeez.
As always, I would have studied.
As always, Daily Wire subscribers get to ask the questions, so make sure to subscribe today.
Also, that gets you into the mailbag, gets you all the shows.
So stop, stop, please.
I can't stand it anymore.
We'll have the mailbag coming up, but first I got to say goodbye.
I had a night like that.
I can't talk about it.
This reminds me of a night I had once.
I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Come over to dailywire.com and watch the rest of the show.
All right, the mailbag.
Wow, that's new.
I'd never heard that before.
From Miriam.
Miriam is angry.
Miriam doesn't like me.
Dear, you know, I don't get that many letters like this, actually.
Dear Andrew Clavin, grand poobah of inaccuracy.
Did you actually watch all of Mr. Reagan's 23-minute video on AOC?
By the way, I did actually watch the entire video, although I did zone out toward the end of it because it got kind of boring and repetitive.
But I did watch it.
He never claimed that AOC had formerly had an acting career.
He also presented in context excerpts from a video at the Justice Democrats website.
He seems really clear in explaining that there is a political process going on.
He was merely bringing that process to the public's attention.
I am concerned by your sloppy and inaccurate report and commentary on this matter, and it leaves me wondering how much else you expound upon is similarly inaccurate.
And once again, this is the part that got me.
In your opening monologue, you sexually objectify AOC.
Those are cheap shots and completely unnecessary.
AOC provides a plethora of legitimate opportunities to criticize her puerile thinking and inconsistencies 24-7.
Shape up, Mr. Clavin, from Miriam Wolf, a subscriber in Israel.
I disagree with every word of this.
Every word.
First of all, what I said was, and I went back and listened, I said that Mr. Reagan said that AOC is an actress.
I didn't say she had an acting career.
I said he had had a show business career and she was like the actresses that he had seen.
Here's what he said.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not really the congresswoman of New York's 14th congressional district.
She is essentially an actress.
She's merely playing the part of a New York congresswoman.
So none of us said that she was a professional actress, but I reported what the guy said, ahem.
So I'll be, you know, I will appreciate your apology in the mail.
And my major comment about this was that he reported this as if it were a conspiracy, as if it were some incredible, by the way, I admired his reporting.
I admired the fact gathering in the video, but he reported it as if it were some dark conspiracy.
And to me, it was just politics.
A group of people picking a candidate they felt could represent their ideas and using their influence over her to feed her the ideas that she would represent.
And he reported all this as if it were some amazing thing, but to me, it is just politics.
That's what I said.
And I'm not attacking the guy.
I mean, he's playing his game.
I just thought it was not as important a piece of news as people think it is, although it is good to know what she represents.
As for the objectifying AOC, objectifying is a leftist trope that is complete crap.
Women's beauty has a power to it.
Men are incredibly attracted to women.
That is the way the world works.
That is the way the world turns.
That is the way we reproduce.
Men are very attractive.
Women's beauty has a power to it.
If AOC were an ugly old crone, she would not have the kind of power and presence that she has.
Everybody knows this.
I mean, look at the women who are most of the news commentators on TV, including Fox.
If they didn't look like that, it wouldn't, some of them are bright, some of them not so bright.
Doesn't matter.
If they didn't look like that, they wouldn't be on TV.
Whereas Bill O'Reilly, who's nobody's idea of an auth painting, can be on TV.
Sean Hannity, I don't think he would ever tell you that he was Rock Hudson, you know, or me.
They can be on TV.
There's a difference.
The idea that we're not supposed to talk about the woman's sexuality and the fact that she's attractive and the fact that that attractiveness clouds the minds of men is absurd.
It's a leftist trope meant to shut people up so they can't tell the truth about what's going on.
And that's what it is.
So I completely reject this letter.
I expect you to write me an apology.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, 2,000 times.
All right.
You don't have to do that.
From, sorry.
Dear Supreme Intelligentsia Claven, Wizard of All Matters Relating to Females.
Oh my goodness.
I find myself in a bit of a predicament.
