Ep. 707 – Trump Corners the Left skewers Iran’s "peace proposal" as apocalyptic bluster while mocking Democrats for funding Tehran’s nuclear ambitions under Obama, then pivots to impeachment theater—exposing Pelosi’s fractured caucus and Trump’s strategic silence on infrastructure. A mailbag dismisses corporate tax myths (Amazon’s R&D deductions) and warns against marrying addicts, before debating Tolkien vs. Game of Thrones morality, Catholic marriage crises, and reviving Western Christianity through truth over relativism. The episode ties cultural fantasies—political, personal, and fictional—to a broader collapse in logic, from abortion headlines to declining IQ trends. [Automatically generated summary]
Things continue to be tense between Iran and the United States.
Iran's former leader, Ayatollah, I'm Gonna Kill You, has now been replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini, Times Do I Have to Toll You I'm Gonna Kill You, who has offered an olive branch to the U.S., which the U.S. can put in an attractive complimentary vase while Iran sinks all our ships.
The Ayatollah has offered to make peace by bringing about the end of the world, slaughtering all the infidels, installing the Mahdi as president of every country, and did I mention slaughtering all the infidels.
President Trump has made a counteroffer of kiss my ass, and how about I bomb you back to the stone age, which for you knuckleheads is only about 20 minutes ago.
So negotiations are going well.
Democrats have expressed concern that in taking a hostile tone, Trump has abandoned the carefully constructed Obama doctrine of dropping billions of dollars into Iran in the dead of night, lying about it, then letting Iran build nuclear weapons, then lying about that, until Iran becomes civilized and joins the community of nations in the role of the nation that destroys all the other nations in the hope of bringing about the end of the world.
The top Democrat of the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Puling Poltroon, said he was concerned that Iran might not like us if we didn't crawl on our knees with our faces pressed into the dust, repeating the words, please like us, until Iran agrees to kill every last one of us, but in a nice way.
Meanwhile, Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton briefed key members of Congress while wearing a lion-skin loincloth and a spike in his nose shaped like a nuclear bomb.
Some congressmen said they found this intimidating, especially after he detonated the bomb.
Nonetheless, tensions do seem to have eased lately as the president has withdrawn our warships from the Strait of Hormuz and moved them into the Capitol building.
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-dunky-dicky.
Blinds Over Reality00:02:46
Ship-shaped ipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray!
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
You know, I've said this before, but it's still true.
There are real disadvantages to owning the media.
The news media and the entertainment media are Democrat creatures dedicated to delivering Democrat messages to Democrats, which they think is just telling the simple truth because they're all Democrats.
That sounds like good news if you're a Democrat, but it does mean you are living in a fantasy world and might find yourself taking fantastic actions for fantastic reasons while the rest of us here in reality look on in pity and leave you to your little dreams.
Locked inside the media echo pod, the Democrats are plugged into their own fantasies like the people in the Matrix, while a lot of the rest of us have already taken the red pill.
Donald Trump knows all this.
He has been expertly taunting the Democrats to act out their fantasies in front of the entire nation.
Nancy Pelosi knows it too, but because Trump has played the game expertly, she's now coming under pressure from the dreamy zombies of her party.
They want to impeach the president over their ephemeral Matrix dreams, a move which would certainly be a waste of time and could be political suicide.
Smart Trump, sad Nancy, when you're locked in a fantasy world, reality bites.
And we will talk about reality, which is what we try to do here.
But first, let's talk about blinds, more important than reality, because let me tell you something.
I learned this myself.
When you get your windows right, everything in your home looks better.
This is true.
I moved into my new house.
I walked around for days saying, complaining to my wife, something's not right with this room.
She put in new blinds.
Everything looked better.
With 15 million windows covered and over 30,000 five-star customer reviews, where do you get your blinds?
Blinds.com.
It's America's number one online retail tailor for affordable, quality, custom window coverings.
Whether you're looking for energy efficiency, you just moved, or you want to refresh the look of your home, blinds.com makes the whole experience so fast and easy.
Plus, every order gets free samples, free shipping, a free online design consultation.
