Ep. 683 dissects why Trump’s 42% approval persists despite economic wins and foreign policy triumphs like ISIS’s defeat, while media like Rachel Maddow clings to the debunked Russia collusion narrative—54% now see Mueller as politically motivated. The episode mocks progressive policies like the Green New Deal as impractical and critiques CNN’s Christiane Amanpour for defending FBI censorship of "lock her up" chants. Callers debate the United Methodist Church’s LGBTQ+ schism, near-death experiences as evidence of an afterlife, marital depression, and biblical remarriage, while rejecting pro-choice "impossible tragedy" dilemmas as manipulative. Klavan argues Trump’s unpopularity stems from media bias and cultural warfare, where the right’s policy focus lost ground to leftist rhetoric. [Automatically generated summary]
How Will Our Genetic Jackpot Overlords Entertain Us?00:05:23
With spring pitter pattering into our lives like little cat's feet or raindrops or something, moviegoers and TV watchers and other people who have no lives are looking forward to a new season of Hollywood Entertainment.
How will our genetic jackpot overlords enthrall, entertain, insult, and debase us in the coming months while taking our money and using it to promote causes that will destroy everything we hold dear?
Horror fans can look forward to a fresh take on the zombie genre with a chilling tale of an urban legend resurrected from the grave and brought back to shrieking life as a soulless entity that devours the brains of journalists.
That's the plot of Russian Collusion Cemetery, starring Michael Knowles as Rachel Maddow or vice versa.
It tells of a grieving pundit's attempt to resurrect her beloved conspiracy by burying it in cursed ground or on MSNBC, whichever is more horrific.
The terrifying beast that results is finally destroyed when after devouring Brett Baer at Fox, it runs out of journalists with brains.
Marvel will continue to try to ride the intersectional wave to the top of the box office with its new hero, Wokeman, or possibly woman, the first transgender superhero or maybe heroine.
The origin story tells how Guido Maldón, a mixed martial artist, joins the Avengers after being bit by a radioactive venereal disease that transforms him into a woman with the amazing power to beat up every other woman on earth.
Sequels are already in the pipeline, including Wokeman 2, really, really big fight with a lot of different superheroes, Wokeman 3, even bigger fight, and Wokeman 4, utter make-believe catastrophe that will be explained away in the next movie.
So 30-year-old males will have a lot to look forward to instead of going out on dates.
And of course, on HBO, we'll finally find out whether the White Walker armies of the dead will triumph and seize the throne or Donald Trump will win re-election.
Trigger warning.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
The birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Ship-shaped hipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray.
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
Okay, that opening, guys, back at the Daily Wire.
That opening was for Jacob Airy.
I want you to go into the office, into the writer's room, and smack him upside the head and tell him to get off Twitter before he hurts somebody.
He's fanboying himself to death over the new Marvel movies and Batman movies, and it must stop.
I leave the town for two minutes.
Here's a strange thing.
For two years, the Democrat media complex hurled Russia collusion conspiracy theories at the President of the United States.
It wasn't possible Trump just beat Hillary Clinton because she was a corrupt, soulless machine paw who despised non-elite Americans as deplorable.
No, it must have been because Trump, Boris, and Natasha went after Moose and Squirrel.
I can't remember the whole story now, or something like that.
Not only has that narrative collapsed, but another narrative of Obama-era malfeasance at the FBI and DOJ has arisen that makes Trump's talk about the DC swamp seem pretty realistic.
Now, according to a recent CBS poll, 54% of Americans feel the Mueller probe was politically motivated, while only 37% think it was justified, and most of them are Rachel Maddow pretending to be a lot of different people.
But for all that, another poll at 538 has Trump's approval rating basically stuck around 42 and his disapproval rating still up around 53.
That's the second worst approval rating at this point in his term.
Only Reagan had worse and the worst disapproval rating ever.
The economy's good, jobs open all over the place.
The ISIS caliphate is toast.
We're out of the horrible Iranian deal and the silly Paris Accord, and the opposition are a bunch of baby-killing communists.
Why can't President the Donald get some love?
I can think of at least a couple of reasons.
But first, we're going to talk about Lightstream.
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Every time I read that, I want to bring in Ben and have him read it so much faster than I can.
It would make so much more sense.
All right.
It's the mailbag today.
It is.
In fact, the mailbag this very, oh my God, stop screaming at me.
Nadler On Free Speech Shutdown00:15:46
I can't.
I'm very sensitive.
I can't.
It's the mailbag, and we will answer all your questions.
Stop, stop, stop.
We will answer all your questions, and there are some really good questions today.
Jonathan Bernstein, a commentator over at Bloomberg News, he's writing about Trump's frozen approval rating, and he says, the truth is, we don't know why Trump is so unpopular, especially at a moment of relative peace and prosperity for the U.S.
It could be the various scandals.
