Andrew Clavin’s Reality is Coming dissects Trump’s trade war escalation—$300B in tariffs sparking China’s food retaliation—while exposing media bias, from Stanford’s cancellation of his speech to Democrats’ shifting stances on tariffs. He contrasts China’s treaty violations with past U.S. concessions, warns of consumer pain, and slams Rashida Tlaib’s Holocaust revisionism, debunked by Aaron David Miller. Meanwhile, conservative comedian Michael Loftus reveals Hollywood’s censorship of right-wing content, calling it "propaganda by exclusion," before the show pivots to antinatalism and Chips Ahoy’s drag queen ads—proving reality’s absurdity knows no bounds. [Automatically generated summary]
President Trump struck first, imposing tariffs on such imported Chinese goods as crappy toys that break as you're trying to get them out of the incredibly frustrating plastic wrap and electronics with stolen U.S. technology inside.
China then retaliated by imposing tariffs on imported American goods like food, which China says it doesn't need because they have so many people and they can't really vote, so who cares if they die?
Chinese trade minister iSclueU told reporters, quote, China has every right to protect its ability to shaft the living daylights out of other countries by reneging on treaties, stealing intellectual property, and totally ignoring the rulings of the World Trade Organization because we don't believe in freedom or morality.
President Trump thinks he can blackmail us into behaving like decent human beings, but he hasn't got a Chinaman's chance.
Nyak Nyak Nyak, unquote.
Market expert Frankly Panicked said the trade war provided a good opportunity for investors to overreact, run amok, and indulge in apocalyptic sell-offs, telling CNN, quote, whether the U.S. or China imposes tariffs, it's the American consumer who pays the price because I'm utterly hysterical and have no idea what I'm saying, unquote.
Democrat presidential frontrunner Joe Biden addressed the issue in a statement to a suit hanging in a dry cleaner's window, saying, quote, China has us by the throat because at any moment they could stop selling us those fried dumplings we all love so much, causing a glut on the dipping sauce market that could bring our economy crashing to a halt, unquote.
Biden then turned away and walked into a lamppost, turned 360 degrees and walked into the post again, then turned 180 degrees and carefully backed up, smacking into the lamppost a third time before asking it for a campaign donation.
President Trump says he is weighing his next step, trying to choose between ignoring the whole thing or launching a nuclear attack.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunkity-doo.
Ship-shaped dipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
Biden's Lamppost Adventures00:14:42
You know, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was the last intelligent Democrat, famously said that everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.
Because the Democrats have built a protective wall around themselves, a Democrat press that tells their side almost exclusively, a Democrat entertainment media that immortalizes their side in skewed and dishonest movies and TV shows, and a Democrat Academy that teaches their side to children so that they don't know any other, the Democrats have lived for a long time in their own world with their own facts and no one to challenge them.
They continue to try to preserve that state of affairs by silencing and chilling discourse on social media, blacklisting one side in Hollywood, and shouting the opposition down on campus.
But those crazy facts have a life of their own, and kind of like the zombies attacking Jerusalem in the movie World War Z, they tend to pile up on one another and climb over any wall you build, no matter how high.
Donald Trump isn't always right in his opinions.
Conservatives aren't always right in our opinions.
But at least we're talking about things that are actually real and actually happening.
And as the facts pile up, the Democrats look more and more ridiculous.
I'll show you what I mean.
But first, let us discuss one of my favorite sponsors, Dollar Shave Club.
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You know, before I get to the news today, I have to mention this really sad little thing about, you know, I'm going to Stanford tonight to speak about our Judeo-Christian heritage.
And the Stanford administration, this drives me crazy.
It's one thing for radical students.
I was talking about this on the show yesterday.
It's one thing for radical students to try to be radical and try to protest and all this stuff.
I think that's wrong.
I think we should all listen to ourselves.
But when the administration essentially chills speech, it really is shameful.
It's not illegal.
They have a right to do it, but it's shameful.
So two people, Susie Brubaker-Cole and Tiffany Steinwert, the Dean for Religious Life and the Vice Provost for Student Affairs, are saying, while our university welcomes discussion of all aspects of America's religious diversity, because I'm talking about the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of Western civilization, all right?
While our university welcomes discussion of all aspects of America's religious diversity, we are deeply troubled by views Andrew Clavin has expressed in the past in relation to Islam.
Clavin has sought to promote Judeo-Christian values in part by fostering anti-Muslim sentiment, which basically isn't true.
She says in an online video, Clavin distorts the tenets of the Muslim faith, equating Islam with violence and barbarism.
You know, none of that is actually true.
You know, I have made jokes about the fact that the left turns a blind eye to Islamic violence, and I've done satire about that.