There are two girls I like, and I've gotten to know both of them a little bit.
I want to ask both of them out, but don't know which one I should go for.
Is it unethical to ask both of them out?
There's always a chance I get rejected, but if I don't, would it be wrong to go on a first date with both of them around the same time?
Obviously, I have no intention of cheating if things were to get serious.
Thanks for everything you do.
God bless you and your family.
No, you know, it's absolutely not.
If you're dating and people understand that that's what this is, it's a first date.
Nobody thinks a first date is an exclusive engagement and you're not going out with anybody else.
The only thing I would caution about is if you're in a social group and both girls are part of that social group, then you might want to put some distance between the dates with both of them because then it just becomes very, very complicated.
If the two girls don't know each other and you want to go out with one and go out with the other the next week or whatever, sure, go ahead and just make sure people know what's going on.
You know, it's all about transparency in that situation.
But you don't have an obligation when you take a girl out to completely end your social life with everybody else.
That's silly.
It's only when that relationship becomes exclusive that you do have to then follow through.
From Joseph, hello, Mr. French, look alike.
That's from David French right now.
We do look a lot alike.
When you had him on your show, he insisted that we must elect only ideal candidates to office.
That's not what he said, but he said we should pay attention to their character, and that's important.
But we individual husbands and fathers fail to choose the path that would lead to raising the leaders we would love to be able to elect.
As long as we men who are in family leadership fail to take responsibility for our lives and the education and training of our own families, we can expect to continue to have substandard candidates to choose from.
How would you point this fact out to Mr. French in the future?
I think he would know that.
He would completely agree with that.
The one thing that I will say, however, that I get this a lot, that people say if a man cheats on his wife, or I assume if a woman cheats on her husband, he won't make a good leader.
That sounds like it should be true, but it's just not.
You know, I wish it were true.
It would make life so complicated.
It would make life much simpler if any man who cheats on his wife or any woman who cheats on her husband makes a bad statesman or a bad leader.
But it just isn't so.
Ronald Reagan is not supposed to have been the most faithful of husbands throughout his life, but he was, I think, a great president.
And, you know, it's just life is complicated, and sexuality is one of the most complicated parts of life, so it doesn't always speak into the rest of the things we do.
From, speaking of which, from Samuel, dear Drew, I am unsure how to end my relationship with my girlfriend of five years.
I'm 25 and feel trapped because of the time she has invested.
But as I have matured, I've realized she is not what I'm looking for in a wife.
Devastating her feelings and severing ties with family friends on both ends has left me paralyzed to do what I know I must do eventually.
What can I do?
Oh, Samuel, Samuel, Samuel.
First, go into the bathroom, close the door, stand in front of the mirror, drop your pants, and make sure you're a guy, because if you're a guy, you got to do what you have to do.
That is the essence of being a man.
A man does what he has to do.
And in this case, you must do for her sake what you have to do quickly.
What you have to do, do quickly here, because you do not want to waste another 10 minutes of her life.
I mean, she is on a clock in a way that you may not be.
And you are responsible to her to get out of this relationship.
You are also responsible to do this in person.
There is no texting, there's no emailing, there's no calling.
You have to go and look her in the eye and explain to her what you're saying.
And yes, it will devastate her feelings.
And yes, you will be causing all kinds of family upside upsets.
But when you say, I'm paralyzed to do what I know I must do eventually, what can I do?
The answer to this is be a man.
You know, be a man, pal.
This is like, this is what this is about.
You know, it really is not about the sex.
It's not about looking like James Bond and fighting Russian spies on the top of trains.
It's about this.
It's about doing what is right in the moment that it has to be done.
You owe it to her to get out of this while she has time to find someone else and start a new relationship.
The fact that it's going to be painful is not, it's not only not my business, it's not your business either.
It's not something you have to suffer through.
All right.
From Lisa, I am not a churchgoer, but I'm thinking about going.
I just started listening to Zoe after hearing him on your show.