It could be his refusal to behave like a normal president.
It could be that his divisive campaign permanently alienated a lot of people.
It could also be the specific unpopular public policy positions he holds, whether it's the tax law, healthcare, immigration, his border wall, or some combination.
But whatever the reason, it's hard to believe that a president could be re-elected when more than half the country thinks he's doing a bad job.
And if nothing so far has shaken Trump's unpopularity, what's going to happen in the next 19 months to do so?
Now, I have to tell you, at this point, and I've had ups and downs with Donald Trump, but at this point, I think it would be an absolute tragedy if Trump were not re-elected.
We know who the opposition is.
We hear them talking the things, the crazy, crazy stuff they're saying, refusing to vote to save a baby born alive.
I mean, my question about not wanting to save a baby born alive, no matter how that happens, if a baby born alive isn't a person, who is?
I mean, what does that even mean?
But the thing that got me just yesterday is Christiane Amapour journalist.
Christiane Amampour journalist has been a lefty, biased lefty.
And every time anybody challenges her on her biases, she gets very, very haughty.
She sits up straight and says, what do you mean that I am Christiane Amanpour?
So I think it was yesterday she's interviewing James Comey, Mr. Sanctimoni, and even he is appalled by what this journalist.
Now, this is a journalist protected by what you may recall we like to call here the First Amendment.
Here she is asking James Comey what the FBI could have done that would have helped Donald Trump lose.
Listen to this.
Of course, lock her up was a feature of the 2016 Trump campaign.
Do you, in retrospect, wish that people like yourself, the head of the FBI, I mean the people in charge of law and order had shut down that language, that it was dangerous potentially, that it could have created violence, that it's kind of hate speech.
Should that have been allowed?
That's not a role for government to play.
The beauty of this country is people can say what they want, even if it's misleading and it's demagoguery.
The people who should have shut it down were Republicans who understand the rule of law and the values that they claim to stand for.
Shame on them, but it wasn't a role for government to play.
That to me is utterly amazing.
Christiane Amman poor journalist asking whether the FBI should have shut down chants of lock Hillary up.
I mean, typical, by the way.
Typical political chants.
I mean, typical of a political rally in a heated period of time.
Yesterday, we heard the Democrats chanting a Marxist chant written by a cop killer who's escaped prison and run away to Cuba, and they called her a leader.
And all the big Democrats were going to talk at that gathering.
Shame on the Republicans for saying lock up Hillary Clinton after James Comey let her go.
I mean, in public in front of us, basically saying that the DOJ, that Obama's DOJ, was so corrupt he couldn't trust them because Loretta Lynch has met with Clinton on the plane.
He couldn't trust them to do the right thing.
He was admitting that the DOJ was corrupt.
Anyway, shame on the Republicans, but at least James Comey, kudos to James Comey for not saying, yeah, you know, I am the most righteous person in America.
Maybe I should have shut down speech I didn't like with the power of the FBI behind me.
Kudos to at least, I mean, at least he is, maybe he's just old enough.
I don't know, to shut down a journalist who wants to silence free speech.
She should be fired.
That's a fireable offense to me to have a journalist talk about shutting down free speech through the FBI.
That is a fireable offense.
She should not be on TV again after that.
That's absolutely, I mean, it really is amazing that people on the right get shut down for like random comments.
But that was a conscious question that she asked.
She should be shut down entirely.
So the opposition's got nothing.
I mean, they've got nothing on Trump, and they will not leave.
You can tell they've got nothing because they won't leave the Russian collusion thing alone.
I got to say, the Washington Free Beacon put together this basically this montage.
It's a little fudge.
It's got a couple of movie scenes in it, but it's basically a montage of the talking points making their way from the DNC through the press.
Is the Russian collusion investigation over?
Listen to this montage.
I don't think it's done.
This is just the beginning.
I think this is far from over.
This is just the beginning.
There are a lot of open questions.
This is not over!
But this isn't over.
I don't think it's over until the Mueller report sings.
It is certainly nowhere near the end.
Neil Katziall has said that this is just the beginning.
The end of his investigation, but it's just the beginning.
Or the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.
It's just the beginning of the fight.
Just the beginning of the fight.
Just the beginning.
This is just the beginning.
Soviet beacons.
Is this really just the beginning?
This is just the beginning.
The beginning of an argument.
This is just the beginning.
This is kind of just the beginning.
This is just the beginning.
Is this just the beginning of the beginning?
This isn't something's over and let's reflect on what just happened.
It wasn't over.
Still isn't over.
Democrats are going to argue this is just the beginning.
This is just the beginning.
I think we're really at the beginning, maybe the middle, that this is the beginning of more questioning and more witnessing.
With more questions today than answers.
This is only the beginning, not the end.
Nothing is over until we decide it is.
So that's the press.
You know, remember when they ran that thing, who was it?