But I have never, I have always said the same thing.
There is a problem with violence in the Muslim world, and I think it needs to be looked at, and I think experts should debate whether that problem is inherent to Muslim tenets or is a cancer that is infecting the Muslim world, which is just as possible.
I've said the same thing about sexual molestation in the Catholic Church, that Catholics should examine whether some of their policies about sex and Catholic priests might have contributed to that.
In both cases, I don't know the answer, but I think it should be debated by people inside those religions and people who are expert in those religions.
We should talk about that.
And I've always said that lying and covering up just makes things worse.
I am not anti-Muslim people.
I do believe in questioning all ideas.
And the funny thing is, I was going to go, I'm still going to go and give a speech talking about ways in which I'm uncomfortable with talking about our Judeo-Christian heritage because I think the right uses that to troll people.
And in fact, they say that they've been spreading, you know, publicizing the event at the Muslim Center.
This is what they accuse them of.
I have no idea about that.
But in any case, I mean, you know, all you have to do is listen.
You can listen, and then afterwards, there's always a conversation, a question period.
You can disagree.
You can tell me why you disagree.
We don't have to hate one another.
I mean, it's just absurd.
It is just absurd for the people in the administration of a university to chill speech.
People in universities should be arguing with each other all night long in their dorms about everything.
They should be talking freely about everything.
Shocking ideas, unspeakable ideas, ideas that some people consider hateful and other people consider real.
You should be talking about everything.
That is how you get to the truth.
You don't get to the truth by silencing anybody.
And I think when they do this, when they encourage people to come out and shut down speech, they're really stripping their students of their inheritance of free speech and open discussion.
They really are.
It's not that it's illegal.
I know they have a right to do it.
It's a private university.
I think it's wrong.
I think you have a right to do it.
I think it's wrong to do it.
And I really do.
And I just think, you know, if these two administrators would like to come and listen to me and raise their objections after I speak, I'm going to stand there and answer their questions and address their concerns.
And it really does bother me.
I mean, I'm not, you know, Knowles loves to troll people, and I love him, and that's his gig, and I get it.
I'm not a troll.
I'm here to talk about the things that matter to me and listen to people when they object if they wait till I'm finished speaking.
I mean, that is the way we work it.
It's a civilized way to do it.
To encourage people not to hear, to not listen, to not share ideas is just wrong, especially at a university.
All right.
The trade war with China, we're talking about this.
So let's talk about this.
The trade war with China is heating up.
Trump imposed tariffs on China.
Their talks broke down.
Their trade talks broke down.
And China retaliated by imposing some tariffs on our goods.
And here's the thing, and Trump was talking about this about five minutes ago, just as I was coming in.
I wasn't able to get a cut because it was too quickly, but he's basically defending this thing.
And the markets are going down.
Yesterday, the markets really took a tumble, and of course, everybody panics.
And all the commentators, the economic commentators, start to speak.
But there's a lot of good in this, okay?
I'm not going to comment yet on what Trump is doing policy-wise, but just the fact that we are in a trade war with China is a fact.
We have always been.
For 50 years, we've been in a trade war with China.
I mean, it's 50 years about since Nixon opened China up by visiting 1972, right?
It was a big shocking thing.
Nixon, the anti-communist, goes to China and meets with Mao, and that was a big deal, and that started to open up and warm our relationships.
That was a big twist in the Nixon administration.
But after that, you know, China became part of the World Trade Organization.
We gave them special trading status, and all these Chinese goods started to come in.
And they have dealt with us in unfair ways.
They steal our intellectual property.
They make deals and don't hold up to the deals.
They've been pretty good with the World Trade Organization, following a lot of those things, but they've had a lot of, you know, they get a lot of low tariffs and a lot of breaks, and they abuse that privilege.
Trump didn't want to get into the Trans-Pacific Partnership because it was pretty obvious that it was going to move more jobs out of the country.
So he didn't want to be part of that, even though it might have given us some bargaining power.
He felt that he could go and deal with the Chinese one-on-one, and that is what he's doing now.
And if you think some of the people are saying, well, Trump is just going off half-cocked.
Trump has been talking about this for decades.
It was even a joke during, I would play it during the election, how often he mentioned China.
They would put out these cuts where they would put music behind it.
Do we have one of those?
I think I sent one of those in.
Yeah, just play a little bit of this, cut number 11.
This has been a big thing on his mind for a long time.
And now he says this is a good thing for us.
Play cut number nine.
China has been taking advantage of the United States for many, many years.
I'm not just talking about during the Obama administration.
You can go back long before that.
And it's been taking out $400, $500, $600 billion a year out of the United States.
And we can't let that happen.
We're in a very strong position.