He's just fabulous, as Ben would say.
My son, Zoe is fabulous.
We're talking about Alfonso Rachel, and you should look him up on YouTube.
My son has been attending a Mormon church.
They were pushing to baptize him, but needed my permission because he's 16, and I said, no, he could do it when he's 18.
Last night, my son revealed to me the church has been pressuring him, as well as giving him ideas on how to get around me, knowing that I have said no.
I told my son that isn't right.
They told him that it was a misunderstanding.
I don't believe them.
I don't know much about the Mormon religion except for something I saw in South Park.
So she wants to know how to deal with this situation where she feels that they are attempting to get him to be baptized behind her back.
Thank you for your words of wisdom.
I just love you all at the Daily Wire.
Keep up the good fight.
You know, you've mismaneuvered yourself here, I'm afraid, from Lisa.
Lisa, you've mismaneuvered yourself.
You've put yourself in opposition to this church and possibly into your son's religious leanings.
You don't know where he's going to go when he's 18, but now you're in this clash with this church instead of being sympathetic to where your son is going and maybe guiding him as he goes.
What I would do is I would change tack here.
I would say, you know what?
I don't know anything about the Mormon church except what I've seen on South Park.
That's obviously not enough.
Let me go to a couple of services with you and observe what's going on.
Let me attend this.
Let's talk about it.
Let's talk about the possibility of baptism.
Let's see what's going on with them.
You should say that it was wrong of them if they were telling them how to get around you.
That was wrong of them.
That should never happen.
They should apologize for that.
But maybe be a little bit sympathetic to this religious journey that he's going on.
And if you see ways, maybe if you go to this church with him, maybe he'll go to another church with you.
And that will help him to see that there are other places that might offer him some of the things that he's looking for.
Listen, I'm not a big fan of Mormon theology, but the Mormon people I know have all been incredibly nice.
And so, you know, I mean, maybe you should just be a little bit more sympathetic and participatory in the journey that he's going on.
And that would help you to guide it rather than just opposing it, at which point he's thinking, well, I'm not going to be opposed, and he's going to fight back in ways that might be damaging to him.
From another religious question from Matthew, Dear the Glorious Claven, I am a senior in college, hopefully soon to go off to grad school.
I'm deeply religious.
I have trouble, though, in finding a good church or organized Christian group.
I find most religious groups for people my age are tailored to entertainment.
So basically, he feels that he's caught between what he calls sweater vest Christianity and people, you know, preaching damnation.
And he's talked about forming his own group.
And he said, P.S., I love the great good thing and made all my friends read it, which I appreciate.
You know, first of all, I think forming your own little church, your own Christian group, is a really good thing.
I think that is where the Christian revival is going to come from, from smart people, college people getting together and meeting, possibly if you can find a catacomb just for the verisimilitude of it.
But I think of you guys talking out through your ideas, figuring out what you believe.
In terms of finding a church, I've talked about this.
I've had a hard time too.
And I wound up returning to what is an Anglo-Catholic church.
It's not a Catholic church in the sense that it's connected to Rome or the Pope.
It has nothing to do with that, but it does have the liturgy of the church.
And I'll tell you why I did that.
I can't find anybody who is preaching Christianity as I think it should be preached.
I can't find anybody who's saying the things that I think.
Even in this church, there's kind of liberal leanings that I object to, and sometimes I just think what they're saying.
They don't really preach about anything that's important sometimes.
At other times, there are good sermons and good people, plenty of good people at the church and all this.
But the liturgy has been there for thousands of years, and it is meant to take your mind on a journey.
There's a book I read, my son gave to me, called You Are What You Love by James Smith.
And he talks about how going through the liturgy is like going to the gym mentally and spiritually.
So when you go to the gym, you do repetitive exercises.
They may not always be that fascinating.
They may be a little boring, but by repeating the exercises, you strengthen those muscles.