I think it was Sinclair did an ad, and somebody put them all together as if every anchor on Sinclair was saying the same thing.
This is generic, though.
This is not coming down from anyone from above, except that it is, because the minute they get the talking point, they're all on board.
This is just the beginning.
They got nothing.
I got to play one more thing just for absolute laughs.
Greg Gutfeld put this out and it is brilliant.
Rachel Maddow, if you haven't been watching Rachel Maddow, it's some of the best entertainment on TV.
She really did build this Russian collusion narrative into a vast conspiracy with all kinds of details.
And Gutfeld's crew pasted it together.
I got to admit, it's a little bit unfair because you could do this to anybody, but it is actually reflective of what her show has sounded like in the last couple of days.
And it's really just worth hearing.
This guy Kalimnik keeps turning up again and again.
Konstantin Kalimnik, Konstantin Kalimnik, and Konstantin Kalimnik.
Konstantin Kalimnik, he's still Russian military intelligence.
Kalimnik, a short man who goes by Kostya, this guy Konstantin Kalimnik.
Aluminum smelters.
Big, big aluminum smelters.
Giant aluminum smelters.
He started sleeping at his smelters.
Sabotage in his smelters.
Came to his smelters.
Very brutal start, right?
Sleeping in the smelters.
The next person who would be criminally charged in the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation bingo game.
Did you have a square marked Alex Vanderswan?
Alex Vanderswan.
Alex Vanderswan?
Chromium.
Atomic number 24.
The brother of the guy who's got the chromium plant.
The guy who was the brother of the chromium plant.
Chromium plant in Kazakhstan.
Chromium plant in Kazakhstan.
Next time you see something chrome-plated, take a deep breath, cough it out, and think of the Trump Soho.
Big story.
Tick, Boom.
Started ticking again.
Tick, tick, Four hours later, boom, boom.
You're stressing me out.
He starts tick, tick, ticking again.
The boom goes off twice.
First boom, tick, tick, tick.
Boom.
Tick, tick, ticking.
Second boom.
Bombshell, the guy who ticks.
Tick, Boom, boom again.
Tick, tick, The boom.
Tick, ahead of time, ahead of the scoop, and then boom.
That's great.
That's from Gutfeller.
Just absolutely hilarious.
And even though, like I said, it's a little bit unfair, because you could do that to anyone.
We could all have a super cut put together like that.
Even so, it is fair because it captures the spirit of her show.
You know, it's amazing to me that Alex Jones is deplatformed everywhere, but she's not.
I mean, why isn't she just as fake news as he is?
I mean, I'm not praising Alex Jones, although I don't think anybody should be deplatformed.
I think we should let everybody speak.
But, you know, if he's gone, shouldn't Rachel Maddow be gone too?
Anyway, of course, where the media leads, the Democrats follow, or vice versa.
It's impossible to tell them apart at this point.
And, you know, Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, the usual suspects, are calling for the Mueller report to be released.
They're calling for it to be released.
And they keep saying, Attorney General Barr keeps saying he's going to release it.
And some of the stuff might be grand jury testimony, which shouldn't be released to the public because it's not fair.
But they're acting as if some great conspiracy is going on.
Here is Nadler.
Now, we want to get the right clip because this is Nadler today saying that it should be released.
Have we got this one?
Yes, number 13.
Yeah.
And the fact is, there was an investigation for 22 months.
And now the Attorney General in four days, an attorney general who auditioned for his job by writing essentially that the investigation was wrong in itself and that a president could never commit obstruction of justice, which is an extreme view.
And so he's not the proper person to oversee this or to decide what gets public.
And we have to see all the material and the underlying, to see the report and the underlying documents to protect the public and to protect the rule of law.
Now, it is provable.
It's provable that this is completely political maneuvering, okay?
These are not people serving the public.
These are not people trying to get at the truth.
This is purely political maneuvering.
How do we know?
Here, courtesy of Fox and Friends is that very same, that you'll know him, you love him, the very same Jerry Nadler talking back in Bill Clinton days when they wanted to release the star report about Clinton's perjury and whether he'd perjured himself and how and all this stuff.
And here is Nadler talking about that then.
As a matter of decency and protecting people's privacy rights, people who may be totally innocent third parties, what must not be released at all.
It's grand jury material.
It represents statements which may or may not be true by various witnesses, salacious material, all kinds of material that it would be unfair to release.
So not only did Nadler used to be a great big fat guy, right?
I mean, you got to give him credit for something.
At least he deflated a little bit.
But not only that, he's just on whatever side he happens to be on.
These guys, they make all these speeches about their sovereign duty to the public and all this, what a noble quest they're on for the truth.
And they're just, it's just all political.
And at some point, at some point, you would just think that this would be reflected in the polls.
And not only that reflected in the polls, but of course, the policy.
At some point, you would just hope that people would say this group of folks is nuts.