Just send them pictures of your house, and they will send back custom recommendations from a professional for what works with your place.
For a limited time, my listeners save $20 at blinds.com when you use promo code Clavin.
That's blinds.com and use promo code Clavin for 20 bucks off, faux wood blinds, cellular shades, roller shades, and more.
Blinds.com, promo code Claven, rules and restrictions apply.
Mailbag today, right?
It's the mailbag today, but so stay tuned for that.
Divorcing Politics00:08:44
But first, let me begin by playing you this clip that really caught my mind as being representative of something.
This is the Colbert, the Stephen Colbert Tonight Show, with the actress Julianne Margolise, who you remember from The Good Wife and ER, talking about how she relates to politics.
Listen to what she's saying.
You divorce yourself from the whole political thing.
I tried to.
You tried to.
Thank you.
But I can't.
It's everywhere.
I mean, one of the things I stopped doing was I do not read the news at night because I was waking up in the middle of the night from nightmares of just screaming.
I had one dream.
Oh, I know.
You've read my dream diary.
I was in a boardroom.
There was a long board.
There was a long table, and it was just the guy who's in the Oval Office right now sitting there.
And I walked in and I was screaming, screaming, don't you care about the next year?
I mean, I was going crazy and screaming at him and yelling.
And that was 2016.
And I woke up in a sweat and I went, oh my God, I've gone insane and I have to stop reading the news at night.
So I read the New York Times in the morning.
I listen to NPR.
I know I'm such a New Yorker, but that's what I do because I want to be informed.
and then occasionally I'll watch PBS NewsHour.
Occasionally, because I want to get- To get yourself to go to sleep, just to get you to write.
But no.
So she doesn't read the news at night.
She reads the Times, listens to NPR and PBS.
So she doesn't read the news at all.
But is it just me or is that this image?
You know, it used to be that you watch these shows because celebrities invited us, ordinary little people, into their world of glamour and fame.
And that was one of the reasons you watched Oscars and you watched the talk shows and all this.
But now they invite us into this world of elitist sequestration, of being closed off, reading the Times and NPR, and then having dreams about politics.
And it's in their dreams that these politics are unfolding.
It's in these dreams that Trump doesn't care about the next generation.
In these dreams, that Trump is doing impeachable things.
And they are living, they're now inviting us into these dreams.
Don't you want to be like us?
We're cool, we're glamorous.
But they're not glamorous anymore because they're telling us, they're showing us right in front of us that they are sequestered elitist people who don't care about us, don't care who we voted for.
Colbert, does Colbert ever have a sympathetic interview with a Trump supporter or a Trumper?
No, I mean, we know exactly how he feels, not just him, but every single comedian like him.
They're just inviting us into this world of fantasy.
And if we don't go, if we take the red pill and stay out, we're completely alienated from these celebrities.
So that's, and that is now true of Congress as well, because Congress has gone in.
It has stepped in to that fantasy world.
And they are playing out this complete matrix kabuki of impeachment.
So let's just start with Jerry Nadler.
We have some stuff that's breaking right now, and I will play it in just a second, but I want to just build up to it and let you know what was going on.
Jerry Nadler subpoenaed Don McGann, the former attorney of Donald Trump, of the president, right?
And McGann just blew him off.
And so Nadler, I mean, this is all a show.
He could have invited him.
He could have said, please come in.
But he went right to the subpoena.
He is doing this for show.
He is playing out his fantasy and hoping just like Colbert and Juliana Margolies, you will be invited into this fantasy to partake of the Matrix.
So he says this is a terrible, terrible thing that McGahn just blew them off and didn't show up.
The White House asserts that Mr. McGahn does not have to appear today because he is entitled to, quote, absolute immunity, unquote, from our subpoenas.
In 2007, President George Bush attempted to invoke a similarly broad and unjustified assertion of executive privilege and asked his former counsel, Harriet Myers, to ignore a subpoena issued by this committee.
Judge John Bates, who was appointed by President Bush, slapped down that argument fairly quickly, quote, the executive cannot identify a single judicial opinion that recognizes absolute immunity for senior presidential advisors in this or any other context.