By going through the liturgy, with this new attentive attitude that I've brought to it, I find that it strengthens my Christian muscles, reminds me of what Christianity is, reminds me of what the creed is, reminds me of the journey through repentance and forgiveness and sacrifice that is at the heart of Christianity.
And those things strengthen my faith.
And if the guy gets up and gives a sermon I don't like, it doesn't matter.
If he gets up and gives a sermon that actually is deep and hits a note that I really needed to hear, that's great.
That's an added plus.
So I've kind of put my faith in with the liturgy.
A lot of the things that happen in my religious life happen in conversation with Christian friends.
And so gathering together with Christian friends, I think, is a really important thing to do.
But otherwise, the only thing I can say that has worked for me is returning to the liturgy, the ancient liturgy, with a new attitude of attention and concentration and focus on what I'm doing by going through the liturgy has really helped me find a church.
And listen, the people are nice.
And if you have coffee hour, maybe you'll find some smaller groups that will help you explore your faith that way.
I'm going to go on a couple more, I think.
From Ray, dear Andrew the Love Sponge, that I am going to legally change my name to Andrew the Love Sponge.
What is your opinion on suicide and gaining heaven?
This is a really good question.
Deciding On Resuscitation Orders00:02:38
I'm not asking about myself or a depressed person.
I mean in the context of end-of-life decisions when severely ill, such as do not resuscitate orders or leaving a medical directive for your family that you don't wish to be revived from a vegetative state or permitive comatose condition.
I'm Episcopal like you and have fully accepted Christ and having read the great good thing, I have become even closer to God.
I recently turned 70 and while in good health, I know such decisions probably await.
So how do you believe God looks on such issues?
Well, first of all, I think we have to separate a couple of things.
The idea of a do not resuscitate order or a medical directive saying you don't want to be in a vegetative state, I don't think that there is any problem theologically with that whatsoever, because just because they invent a system that can keep you alive doesn't create an obligation in you to use that system.
So if you are going to naturally die and you say, no, don't take what they call extraordinary measures to keep me alive, that's not suicide.
That is absolutely just accepting what has now come upon your body.
And I don't think that that is a theological problem.
I really don't.
If it's your decision.
What really is a theological problem, and I have to be honest with you and tell you that I do not have a succinct answer to this.
I'm a little soft on this subject, is people who are ill know that their illness is going to be fatal, know that it might bankrupt their family or cause their family all kinds of harm and have committed suicide.
And somehow find a way to leave the stage in a nonviolent, peaceful way.
I have known people who have done this.
I have had friends who have done this.
And I've seen it done in hospitals where basically when all hope is gone in almost any hospital in America, they will say to you, you know, we're going to increase the dosage of morphine.
And what they mean is we're going to put the guy out of his misery.
If the person is compass mentis and actually makes this decision with good reason, not because he's depressed, but because the end is nigh, the end has come, and he takes a couple of days off his life to save people some trouble or to save himself some pain.
You know, I have a hard time condemning that.
I'm not the one who's going to make the final judgment.
I know theologically, what is it from Hamlet, The Everlasting has said his canon against self-slaughter.
I know that theologically most churches don't agree.
They compare it to abortion.
I can't see that at all.
I cannot see how killing an innocent baby who has no choice in the matter is the same as making the decision to end your own life in a terrible moment where you know it's over, when you know that this is the end.
I'm not the one who's going to make the final decision.
So you really, it's really something you have to pray about, think about, read about, because when you will, after you make that decision, you will stand before the throne and his judgment is going to be a lot more important than mine.
Terrible Moment Decision00:01:24
You know what?
I think I'm out of time and I'm going to end there and just let the show end, take its natural end.
I'm going to have a do not resuscitate order on the show.
Really interesting emails and I wish I had a more solid answer on that last one, but I thought about it a good deal and basically I just feel like life is so complicated, morality is so complicated that really your own individual situation in that terrible, terrible moment is going to have to be your guide, that and prayer and reading your Bible and reading books about your Bible.
But we will be back tomorrow to talk some more and we'll figure out more stuff.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
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Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
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Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
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Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
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