That thing with the Green New Deal, you know, basically that Alexandria Occasional Cortex is going to sit in boardrooms and tell them how to run their businesses.
And we're going to change the way the cows eat so they don't pass gas and we're not going to be able to fly.
You know, Trump, here is Trump as, I wish I could bronze this Trump.
I wish I could just freeze this Trump and keep him at this Trump level because when he does this, he's brilliant.
Here is Trump going off.
He's at the National Republican Congressional Committee.
He's making a speech and he goes off on the Green New Deal.
And if this were Trump every day, I think his approval rating would be at 60%.
The Green New Deal, done by a young bartender, 29 years old.
A young bartender, wonderful young woman.
The Green New Deal.
You know, but it's crazy.
You know, the first time I heard it, I said, that's the craziest thing.
You have senators that are professionals that you guys know that have been there for a long time, white hair, everything perfect.
And they're standing behind her and they're shaking.
They're petrified of her.
We support the Green New Deal.
How about the woman from Hawaii, the senator from Hawaii?
Highly nice woman, right?
Oh, I'm glad I didn't say it.
I'm going to get great points from my wife for not saying that.
But she was so angry to men, right?
Remember, she was screaming at men and then they asked her about the Green New Deal.
I love it.
They said, yeah, but you don't allow airplanes anymore, so you can't get to Hawaii.
Oh, we have to work on something.
So somebody jokingly said, we'll build a train to Hawaii.
And she actually thought it was a decent idea.
So now she supports it because she thinks they're going to build a train to Hawaii.
But they really believe this stuff.
And you know, it's like, it's the craziest thing.
They believe it.
And we will have to do something.
But don't do it too early, please.
Don't kill it.
Because we want to be able to run against it.
If they beat me with the Green New Deal, I deserve to lose.
All right.
So that is one Trump.
And I love, you know, you forget that this guy is a professional entertainer.
This is a guy who had a hit show.
He knew, you know, when you have a hit television show, people don't know this, but like every day they are reading the ratings that come in and going through the details and looking at the statistics.
And they're adjusting to everything.
They're always adjusting what they're selling to make sure they're selling it to the greatest number of people, to make sure they're doing more of what people like, less of what people don't like.
This is a guy who knows how to appeal to the public, and he does when he does stuff like that.
But he's also a guy.
He's a creation of a certain kind of culture.
And he's also a guy who sometimes goes off and says, this is when he was attacking the Russian collusion thing.
This is cut number 14.
So the Russia hoax proves more than ever that we need to finish exactly what we came here to do.
Drain the swamp.
The Democrats have to now decide whether they will continue defrauding the public with ridiculous bullshit.
Partisan investigations or whether they will apologize to the American people.
So, you know, I played that with the, he said the word, the BS, and, you know, I played that and I heard my wife in the other room.
She called out, was that the president of the United States?
And I was like, never mind.
You know, women don't like the guy.
I mean, he's gruff.
He's harsh.
He's coarse.
He's all those things.
A lot of people don't like him.
And of course, the press has created a world in which it is almost criminal to like him.
I mean, a teenager wears a MAGA hat and they call the kid a racist.
I mean, that was a shameful shame on them, but they do that.
Press Creates Criminality00:06:23
You know, he's a white supremacist.
They push that myth, that hoax about him saying there were fine people in the white supremacist movement, which he never said.
And, you know, they make it so it's gotten dangerous.
There's a piece over at American Thinker by Lloyd Marcus.
He says, it is outrageous that supporting Trump is dangerous.
And he says, my car, which has a Trump Pence bumper sticker, was keyed while pumping gas.
A motorist seemed impressed by my courage to have a Trump bumper sticker.
And by the way, I mean, I don't put bumper stickers on my car, but I wouldn't do it.
I don't think.
I mean, I would be worried about somebody keying my car too.
People have told me they're afraid to wear a MAGA cap or have a Trump sign on their lawn.
Having to feel so afraid to express our political views is outrageous.
And, you know, this is something especially, especially among blacks and maybe Hispanics too.
You know, Trump once bragged that he was going to win the Hispanic vote, and he actually did a little bit better than Mitt Romney.
And no matter how often the press tells us that he is alienating Hispanics with his tough stance on the border, he's not.
The polls show that so far he's not.
There is, in my mind, a real question, a true question about how blacks are feeling about Donald Trump, because things are going much better in black neighborhoods.
But I know they've got to be, you just have got to be intimidated by every black authority figure, every black spokesman, everyone who pretends to speak for the blacks telling you that this guy is a white supremacist, which makes absolutely no sense given the facts on the ground.
I mean, you know, luckily, Candace Owens is out there at least pushing another message.
But, you know, it's hard.
It's hard to do that when there's this tidal wave of voices telling blacks this guy is your enemy.
This guy's your enemy.