Our economy has been very powerful.
Theirs has not been.
We've gone up a lot since our great election in 2016.
And if you look at the numbers, they've gone down quite a bit.
We're dealing with them.
We have a very good relationship.
Maybe something will happen.
We're going to be meeting, as you know, at the G20 in Japan.
And that'll be, I think, probably a very fruitful meeting.
But we're taking in right now hundreds of billions of dollars.
We're taking in billions of dollars of tariffs.
You look at what we've done thus far with China.
We've never taken in 10 cents until I got elected.
Now we're taking in billions and billions.
So that is a little bit distorting.
And this is the thing that has the markets so upset.
And by the way, talking about facts, it's a good thing when the markets get upset.
It's obviously nobody wants to lose money.
Nobody wants the markets to go down.
But the markets are reacting to things that really trouble them.
The fact that sometimes the market panics means our leaders have to keep cool and have to follow through with their plans.
The part that disturbs me about this, about the Trump thing, is that the money that we make from tariffs is made from our people, right?
It's our people paying more for Chinese goods.
And so it's just to be clear about that.
Now, what Trump is saying is he's going to use some of that money to offset the pain that is caused by people who can no longer sell goods overseas like farmers, because farmers, we sell a lot of our food to the Chinese.
So he's saying, well, we're going to pay you back with this money that we get from tariffs.
But the money that comes in from tariffs comes from people buying us, our people buying stuff that the Chinese make.
Now, that's the part of what he's saying that has me a little disturbed because I want to make sure I think he's right to get into this fight.
I think he's right to try and get China to the table and try and get them to make a good deal.
But I do think I want to know that the president understands where that money for tariffs is coming from.
Then on the other hand, you have the kind of commentary we're getting, the kind of everything is a disaster.
No matter what happens, it's going to be bad for us commentary that you see everywhere.
So here is former Congressman David Jolly.
He's talking on CNN.
Trade wars inflict a lot of pain.
And the reality is what we are seeing now is a unilateral Trump tax on the consumer.
To Ali's point, this is a tax the president is imposing upon consumers.
And when you move in that direction, when you try to adjust global trade policy, as Mac referred to, what he is hoping for is that there is necessarily wage and economic growth in domestic industries to compensate, to overcome that additional cost to the consumer.
But the reality is we're not seeing that.
The basket of goods where the consumer sees the increase in prices, they're not seeing increase in wages that match that.
They don't have the discretionary income each month going up at a rate that's greater than what it's now going to cost them to provide for their household.
That's where the pain is.
But this is an opportunity for Democrats to message around that.
Because if not, Donald Trump's going to message his populist message to the heartland in Main Street saying he's fighting for it.
Equally only a half-truth, right?
That is equally only half-true.
The idea with tariffs is they raise the price of goods that come from China.
So maybe you buy goods that don't come from China, right?
The consumer does have some flexibility.
The fear is that other people will raise their prices to match the prices of the Chinese goods going up.
So there's all kinds of fears, all kinds of things to worry about.
It's all sort of, you know, a fluid situation.
But the fact is that Trump, as with North Korea, as with Iran, is dealing with things that have not been dealt with in a long time and is dealing with the facts.
And the facts are going to catch up with him.
And one thing that he said, which is absolutely true, absolutely rings true.
Trump said that the Chinese were close to a deal and then suddenly reneged on it.
And this the Chinese do a lot.
Here he's talking about that.
We had a deal with China.
It was 95% there.
And then my representatives, as you know, Secretary Mnuchin and Bob Lighthizer, Ambassador Lighthizer, they went to China and they were told the things that were fully agreed to, we're not going to get.
That's not acceptable.
I said, good, that's fine.
Put on the tariffs.
You know, that is so like the way the Chinese operate, the country of China operates.
I know a lot of businessmen who do dealings with China.
I've seen a lot of dealings with China in Hollywood.
They make these deals, they sign the deals, and then they say, oh yeah, now let's negotiate.
It's a very powerful and dishonest technique.
It's powerful, and some people in Hollywood do this too.
It's powerful because you're in this negotiation, you're fighting, you're compromising, you're giving stuff, and then you finally get it, and you sign the deal, and everybody's a little disgruntled, but everybody's also a little happy, and then they come to you and say, oh, wait, you know, and it's like, oh, my God, we have to go back, and you just tend to surrender.
And I've seen people in Hollywood do this, but the Chinese do it all the time.
And Trump is right about this.
He's right to take them on.
Let's see if he has the guts to stand up to the kind of panic that's coming down the pike.
It's going to be really interesting to see.
But it's just reality.
It is just reality catching up.
I mean, even Chuck Schumer has said that he is for tariffs in this situation.