When this committee issues a subpoena, even to a senior presidential advisor, the witness must show up.
Our subpoenas are not optional.
Mr. McGahn has a legal obligation to be here for this scheduled appearance.
If he does not immediately correct his mistake, this committee will have no choice but to enforce the subpoena against him.
So that's the drama that you're being invited into.
That's the matrix that you're being invited into.
But since we like to talk about reality, we have invited the former Jenna Ellis, now Jenna Ellis Reeves, Mrs. Jenna Ellis Reeves.
Are you with us?
Jenna?
I am.
Hello, Drew.
How are you?
I'm good.
Mrs. Reeves, how was the honeymoon?
It was fantastic.
And yes, and we are actually on the road back to Nashville where I will be moving to a new home.
So we will still be celebrating our honeymoon for the rest of our lives.
And there's a collective awe around the world.
Well, that is great.
Well, I asked you on not to talk, oddly enough, not to talk about that, but I asked you on.
Tell me where we are.
I mean, this seems to me, it seems to me there was no reason for this drama that Nadler is just going for, he's just playing theater.
He's just doing theater.
Is he right when he says that Don McGahn has to show up?
Absolutely not.
And I thought that was a brilliant analogy to Kabusi Theater, because that's all that this is.
I mean, and they're not even asserting executive privilege, but absolute immunity.
This would be the same thing as if when I was in private practice and had a client for opposing counsel to subpoena me as an attorney and says, you have to come in and testify about the private conversations of counsel that you gave to your client.
We have attorney-client privilege for a reason, and it's a very legitimate one, because history has taught us, and there's actually a bunch of different court cases, opinions that cite to this, that say that history has taught us that there will be a different level of candor if the person giving counsel recognizes that they may have to talk about that in public at a later date.
So this is just a complete sham, and it's something that Nadler and the others are hoping that people will buy into the theater rather than recognizing what our rule of law stands for.
They want to just ignore the rule of law when it suits them to just be able to hate on Trump.
So essentially what you're saying is the president has a right to counsel just like anybody else.
The president has a right to personal confidences within the executive branch.
Isn't there also, it seems to me, some kind of separation of powers thing going on over here?
I mean, if Trump can't say to Jerry Nadler, get over here to the Oval Office right now because Nadler's in a separate branch of government.
I mean, so why should he be able to say that to the executive branch?
Yeah, absolutely.
And so people talk about the separation of powers in terms of legislative oversight and those types of things.
But we have to recognize that the separation of powers exists to allow each of the functionality of legislative, executive, and judicial to have their own decision-making capacity and be able to effectively carry out their constitutional obligations.
To do the same thing as if President Trump didn't like some sort of legislation that the House passes, and so he holds under subpoena, he hauls in legislators and says, you have to answer for your vote on this legislation.
That would assume then that Congress is a subordinate branch rather than a co-equal branch.
So Congress can't do the same thing to the executive.
You know, just off on the fly before I let you go, I mean, this is just what I wanted to hear from you because I'm not a constitutional lawyer and you are.
But when they talk about, when they're talking about impeachment constantly, this high crimes and misdemeanor, I mean, this really has to be a high crime, right?
I mean, it's not just something.
I mean, I complained about this with Clinton.
I know he committed perjury, and I know that is a serious crime, but I complained that they were going after Clinton.
You know, he is the president of the United States.
We did elect him.
You don't just, he doesn't serve at the pleasure of the House.
He serves at our pleasure because we elected him.
Doesn't high crimes and misdemeanor, isn't that supposed to be kind of a high bar?
High Crimes and Misdemeanors00:02:51
Absolutely.
And it has to be something that has a legitimate legal basis.
It can't just be that we dislike what the American people chose in terms of their vote or just dislike how he is effectively carrying out his constitutional obligations.
It has to be much more than that.
And so all of this impeachment talk absolutely, again, is kabuki theater, and it has no basis or merit in law.
And anyone who actually votes for that, that would be against, from Congress, would be against their oath of office that they swore to uphold, preserve, and protect the Constitution.
They could be impeached for an impeachment vote.
Okay.