But let's just say what I believe, which is that black people are just the same as everybody else, except a different color than white people.
They see what's going on.
They got eyes to see with.
They've got brains to think with.
I can't help but wonder if a lot of black people are going to go in and vote for Trump and lie about it.
I mean, what's in it for them?
That's why there's a curtain on the voting booth.
What's in it for them to tell the truth?
How would people ever know if they did?
I mean, except for maybe charting locations.
But if they come out of exit polls and say they didn't vote for him, but they did, I think he may win something there.
But what is it?
What is it that is keeping Trump mired?
First, I think part of it is that coarseness.
You know, you heard that he has got the second worst approval rating since Ronald Reagan.
And of course, Ronald Reagan came back and won by a landslide.
I think there were other planets that voted for Ronald Reagan when he ran the second time.
And the first, people don't remember, but first, his new policies hurt the economy because he had to cause some unemployment to get the incredible inflation down.
And then things started taking off as the cut regs and the lower taxes did what they always do, which is spur the economy.
Trump had the economy.
The economy was ready to explode.
It was just Obama with his stupid policy sitting on it.
So he hasn't got that.
And Ronald Reagan came back and he spoke with grace.
He attacked the Democrats.
He spoke up for America, but he spoke with grace.
He spoke with politeness.
He was a product of a different culture.
What culture is Donald Trump a product of?
He's a product of the coarse, vulgar culture that the left created.
It wasn't right-wingers.
It wasn't William F. Buckley going around saying, yeah, everybody can curse now.
Yeah, that'll be great.
Everyone can say four-letter words on TV and there'll be nudity.
It'll be great.
It wasn't the right saying that.
It was Hollywood and the left saying, oh, yes, you're just an old fuddy duddy if you don't like this stuff.
So Trump is a product of that culture.
The coarseness that he speaks with is a product of their culture, of leftist culture.
There's no way that a person can be created by that culture and be anything other than a vulgar guy.
If that's what hurts him, if that's what hurts him with women, if that's what hurts him with voters, that is going to be a true triumph of leftist culture.
They turned a man into themselves so that even when he was promoting different policies, people didn't like him for being the product of left-wing culture.
And the other thing is that Shelby Steele article that we spoke about last time, I guess on Monday, that the left has created a new narrative, not of right and left, but of good and bad.
A narrative in which we're not talking about policy, we're not talking about principle, we're talking about morality.
And in the realm of morality, it's just, I mean, I think this thing came, I saw this thing come to pass when I first moved back from England and 9-11 happened, and people were talking as if we were to blame.
I remember David Letterman, who was the late night guy at the time, coming on and saying, why do they hate us?
And I thought, they're the Taliban.
Who gives a rats if they hate us?
Who gives a rats if they hate us?
I mean, I used to be on hotlines.
You know, I've told you, I've volunteered on suicide hotlines, and women would call me up and they'd say, my husband is beating me.
Why does he hate me?
Why is he angry at me?
And I thought, you know, I couldn't say this, but I would just think like, well, I don't know, but try shooting him and see if that, you know, solves the problem.
Because if you're beating up your wife, you're a criminal.
You're a villain.
The Taliban were villains.
The culture changed to look at America not as a principled place that was moving forward in progress toward greater and greater freedom and equality, but as a place that was darkened by its evil past, the slavery and all the other things that hadn't happened, you know, that never, that no other country had any sins, but we had all the sins, all the sins.
That also is a product of left-wing culture.
If Donald Trump is being frozen in place by that, by his own vulgarity created by a leftist culture that excused that, or by a concept of the United States as an evil place rather than a set of principles that are universal and moral and great and work toward progress and greater freedom, then that is going to be a true triumph of leftist culture against the right.
And it is going to be a true proof that the right, by ignoring the culture, which it still does, the right turns everything into political arguments.
The right turns everything into facts and figures and charts and graphs.
The left does not know how to tell a story.
It does not care whether they tell stories.
It doesn't know how to appreciate stories that are told.
And I'll tell you, the wages of losing the culture can be losing the country.
And it's just, it will truly, truly be a tragedy because the left has gone insane.
We got the mailbag coming up.
Gospel vs. Data00:15:26
I got to say goodbye to stop yelling at me, please.
We got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, but come to dailywire.com, subscribe to dailywire.com.
Why?
Because you have the money and we want the money.
It's very simple.
This allows you 10 bucks a month, allows you 100 bucks for the year.
I don't have my leftist tears tumbler because I'm here at beautiful Hillsdale College, but it's there somewhere filling up with leftist tears as we speak.
You can have one too.
Plus, you can be in the mailbag.
So mailbag coming up.
All right, mailbag.
You guys forgot to press the button.
All right, from Brian.
Dear Drew, since I was 16, I've had the personally imposed rule that I would not pursue or even casually date co-workers.
However, I've also always said if the right girl came along, I'd make an exception.