Let's see if he backs Trump on this.
I bet he doesn't.
I bet he suddenly says, well, they're not the right tariffs.
They're not the right tariffs.
You know, we need this tariff and that.
Reality Rising00:11:46
You know, the Democrats always do this.
They pull the rug out from under you once you're actually in doing the thing that they supported and is unpopular.
They suddenly head for the hills.
We will see.
Reality also coming in the Russian collusion story.
I mean, this is a big deal.
Attorney General William Barr, Bill Barr, has tapped the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut to study the origins of the 2016 counterintelligence investigation that conducted spying on people affiliated with the Trump campaign.
This guy is named John Durham.
He's a Connecticut U.S. attorney.
He's helping Barr look at the early stages of the FBI investigating this.
And they're going to check out all of James Comey's very suspicious sounding ideas.
And Durham is a guy who's used to this.
He's done it in a bipartisan way during the Clinton administration.
He was asked to probe the FBI's use of organized crime, how they dealt with Whitey Bolger.
I'm sure many of you know that story about how they gave Bolger all this leeway.
They made a movie about it with Johnny Depp where they gave him all this leeway to do stuff and Bolger just went about killing people and playing the FBI.
He investigated that.
He was also sent to investigate the destruction of videotapes made by certain CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects.
So he's worked for both sides investigating our intelligence community.
We should not do, I think, what the Dems did, what the Democrats did with the Russian story, where we leap to judgment and we build up the idea that here, coming down the pike, Obama is going to prison, Comey's going to prison.
I'm very suspicious, and I'm especially suspicious of a press that is not suspicious.
When in the world did our press, our modern everyday journalists, when did they suddenly become completely incurious about the abuses of the FBI and the CIA?
I mean, this is what they've been running us down with for a thousand years.
All the born identity movies are about how evil is our intelligence service because they sent out Matt Damon to kill people.
You know, I mean, that has been their narrative all this time.
And suddenly the FBI sends spies in to surveil Donald Trump and his team.
And it's like, I don't see anything.
Isn't this okay?
You know, they're going to make a movie in which James Comey, Matt Damon plays James Comey.
I mean, he'll suddenly be the hero.
So that is to me appalling.
And I think we should look into it.
And I'm highly suspicious.
And I've said I'm highly suspicious, but we don't know yet.
And I don't want to do what the Democrats and the Democrat press did with the Russian collusion story where we convict them before it comes through.
It's possible.
I mean, Ben has made the argument that it's possible that they had good reason to do this.
I don't see it.
I don't see why they just didn't warn Trump that this might be happening.
But let's find out.
I was very happy to see Rod Rosenstein hit back against James Comey.
Remember yesterday we played that clip of James Comey saying that Rosenstein was, or Stein, I don't know if it's Rosenstein or Rosenstein.
Rosenstein was not a strong man and Trump was eating his soul.
So Rod Rosenstein was making a speech in Baltimore and he hit back on that.
So I do not blame the former director for being angry.
I would be too if I were in his shoes.
But now the former director seems to be acting as a partisan pundit, selling books and earning speaking fees while speculating about the strength of my character and the fate of my immortal soul.
I kid you not.
That is disappointing.
Speculating about souls is not a job for police and prosecutors.
But he doesn't understand.
James Comey used to be part of the FBI.
Now he's a saint.
Now he has been elevated to the highest heavens of sanctimony and imperturbable righteousness.
And now he has the right to talk about Rod Rosenstein's soul.
He went on to say this.
He said the clearest mistake the director made was his decision to hold a press conference about an open case, reveal his recommendation, and discuss details about the investigation without the consent of the prosecutors and the attorney general.
He chose to send a letter to the Congress on the eve of the election stating that he was really calling him out for this stuff, that one of the candidates was under criminal investigation, expecting that letter to be released immediately to the public.
Those actions were not within the range of reasonable decisions.
They were inconsistent with our goal of communicating to all FBI employees that they should respect the Attorney General's role, refrain from disclosing information about criminal investigations, avoid disparaging uncharged persons, and above all, not take unnecessary steps that could influence an election.
I mean, all of this stuff is really hard-boiled.
It sounds also like what Mueller did, basically, when he refused to recommend whether Trump should be charged with obstruction of justice.
Again, we shouldn't convict, but it is nice to see reality suddenly rising up.
It's nice to see a guy like Rod Rosenstein who's been attacked by both sides speaking out against James Comey, who is just putting forward this obviously false, obviously absurd narrative about his own sanctimonious perfection, and the press sitting there with these gobsmacked looks of absolute incurious stupidity about the FBI investigating a political campaign.
Those facts now are catching up.