Jenna, thank you so much for coming on.
Have a wonderful time in Nashville.
I want to bring you back and talk about all the abortion fuss and everything.
So once you get settled, we will talk again.
But thanks very much.
Sounds good.
All right.
Thanks, Drew.
Jenna Ellis Reeves.
Now we have to learn to call her that.
So this is now the Mrs. Reeves spot.
We used to call it the Jenna spot, but we'll just call it Mrs. Reeves spot.
We the people, this is a new sponsor, which I'm really thrilled about.
You know, I never owned a gun before I came out West and before, you know, I became somebody in the public eye, but I keep a gun for self-protection to protect my home.
And We the People holsters offer custom-made holsters that are all produced in the USA.
And you really want something that's good-looking and functional.
And they design their own, which means they don't use any third-party molds for their holsters.
They design every unique mold in Las Vegas in order to best fit each and every firearm perfectly.
Their unique and intuitive clip design allows you to easily adjust both the cant and ride of your holster so that will fit comfortably and securely at all times.
And every holster also has adjustable retention, which is signaled with a click sound, which lets you know that your firearm is securely in place.
We the people holsters start at just 37 bucks a piece, and every holster comes with a lifetime guarantee.
It ships free, and if it's not a perfect fit, you can send it back for a refund.
Right now, listeners to the Andrew Clavin Show can go to wethepeopleholsters.com slash Clavin and enter promo code Claven at checkout to get 10 bucks off their first holster.
That's as low as $37 and shipping is free with an additional $10 off using my promo code.
Again, that's wethepeopleholsters.com/slash Clavin and promo code Clavin at checkout for $10 off.
And I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, twice, we have to spell Clavin twice.
What now?
It's still the same, K-L-A-V-A-N, both times.
It does not change.
There are no E's in Clavin.
I just make it look this simple, really.
It's amazing.
The guy who really gets this right is Doug Collins.
He's the ranking.
This is the House Judiciary Committee, which called in McGahn.
And Doug Collins is the ranking Republican on the committee.
Andrew Clavin Show Promo00:15:46
And he just describes what's going on there perfectly.
Here we go again.
The theater is open, and the summations are coming in.
In fact, right now, we're again running over the norms of congressional oversight.
We're dabbing at the edges of rubbing roughshot on the Constitution, asking for things that we don't.
But I am glad about one thing.
I'm glad that the chairman read into the record today the Mueller report.
I'm glad that he quoted, as he said, this is a quote directly from the Mueller Report.
I just wish my chairman would actually go read the rest of it that he has been offered to read, which he has chose not to read.
But he did leave out one thing.
He left out something in the Mueller report from just now.
He read McGahn's testimony beautifully, did everything right, but he left out what he doesn't want to have to come back to and the frustrating thing that has brought us here again and again and again, and that is the conclusions.
There was no collusion.
There was no obstruction charge.
There's nothing here.
After two years of doing this, we can read it in.
You can talk about how you don't like it.
You can talk about what you would like to ask.
But at the end of the day, it's interesting.
We'll read in the quotes that make the headlines.
But we're also going to read in the bottom line of what was actually concluded.
So the Democrats are here trying again.
It's like, so it's utter fantasy, utter theater.
Now, here's the thing I'm talking about, right?
You're doing this theater, you're doing this fantasy, and you know that the media is going to back you up, is going to make that, put that, put your show on the road, right?
We know that Juliana Margolies is having nightmares.
She's living in your dreams.
It's like some kind of horror movie, right?
They put out their dreams and then the media sends it out and then this poor actress is sitting there screaming in her sleep.
So it's like they're passing on their dreams.
What is it, nightmare?
It's nightmare on J Street, basically.
It's so nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Anyway, they are doing this whole thing, but Trump knows it, right?
And so Trump is just pushing them and pushing them.
He's telling everybody, don't go.
Don't respond to the subpoena.
We have absolute immunity.
Screw you.
And now Nancy Pelosi knows that it may not be political suicide to impeach Trump.
I don't know.
How can we tell?
But it's certainly a waste of time, right?
You need a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict him.
So they would be wasting America's time and money doing this.