Well, she started in my office this past February in today's Me Too climate.
How does someone like me, a Christian guy in his mid-20s, navigate dating at work?
Do you think pursuing a relationship at work is appropriate?
Well, it can be appropriate, but it is a minefield.
I mean, don't make no mistake about it.
It's a minefield.
And yes, especially today.
But it's always a minefield.
I mean, first, you have to ask yourself some questions.
Are you this girl's boss?
I mean, that's important.
If you are her superior, if you have power over her, you're putting her in a pretty bad position by asking her out.
I mean, that really is a kind of uncomfortable thing for her.
And you have to think about that.
You have to think about what your company policy is.
You don't want to make her an outlaw.
You don't want to make yourself an outlaw.
You have to think about what you can do comfortably without making her feel even asking her changes her work environment.
So you have to figure what's it going to be like if she just doesn't want to go out with you and you say, do you want to go out with me?
And she says no, is she working in the booth next to you?
Is she standing next to you every day?
Is she going to feel really bad?
You have to really think about these things because if you think this could be the one, if you think this is it, you can take a lot of risks, but you better know what risks you're taking.
You better have a full and clear idea of what risks you're taking, not just to you, not just to you, but also to her.
You know, you've got to have some consideration for her and the fact that this is her job.
She wants her job.
She probably needs her job.
And she doesn't want it to become this horrible thing where she has to come in every day and feel you moping around because she said no.
So yes, you've got to think about it.
If you can't do this, if you don't feel you can do this without making her life a misery or without risking yours, then maybe you ought to wait or get another job or whatever, but you should take it easy.
I mean, it really is a minefield.
And I've done it.
You know, I'm not saying that I've been absolutely squeaky clean on this.
I have done it, but it is a minefield.
From Christopher, oh, master of the multiverse and lord of the power of A's versus E's in last names, I am a gay member of the United Methodist Church and thus expect that I will be one who is part of the group that splinters from the UMC as the church splits following the recent decision to require adherence to the traditionalist view as it relates to human sexuality.
And this is, for those who don't know, the Methodist Church has a powerful contingent in Africa, I believe it is.
And of course, they're far more conservative than we are.
And that contingent helped vote, cause the church to vote to continue to condemn, even strengthen their condemnation of gay marriage.
And so now the liberal faction of the Methodist Church may break off.
And he says to me, as an Episcopalian who's been through such a split, do you have any recommendations on how to weather the storm that is to come with the UMC?
Hashtag came for Ben, stayed for Clayfield.
Well, you can stay for Ben too.
You know, we're both here.
Okay.
Great question.
Excellent, really good question.
And I will tell you everything I can tell you about it from my point of view.
You should preach the gospel.
If you can preach the gospel and put forward your point of view on human sexuality within the context of the gospel, you should do it.
If you can't do that, then you should preach the gospel and change your mind.
That is what you should do.
And the reason I say this is because I have noticed as I've gone from church to church that, and you know, I'm pretty liberal on this subject.
I mean, it's just something that as an artist, as a guy who works in the arts, I mean, half the people I know are gay, so many gay people that I've respected and worked with and been friends with, you know, it's always just been something that just doesn't bother me.
It just doesn't enter my consciousness.
But I have noticed that many of the churches that are now accepting of gays have become corrupt because they've left the gospel behind in order to get to the place they want to get to on the gay question.
Other churches that continue to condemn or at least exclude gay marriage or gay people, some of them strike me as unchristian.
So you have a place where some churches are small-minded and cruel, like when they throw a young man out of their church.
I don't think anyone should be kept away from the table of Christ.
But when they throw a young man out of their church because of his sexuality, I think that that's unchristian and cruel.
I don't think Christ would have done it.
He sat down with just about everybody and broke bread.
But the people who are saying, no, all is well, we now sanctify gay marriage and we have a new service for people who are transgender or whatever, they haven't thought it through.
So what you have to do is you have to get a good theology to support what you're saying because there is nothing worth abandoning the gospel.
The gospel comes first.
And if you can do that, and by the way, I actually have high hopes that you will be able to do it or some gay people will be able to do it.
I do not believe the gospel is meant to freeze us in first century morality.
Obviously, things change over time, but you got to do it that way because there's no other way the gospel comes first.
And if you can't, change your mind.
From Ernie.
Oh, fellow withles.
What happened to those master of the multiverse?
I used to get king of the emperor.
Now I get failed follicles.
What do you make of near-death experiences, NDEs?
Are they evidence of an afterlife?
I think they are.
I think they're evidence, but not proof.
I mean, I think it's really interesting.
They have done some experiments.
I've never heard of a result of an experiment.
I think they did this in Scandinavia somewhere, where they actually put messages up above where a person could read them standing still, because many people feel when they experience a near-death experience, they feel themselves lifting up out of their body, and they wanted to test whether they could actually read something or see something that they couldn't see if they were actually where their body was.