Speaking of facts, we have to talk about Rashida Talib and the anti-Semitism, the deep anti-Semitism and promotion of a terrorist philosophy that has crept into our Congress in the person of Rashida Talib and Ilhan Omar.
She made these comments.
I want to play the original comment she made on a podcast not that long ago.
This is cut number four.
You know, this is kind of a calming feeling I always tell folks when I think of the Holocaust and the tragedy of the Holocaust and the fact that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, the human dignity.
Their existence in many ways had been wiped out and some people's passport.
I mean, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews post the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time.
And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways.
But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away, right?
And it was forced on them.
And so when I think about one state, I think about the fact that why can't we do it in a better way?
Where, and I don't want people to do it in the name of Judaism, just like I don't want people to use Islam in that way.
It has to be done in a way of values around equality and around the fact that you shouldn't impress others.
So that is total crap.
Now, she was attacked for that line about the calming.
She gets a calming feeling when she thinks about the Holocaust.
Now, of course, if a right-winger said that, he would be hanged.
That would be CNN for the next 48 to 72 hours.
But we're going to be more fair.
It's obviously she wasn't saying that the Holocaust gave her a calming feeling.
I won't even comment on that.
I won't even make a joke about it.
You know, I don't think that was what she was saying.
What she was saying was she got a calming feeling that it was her ancestors who provided a safe haven for the Jews, which she now wants to destroy by what she calls the one-state solution.
Now, I had a one-state solution, which is give the entire Middle East to the Jews because they run things better than anybody else in the Middle East.
But she's obviously not talking about that.
She's probably talking about the kind of open democracy that would mean wiping the Jews and the state of Israel off the face of the map.
Now, it is amazing to me.
Was it Seth Meyers who had her on?
Yes, it was Seth Meyers who had her on TV to let her explain herself.
And again, just imagine, just imagine if Donald Trump, I mean, Donald Trump, who said there are good people on both sides of a statue controversy and was accused of saying he was in favor of Nazis, nobody had him on.
Nobody had him on to ask him about this.
But Rashida Tlaib is immediately asked to go on Seth Meyers on late night TV because this is the wall against the facts that the Democrats have built.
And God love them, they know a wall works.
You know, they want it everywhere but the border.
They know a wall works and it will keep those facts out.
So here's Seth Meyers letting her cover for herself and listen to the emotionalism and the way she tries to wiggle out of what she's saying while still saying exactly what she's saying.
The tragedy of the Holocaust, I mean, the reason why Israel was created is to create a safe haven for Jews around the world.
And there is something like in many ways beautiful about that my ancestors, many had died or had to give up their livelihood, their human dignity to provide a safe haven for Jews in our world.
And that is something that I wanted to recognize and kind of honor in some sort of way.
But I also think it's important because I want Palestinian people also to find some sort of, you know, light in this kind of what's happening.
But also, you know, in the end, I said, I want all of us to feel safe.
All of us deserve human dignity.
No matter our backgrounds, no matter our ethnicity, no matter even our political opinions, we all need to deserve that kind of equality and justice.
And, you know, for me, I wanted to uplift that and bring that to light.
And it was unfortunate.
You know, I got a text message from a friend who's like, hey, next time, you know, really clarify, maybe talk like a fourth grader because maybe the racist idiots would understand you better.
So it's just, you know, I will continue to speak the truth of power and continue to uplift my grandmother.
Oh, man.
Oh, man.
What a snake.
What an anti-Semitic snake.
I mean, this is just garbage.
It is just garbage.
So let us turn to those, that bastion of facts, CNN, because John King, I have to give him credit, and Aaron David Miller got it exactly right and called her out.
She's completely rewriting the history of that era, which is much more shameful to the Palestinians than it is to anybody else around.
So the Republican focus on the word calming does twist the Congresswoman's words out of context.
But she also fails a critical fact and context test.
Yes, as she said, Palestinians lost land in the creation of Israel.
But she ignored the fact that Palestinian leaders at the time allied themselves with Hitler.
And the total war was how the Arab world reacted to the Declaration of Israeli independence.
Joining our conversation, our global affairs analyst and former State Department negotiator, Aaron David Miller and CNN Sunlin Srafati.
Aaron, let me start with you in the sense that she can't rewrite that history and you can't project revisionist history, so why?
She also has her history wrong.
I mean, on two points.
Number one, it's an arguable proposition, even had there been no Holocaust.
Most of the institutions of the current state of Israel were in place before Hitler started killing Jews.
So the Holocaust added urgency and international support.
But I suspect with or without it, the state of Israel would have come into being.