But the other people in the House, they've gotten caught up in this fantasy.
I mean, this is an actual phenomenon.
You fantasize and you get caught up in your own fantasy, even knowing that it's not true, right?
It actually, this is an actual psychological phenomenon.
So now Nancy Pelosi is losing control of her caucus, and they're coming to her and saying, we want an impeachment.
So today, this morning, they had a meeting in which they came to her and said, you know, this is really heating up and we're really getting at it now.
And it's all nonsense.
But she comes out and she has to do something, right?
She can't just say no, no, no, no.
I mean, she hasn't got that.
There are independent votes.
She hasn't got that much power.
So she comes out after the meeting, and this is what she says.
It was a very positive meeting, a respectful sharing of ideas, and I think a very impressive presentation by our chairs.
We do believe that it's important to follow the facts.
We believe that no one is above the law, including the President of the United States.
And we believe that the President of the United States is engaged in a cover-up, in a cover-up, and that was the nation.
Are you going to do that successful meeting on indecision of some of your members on impeachment or contempt or anything?
Is that part of the persuasion that you speak?
Speaker, question persuasion, we were just exchanging information and points of view.
So we're just exchanging information points of view, but Donald Trump is committing a cover-up.
So now, right, they have this meeting right after this.
They have this meeting about infrastructure.
And this is a good thing for both the Democrats and the Republicans, because this is a thing that we conservatives are always very wary about infrastructure stuff, right?
Because a lot of infrastructure stuff, we say, why is the federal government paying for infrastructure?
Why don't they do this in your locality?
Why should the feds pay for a road in Georgia and a bridge here and all this stuff?
Why is this going on?
And why, and can we afford it?
And all the rest of the things that conservatives are known for saying, right?
But the Democrats love it because it's spending money, it's taking your money and giving it to their unions, so they love it.
And Trump wants it because we do need new infrastructure.
So it's a place where they have common ground.
So they go into this meeting, and it's good for both of them because the Democrats haven't done jack diddly squat.
All they've done is their resistance kabuki going on.
And Trump, of course, is also frozen.
I mean, he has a lot of power overseas, and he has a lot of power with executive orders and things like that, and certainly cutting regulations, appointing judges.
But he's not getting any legislation passed because of all the theater in the House.
That's all they're doing.
So this is a good thing for them both.
Trump walks in and he's just heard he's committed a cover-up.
He tells him to stuff it.
He walks out of the meeting and comes out to the press.
Things are going well.
And I said, let's have the meeting on infrastructure.
We'll get that done easily.
That's one of the easy ones.
And instead of walking in happily into a meeting, I walk in to look at people that had just said that I was doing a cover-up.
I don't do cover-ups.
You people know that probably better than anybody.
So he's letting, he's holding them responsible for their fantasies in reality.
He's basically saying, you want to impeach, you want to live in the matrix, you want to bring the whole country into the matrix?
Go the hell ahead.
It is smart.
It's smart politics.
I mean, forget about the morality of it, because this is really not a moral story.
This is a political story.
These are two sides maneuvering for power, and Trump is doing it better than the Democrats.
Nancy Pelosi, who is an old hand, and like he got to hand it to her.
You don't get that level of power for nothing.
She is an old hand.
She knows what's going on.
She has said herself that Trump is goading them and goading them and goading them.
She doesn't know what to do.
Trump has got her.
Essentially, it's like that old thing where you're playing checkers with a master and you think you've got him cornered and he says, I've got you just where I want you.
And he does.
That's kind of what Trump is doing.
He says, you want to impeach me?
Bring it on.
Bring it on.
It's really amazing that Trump, who is a Carney Barker and a reality TV guy and a guy who knows about playing the audience, Trump is using reality to work their fantasy against them.
It is an amazing piece of strategy and it's great.
And you know, listen, the funny thing is, is that so much of what the left does, and I was talking about this yesterday, but so much of what the left does is fantasy.
And the question is, are you going to be brought into their fantasy?
I mean, there are arguments.
Listen, I believe that there are arguments that someone who is pro-abortion can make.
I think those arguments are simply trumped by the death of a child.