I haven't heard any really startling results of those.
But the fact that they're all so similar, look, as I wrote in a novel once, I had a character say there's a reasonable explanation for everything, and that's the one some people choose to believe.
You can either believe that this is something that the brain emits at the point of death to help you get through it or to make things better for you, or that you're really seeing something.
I think that people really see things.
You know, I really do.
And I think it's evidence, but because you can always come up with a reasonable explanation, I have to say it's not proof.
It is really interesting, though, and I'd love it if they would do more and better tests about it.
I knew a woman who experienced one once, and it didn't change her mind at all.
She was an atheist before.
She had an incredible near-death experience, or actually it was an after-death experience.
Her heart stopped.
She was dead.
And I said, well, wow, did that change your mind?
Nah.
So I don't know.
People are very stubborn.
From Kelsey, Andrew, I'm currently reading The Great Good Thing, and I've been very touched by your relationship with your wife throughout your entire life.
My husband is struggling with depression, and it has put a great strain on our marriage in such a way that we have separated for the time being so that he can take time to work on himself and decide what he wants out of life, and if it includes our marriage.
He's so stuck on how he felt about me in the past and wanting to get back to that that I am afraid it clouds his future and how he can feel about me now as we work through this.
How did your depression not affect your love for your wife during its darkest hours?
I don't know how to get through this.
You know, first of all, you asked me to recall a period of my life that I hate thinking about, but I think about it.
I talk about it, so I have to think about it.
I did have dark times.
A lot of my depression manifested itself in terms of rage.
They say that rage and depression are actually two sides of the same coin.
And frequently, of course, when you're angry, you're angry at your wife.
And I'm proud of the fact.
I look back with pride on the fact that I never took it out on her.
I knew it was me.
I knew it was coming out of me.
I knew it was emanating out of a sickness inside me.
And even though I would sometimes in my mind be angry at her, I did not, you know, I never unleashed on her.
I didn't scream at her or anything like that.
I'm sure I wasn't pleasant to live with, but still, I had a lot of discipline about it, and I'm proud of that.
But still, it was a terrible, a terrible thing.
The thing about my love for my wife, though, it was so clear to me.
You know, a lot of times people write in and they say they've lost their faith in God.
And I always say the same thing.
Your faith in God is essentially a feeling.
God's presence is a reality.
God is really there.
And sometimes you may feel that you've lost touch with him, but he hasn't lost touch with you.
I mean, so that's the thing.
So even at times when I was in a rage, I knew I loved my wife.
I knew that love was there.
I didn't have to feel it.
It wasn't like little hearts were coming out of my head.
I didn't feel, you know, oh, you know, the same way I might have felt on a good day when I wasn't depressed, but I knew it was there, just the same way I know God is there, even if I have a day when I don't feel his presence.
So it was a reality, the reality of my love.
The thing that you mention about your husband looking back and saying, oh, we were once in love.
And I have a real problem the way I hear people talking about this.
Jeremy and Ben were talking about this on backstage.
And it's not that what they're saying is untrue.
It's the way they say it that doesn't convey, I think, the full meaning.
They're always saying things like, and people say this in general, oh, you know, the original love fades and you're never going to feel that great feeling again.
But that's not right.
That's not the full story.
What is happening is, of course, you're becoming more intimate with one another.
And of course, you're becoming more comfortable with one another.
And of course, that first rush of feeling is, you're leaving it behind, but you're leaving it behind to travel towards something deeper and richer, one hopes.
And when that happens to people, when that happens to people, a lot of people get frightened and they pull away.
It's really common that they think that what is happening is they're missing what's behind them, that first romantic flush, but they're really afraid of what's in front of them, that deeper intimacy, that coming together almost as a single entity, as one flesh, as the Bible says.
And so it's very possible that what he is doing is not trying to run back toward that first feeling, but he's trying to run away from the deeper feeling that is coming together.
You have to take a long look at this.
Obviously, you can't cure his depression, and it's possible.
I don't know if you have kids.
You don't mention whether you have kids, but that's an important consideration.
If you do have kids, you should do everything you can to keep your marriage together.
But if there comes a point where he can't be a husband to you, then you are going to have to move on in some way, depending on what your situation is with the kids.
I hope he does.
I hope that he gets treatment for it.
I mean, there is treatment for depression.
I personally am in favor of the talking cure.
That's what cured me, and it cured me in such a dramatic fashion that I'm very much committed to it.
I don't really like the new drugs.
I think they teach people that they're just bags of chemicals that can be adjusted when really they usually have some problem, as I did in my past and the way I was raised that was causing them to have that depression.
I wish you luck.
It's very, very painful.
But remember that It's less likely that he's missing that first flush than he is running away from the new intimacy, the deeper intimacy that comes with marriage.