And finally, on this notion that Palestinians either negatively or positively help to create a safe haven for Jews, the reality is that the Arabs of Palestine, Hajime al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti, in Nazi Germany, collaborating, coordinating with the Nazis about what would happen if Rommel's Third Court actually had been successful in Egypt and been president in Palestine.
They were considering extermination of the entire Jewish community there as well.
They were literally collaborating with the Jews, the Palestinian authorities.
They're handing out Qurans with swastikas on them.
I mean, you know, this is the truth of that history.
And that fact that Seth Meyers doesn't know enough to call her out on it or to speak up to it is part of this wall against the facts that the Democrats have built for themselves and part of the thing that we have to climb over.
The facts have to climb over like the zombies in World War Z. Luckily, Alexandria Casional Cortex, she actually came out and had this to say about the entire controversy.
Conservative Comedy Challenges00:12:52
Don't you love when you go to like the nail salon or you go wherever and people try like pointing out all your insecurities and stuff?
Like, I just, so I just went to the nail salon, okay, just so I can feel human, nothing special, just trying to get some pain, cut my cuticles, whatever.
And I'm sitting there and I'm painting my nails and, you know, my nails are getting painted.
And the woman's like, your eyebrows are too big for your face.
And I'm sitting there and I'm like, and she's like, mustache?
And I'm like, ah!
I'm like, first of all, I thought I came here to feel good about myself.
Second of all, what if I like my mustache?
You ever think about that?
I love this woman.
It's a gift that keeps on giving.
That's kind of what it's like for her in Congress.
You know, she goes in and they say, you know, you don't know anything about economics or the environment or foreign policy.
And she says, I thought I came here to feel good about myself.
Anyway, I feel so much safer knowing that she's in Congress.
As I say, the Democrats are out there dealing with reality.
We've got Michael Loftus coming up, a terrific comedian and writer.
We're going to talk to him about the state of the art in being a somewhat conservative comedian out there.
But first, let me remind you, tomorrow is mailbag day.
Go.
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Michael Loftus is a stand-up comedian, host of the Loftus Party podcast, and a writer-producer on shows such as Kevin Can Wait and Anger Management, both of them quite funny.
He's going on tour with the Loftist Party live show, A Night of Conservative Comedy.
It's great to see you.
Good to be here, man.
This is fantastic.
The camera's set up.
There's a guy moving cameras with an Xbox controller.
None of these, these are all empty boxes.
It's all make-believe.
Fantastic, man.
So you are going on tour.
You're not just going on tour.
You're going on tour with a vengeance and with a purpose.
I really am.
I really am.
I've seen the problem.
We've diagnosed it, and now I've got to take a step back and take my message to the people.
I've been very fortunate enough.
I came out to LA many moons ago to be a stand-up comic, right?
I would already been doing stand-up.
Long story short, this really funny comedian, George Lopez, saw me one night at the Ice House in Pasadena, and he's like, hey, man, I'm doing a TV show.
I want funny people to write on my show.
I think you're funny.
So I accidentally became a television writer.
So the George Lopez show, then back to stand-up, because shows always get canceled.
Right, of course.
So I've been knock on wood, very fortunate.
Anger management with Charlie Sheen, a show called Outsourced, yada, yada.
But I recently was pitching a show because Roseanne came back, right?
And as a conservative and as a comedian, I was really happy.
Okay, so here's one.
And we could see that, okay, she voted for Trump and her sister voted for Hillary and they have it out.
And it's funny and America laughs.
So myself and another writer, well, producer, actor, movie star who I don't want to name names, you know, because I don't want to get any, right?
I don't want to get anybody in trouble.
We came up with this talk show, this really, really funny, even-handed calling out hypocrisy.
So we go around and we're pitching this thing.
And repeatedly, these network executives would say, that's a really funny show.
We love it.
It would do great.
We can't put it on the air because it would look like we were friendly to the right.
Really?
They would openly say that.
They would openly say this.
Wow, that is amazing.
It's amazing it's gotten that open because I haven't heard them get that open.
That's what was so shocking to me about it.
You always hear it was like kind of a hush-hush.
They'll just kind of pass.
They'll come up with an excuse.
So there's always, there's this common thing where, oh, there are no funny conservatives.
There are no, there's not a lot of us that are like out, you know, that are openly.
So I'm like, wow, we're not going to be allowed to participate in television.
We're not.
They're just going to keep those doors shut.
And so you look at, you know, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel.
One after another of them.
There's literally like seven when you start talking about Samantha B and Bill Maher.
And it's just at this point, it is the equivalent of propaganda.
Like when no one, when you, when you're, when the opposite when the opposing voice is not allowed to participate and they know that there's a market and it's, you'd think they would chase the dollars.
So I had to take a step back, man, and I'm like, I'm going to go to clubs.
Yeah.