I think, no, you know, we don't kill children.
But they are bringing you into this fantasy that babies aren't really babies, that it's about a woman's right to reproductive rights.
As Matt Walsh pointed out, you've already reproduced.
You know, Jenna, Jenna Ellis Reeves, was bumped off Facebook for quoting Matt Walsh.
And this is really interesting.
Here's what Matt Walsh wrote, which I just think is absolutely brilliant.
And Jenna reposted it on Facebook, and they called it hate speech.
And they wouldn't back down either.
They called it hate speech and they blocked her.
Here's what Matt wrote: Gender is a social construct, but I am woman, hear me roar.
But anyone can be a woman, but no uterus, no opinion, but transgender women are women, but I demand women's rights, but men are women, but men are scum.
But drag queens are beautiful, but appropriation is evil.
In other words, they are making absolutely no sense.
Of course, it's hate speech to the liberals, to the leftists on Facebook because it exposes the fact that they're creating a fantasy.
And the thing about fantasy, listen, you know, I used to go into Hollywood rooms and I would pitch, say, a time travel story.
And they would say, listen, we'll listen to a time travel story, but it has to make sense.
And I would say, guys, if it made sense, it would be possible.
Things that are possible are real make sense.
In every time travel story, there's a cheat.
There has to be because you can't travel in time.
That is the way it works.
In every story, if it's a fantasy, there's always a little cheat somewhere because only reality makes sense.
And what Matt is pointing out is that their abortion argument doesn't make sense.
The president of Planned Parenthood in New York, Laura McQuaid, made this speech.
I mean, listen to it.
It's entirely make-believe.
We're not facing anti-abortion laws across this country.
We are facing a sick attempt to strip us of our fundamental humanity and our individual autonomy.
Don't believe anything less.
They are coming for your fundamental human rights.
Missouri, Alabama, Georgia, they passed some of the most dangerous and egregious legislation that we have ever seen passed in this country in our lifetimes.
And it isn't a coincidence.
This is a coordinated attack in order to drive care underground, but also to force a national showdown in our Supreme Court about access to our constitutional and human rights.
And it's not just an attack on women.
It's an attack on anyone who can or might get pregnant, including transgender men and gender non-conforming people.
Not just on women, but anyone who can get pregnant.
I mean, just living in this other world because that actually is part of their philosophy that if you change the narrative, you've changed reality.
Unfortunately, that just happens not to be reality.
And when they bring you into this, you have to start listening to that stuff.
You have to start listening to the kind of things that Matt Walsh is talking about that just don't hold together.
The New York Times has a headline on Knucklehead Row, their op-ed section.
It says, pregnancy kills, abortion saves lives.
This is by Warren Hearn, who is a physician and epidemiologist who specializes in late abortion services.
Pregnancy kills, abortion saves lives.
And when they drag you into that fantasy, you've got to know that it's not Donald Trump who's going to use reality against you.
It's reality itself.
And you want to be real, you know, it's something you want to be careful about.
Nancy Pelosi is now finding this out.
The Democrats are finding this out.
That when you live in a fantasy world, when you live with fantasy logic, when you change the narrative of reality, reality doesn't change and it will come back and bite you.
And when you do something like an abortion, that doesn't go away.
That's the rest of your life.
That's going to be something you live with.
And you're going to be given that choice of whether to say at some point, gee, maybe I did something that's wrong, or lying to yourself for the rest of your life.
I mean, reality bites, you know, I mean, reality has a voice and it will speak out and it will ultimately come back to get you if you live in a fantasy world.
So you don't want to be sucked into that as Nancy Pelosi is finding out right now.
We got the mailbag coming up.
I got to say, you know, one of these days, guys, I actually am just going to pitch forward with my face.
Oh, that's what they're trying to get.
I'm sorry.
I thought that's not a bug.
That's a feature.
What was I saying?
What am I?
Who am I?
Where am I?
You want to go to dailywire.com, subscribe.
That's what I'm trying to tell you.
Because then you can ask questions in the mailbag.
All your problems will be solved.
You'll be out 10 bucks a month, 100 bucks a year.