The reason I say that, I don't like the way when Ben and Jeremy talk about it, it sounds like they make marriage sound like a chore.
I've never found that to be the case.
I have always found it to be much more of an adventure.
From Cameron, hi, Mr. Clavin, which he spells with a capital E. Could you send out somebody to put him to death?
We still have the death squad, the Daily Wire death squads, right?
I am often asked by pro-choicers, being pro-life, would you save a life, would you save a five-year-old from a burning building or a thousand embryos?
What is the best response to this common abortion argument?
I'm sorry, I never heard this one before.
Thank you for all your commentary and support of the community.
Okay, well, first of all, you should turn to the guy with an incredible condescending voice, pat him on the head and say, aren't you clever?
Aren't you clever?
Okay.
And just really make him feel bad.
I think that's it.
Because listen, you can do this with anything.
If terrorists say we're going to blow up your city unless you shoot a five-year-old girl in the head or you shoot your daughter in the head, which would you do?
Would you sacrifice the 8 million people in New York or would you kill your own child?
You know, should Superman save Jimmy Olson or Lois Lane?
The thing is, it's not really a choice.
It's a tragedy.
That's what he's posing.
He's using the word choice to obscure the fact that life has terrible, terrible tragedies in it.
We live in a fallen, broken world, and sometimes there are no good choices.
If what he's trying to elicit from you is because the child is visible to you, the grown child is visible to you, and the embryos don't look like a grown child, that somehow your emotions might make the decision for you in a tragedy where there is no good decision, then all he's doing is saying we should all use our stupid emotions to make irrational decisions when there is no tragedy, when there is a choice, which is to keep the child alive and arrange for its upbringing.
He's putting together, he's putting forward a puzzle, basically, on the idea of trapping you in an impossible choice.
It's just an impossible tragedy.
Life has its impossible tragedies, so that you'll be emotional, hysterical, and irrational, like he is when he says you should be able to abort a child.
That's all he's trying to do.
He's trying to maneuver you into his irrationality.
And then you should send him on his way.
All right, I'm running out of time, but I will try to do one more here.
Let's see.
Nicholas, from Nicholas, hi, Andrew.
I just turned 24.
I finished watching the most recent backstage episode.
I was very curious to ask each one of you guys about divorce and remarriage.
In 2018, my wife left me quite unexpectedly.
We were married for exactly a year.
I never got any answers as to why.
If you recall, I wrote you some months ago about my situation, and I'm happy to say that I'm doing much better.
I'm really happy to hear that.
Thank you.
Anyway, being as young as I am, I desperately want to get married again in the future, but I'm torn as to what the Bible says on it.
To clarify, we had no kids together.
I did everything in my power to save the marriage.
We both were and still are practicing and believing Pentecostal Christians.
I'll be grateful for any answers you have sincerely, Nicholas.
Get married again.
Find a new girl and get married again.
Here's why.
You know, Jeremy, I thought, made a wonderful, wonderful point about Christ's statements on divorce.
He said, what God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
No Children, Happy Marriage?00:02:01
He also said that if you experience lust, you've committed adultery.
Now, we all know that what he's talking about is he's talking about the perfect web of moral universe that God creates, not the world that we live in.
If you experience lust, you're not.
It's not the same as committing adultery.
Go ahead, ask your wife, and you'll find out.
Okay.
So in this case, too, Jesus is telling you that marriage makes you one flesh.
It is a real thing, a real sacrament.
But he knows.
You know, if you read the Gospels carefully, Jesus doesn't make rules.
He doesn't make rules.
He shows you the way.
He demonstrates in himself the way to treat yourself and others.
And one of the things he does is he humanizes the rules.
He makes allowances for the things that happen.
You didn't have children, so you're not in that situation, which changes everything.
You did everything you could to save the marriage.
The marriage is not coming back.
You don't know why.
It's time to move on.
And yes, it's a sad, sad thing.
But I will tell you, some of the happiest married people I know had an experience like this, where they had a very short marriage that didn't take, where there were no children, where maybe really it wasn't a marriage.
That's why Matt Walsh was saying, that's why the Catholic Church has annulment, because it wasn't really a marriage.
It didn't really take.
It didn't really make you one flesh as it should have.
And so a lot of the people I know who have the happiest marriages got married, very quickly found out that it was the wrong one and moved on and had another marriage.
And I hope that happens to you as well.
I got to stop.
I'm just completely out of time.
But I'm here at Hillsdale College having a wonderful time at a great place with some terrific kids and incredibly smart professors.
I hope they don't find out that I'm just faking it.
But anyway, I'll be with you again tomorrow on Thursday on the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm Andrew Klavan.
Jonathan Hay: Senior Producer00:00:36
The Andrew Clavin Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
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Edited by Adam Sajovitz.
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The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production.
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Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, a couple of state races provide some evidence which way 2020 is headed.