I'm going to go to clubs and take my message to the people.
So, you know, fortunately, I got a couple of buddies who were like brave enough to do it, which is insane.
And are they all right-wing?
Yeah.
So this is going to be openly right-wing comedy?
Oh, absolutely.
I'm totally, it's going to be a night of wonderful small government making fun of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
How could you possibly?
She's like an obsidian wall.
In the clip you just showed, it's like I went to a nail salon and they told me I needed my eyebrows done.
Yeah, honey.
That's called upselling.
That's called capitalism.
They're going to call you ugly to sell you stuff.
Welcome to America.
So I have to.
You won't tell me who you were pitching this idea with, huh?
No, I won't.
However, you can watch his production company.
He has several hit shows on the air right now.
He has a successful show on the air right now.
And you're talking about, I mean, because now when I go in and pitch, I actually tell people, like, most of my stuff is genre stuff.
It's mystery, ghost story stuff.
I don't actually do political fiction, you know?
So I'll say to him, you know, I just want you to know I'm a right-winger.
I have a podcast because I know they're going to Google me if they don't already know me.
And they always say, yeah, isn't it ridiculous that we have this divide in our country right now?
And then it's like, don't let the door hitch on the way out.
But no one has ever come out and said to me, huh, that's interesting.
Get out.
Or, no, we can't be seen to be kind to you.
These are network people said, yes.
Yes.
And network people, syndication people, and a streaming service.
Wow.
And the streaming service was the one that was just very, very upfront about it.
Like literally, like going in, you know, you have your pitch deck and you're going through and then we'll do this and we'll that.
And like they're laughing outrageously in the room.
Like literally, I've pitched a bunch of TV shows, sitcoms and this and that.
Like it could not have gone better.
And then, you know, two days later, you get an email.
We're going to pass.
And for this reason, for this reason.
Yeah, I guess I shouldn't be shocked anymore, but I'm still naive enough to get shocked.
Let me ask you this, okay?
Because I hear this all the time, that right-wingers can't be funny.
Right-wingers aren't funny.
Just in all honesty, one of the things that I run up against as a storyteller who has a right-wing audience, right, is that they expect me, they're watching Game of Thrones, but then they expect me not to curse and not to have my characters have sex and all this stuff.
And I think like, well, wait, you're watching Game of Thrones because you know what a great story is.
Yeah, but we don't approve of that.
We want you to be pure.
And I think, well, you're taking away from me my power of storytelling.
So I'm not going to listen to you.
I'm going to just go and do what I do.
As a comedian, do you run into that?
Are there things where you make a joke and a right-wing audience is going to say, wait, you just made a joke about religion.
No good.
I, my man.
So all the dates and the show times are at theloftistparty.com, right?
That's it.
So I'm on Facebook at the Loftus Party and I got a message in this lady.
I just got tickets to your show.
However, I really don't want foul language.
So she's telling me, you know, and of course, like, I want her to come out and have a good time.
And it is a clean show.
I'm going to do that because it is so bad out there that I'm going to give people like a real, not like wholesome yada yada, but there's enough to make fun of.
I don't have to do foul language.
However, we need to come together as an artistic community, as people on the right who do this stuff, so that we can let those rules go away.
Like, absolutely, there should be no, like, the fact that there's a night of conservative comedy is just insane.
Right.
Right.
But, like, I'm going to wrap myself up in it and do it.
And someone needs to, I know several people in the entertainment business.
And then they're like, they're afraid to come out and say they're conservatives because it's just going to kill their box office.
It's going to kill their marketability.
So they're like, someone has to get in the pool.
Like, it's like everyone's standing around and they're looking at the pool.
And I just found out we're not even allowed in the pool.
Right.
So like as a community, as like, as a creator, as a guy who writes, like, I want to help sell whatever you've got, whatever you create.
And just as the left does this very well.
They circle the wagons and they'll protect the enterprise.
They'll protect their artists.
And it's like on the right, you've got a lot of people who are like, well, what's the return on investment?
What's the thing?
You know, we do, I agree with you.
We do do this.
We actually, like, I have had people say, like, oh, your character was right.
I'll put a right-wing hero into a book.
And they'll say, well, that's kind of propaganda.
No, it's not.
He's just a guy who shares our values who's the hero of the story.
And you get the right criticizing people.
I see it all the time, like on right-wing Twitter and everything.
You see people criticizing stories because it went this way instead of that way.
And you think, like, were you wrapped up in the story?
Were you involved?
And then it's a good story.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, that's, that's, that's all it is.
And I, it's, there are a lot of people on the right who are very eager to tear down other people.
I've never understood that.
No, no.
I mean, I guess everybody is ambitious and everybody is, you know, you've got to, okay, you're a capitalist and you want to make money.
So you are going to.
There's room on the top shelf for everybody, though.
I mean, there's not that many people can get to the top shelf, and the people who have got the quality to get to the top shelf will get there.
You know, I mean, that's the thing.
But you have been working in TV all this time.
Now, I know you were on Kevin Kinwaite, and I know that that's kind of got a little bit of a right-wing tinge to it.
Well, not really a right-wing.
Just normal.
Yeah.
It's just normal.
Yeah, it was.
Yeah, I was.
It was not a rabbit.
It was not a woke show.
Yeah.
It wasn't Roseanne, you know, and it wasn't like the family channel.
But it was a really fun show.
Did people know in writers' rooms what you believed?
Because, I mean, you did a show.
I was on your show, the Loftist show, where you were doing essentially a comedy show, a talk show.
Yeah, well, that was the first foray.
I'm like, we were doing this show, and we had great guests, you know, yourself, a bunch of other wonderful people.
And that was like syndication people were like, can't do it.
Can't risk it.
And that was very, very, that was very surprising.
So did people in writer's rooms know that you were conservative?
Oh, my goodness.
I was outed on the George Lopez show because I didn't know.
And that was like 2001 or something.
I forget.
It was like Desert Storm.
So there was some military action going on.
And this, you know, there's a big writer's room.
We're all sitting around this big conference table.
And someone said something, you know, disparaging me on the president.
And I'm like, I don't know.
I'm just, you know, I said just the littlest, tiniest thing.
And one of the producers, this girl, like literally like looked up at her script and looked at me with this, you'd think I had just gone to the bathroom on the table.
And she goes, I can't believe we have a Republican on the writing staff.
Like she was horrified.
Wow.
And a buddy of mine who was kind of like took me under his wing because this was my first show, kind of looked at me like, like, like, be cool.
Doris Day's Saddest Ambition00:02:38
And so ever since then, it was just like, you got to let it, you got to let it go.
Where do people find out?
What's the website where they find it?
TheloftestParty.com.
Is it theloftestparty.com or loftestparty?
The loftest part.
Theloftistparty.com.
Live shows, all kinds of good stuff.
Come back when you're done.
I want to hear how it went, and I want to hear all about it.
Oh, absolutely.
I'd love to, man.
All right, don't move.
I got to just wrap up and then we'll chat with you again.
As a final reflection, I got to say goodbye to Doris Day.
And I'll tell you why.
Doris Day was, you know, Oscar Levant, a famous wit, said that his last picture at Warner Brothers was Romance on the High Seas, which was Doris Day's first picture before she became a virgin.
And he said that because Doris Day became incredibly famous, especially here in the early 60s, doing these kind of sex comedies with Rock Hudson and Tony Randall and other people, where she was the unassailable virgin, sometimes a working woman, but always the, they were always trying to seduce her for basically two hours, and she was always the virtuous one.
And she got this persona like Julie Andrews or Doris Day or Doris Day, like Julie Andrews of being the perfect virginal girl.
But the fact is, she was one of the great singers of her time.
And she was especially great before she became fantastically popular.
And this happened to a lot of singers.
Bing Crosby, if you go back to his early records where he was a jazz singer, he is an unbelievably revolutionary singer who basically created that kind of American music on his own.
And then when he became so popular that they just loved him going boo-boo-boo-boo and crooning and all this stuff, he became the crooner.
Doris Day, very similar trajectory.
She started out as a kind of jazz singer with the Les Brown orchestra.
And she was really terrific.
The saddest thing about Doris Day, in my opinion, was that she said, from the time I was a little girl, my only true ambition in life was to get married and tend house and have a family.
And again and again, she married men who beat her, cheated her, dumped her.
I think she had three husbands and they all treated her badly.
So, she never got to be the kind of person that she played, which was her ambition.
So, maybe she worked out that ambition on the screen when she couldn't work it out in real life.
But I just want to end by playing just a little bit of one of her older Les Brown tunes when she was just starting out.
She was just a tremendous jazz singer.
Somebody once said at the very beginning that she was up there with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, and I think that's right.
And I think she became less as she became more popular, as a lot of these singers did.
If you want to see her best movie, It's Love Me or Leave Me, with James Cagney, in which she plays a much darker character and sings much darker songs.
But let me leave you with Darcy and the Les Brown Orchestra.
It's Love Me or Leave Me00:02:02
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Hey, everybody.
On the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to be talking about antinatalism, which is the belief that human life is basically a curse and no one should ever be born ever again.
And this philosophy is more prevalent than you might think.
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And finally, Chips Ahoy has decided to sell their terrible chocolate chip cookies by using drag queens.