Is it so important that you have that money?
No, it's important that we have that money.
Try to get that into your head.
Money you have is money we want.
So give us the money.
You can then subscribe, listen to all our shows, and be in the mailbag, which is coming up.
All right, the mailbag.
Woo!
Yeah!
I'm ready for it now.
From Alyssa, my question is about the big corporate taxes.
You mentioned briefly on Monday, I'm not very savvy on how any of it really works, but why do people say businesses like Amazon don't pay taxes?
I know it's a load of crap, but how do I refute this argument when it's thrown at me by crazy leftists?
Thanks.
Okay, yeah, Amazon pays plenty of taxes.
But, but Amazon frequently has a year without profits, a year in which it doesn't make money, and then it doesn't pay taxes.
And not only does it not pay taxes in that year, but because we want to encourage businesses like Amazon, which has created so much, so many jobs, so much wealth, so much convenience for everybody, we want to encourage business, they're allowed to move some of the profits they make one year into another year where they didn't make any profits, and then maybe that will cut down their taxes there.
But in a year where they make profits, they pay taxes on the profits.
And the other thing that they can deduct things like research and development because we want them to thrive.
We want businesses to thrive and expand.
Businesses are good.
All the people who are shouting about those, you know, like Bernie Sanders, I happen to believe that those corporations are, you know, all of them are on Facebook and using computers and using Amazon.
These corporations bring good stuff into our lives, including jobs and wealth and whatever convenience they're doing.
So we want to encourage them.
So research and development, for instance, is something that they can deduct from their taxes.
When they make profits, not only do they pay taxes on the profits, they pay taxes twice.
Because if you're a shareholder, you get a dividend, right?
And that's taxed too.
So they pay taxes on the profits once when they make it.
And again, when they pay out the dividends, they're taxed again.
And as far as I'm concerned, since everyone there makes a salary that is taxed, they're being taxed even a third time.
So corporations pay plenty of taxes.
It's a complete nonsense.
And you do have to understand, like when the New York Times was attacking Trump for years when he showed a loss, businesses show losses.
I mean, you have something you did that was successful and that benefits the country and the world, but you also did something that you tried and it didn't work.
That's risk.
So you get to take that off your taxes.
So corporations pay plenty of taxes, but they also are laws in place to make sure they don't lose money when they've lose more money when they've already lost money and that we encourage them to thrive.
I mean, this is the thing that these people like AOC and Bernie Sanders never ask about.
Where does the money come from?
They think it grows on trees.
They think it's like these guys are stealing it from everybody else.
They think there's this big pile of money.
There's not.
Money is a symbol of our desire of the things we want.
And when you make something that people like, you create more money because the people want that thing.
Okay.
From Anonymous, my fiancé and I are getting married in November.
I'm very much in love with him and he is madly in love with me.
There's only one problem, his weight.
We got very comfortable being in a relationship and eating.
We both have a gym membership, but he doesn't go at all.
I go about four times a week.
He always has an excuse not to go.
I always try to motivate him.
When he gets home, he smokes pot and plays video games and eats and eats.
I tell him, let's go to the gym together, but he prefers to smoke pot.
Sometimes I feel like I'm mean when I tell him to go to the gym.
I even told him, if you lose weight, our sex life will be better.
I know you're supposed to accept someone for who they are, but am I supposed to let him get to 300 pounds?
I don't know what to do about this.
I need some advice.
P.S.
I always laugh out loud during your opening monologues.
Unfortunately, sometimes so do I.
Yeah, you're misidentifying the problem.
The problem is not his weight.
The problem is he's a drug addict.
And he's an addict in general, really.
I mean, he's addicted to food.
He's addicted to video games.
He's addicted to pot.
If he were coming home and drinking like he was using pot, you would see that he's an alcoholic, but because it's pot, you think it's fine.
You don't want to marry an addict.
Marriage Pain and Faith00:13:47
That's the truth.
Now, I think that you, you know, this is not a question of whether he goes to the gym.
This is a question of whether he gets his life together, gets his act together.
This is a bad guy to marry because this guy is addicted.
He is an addict.
So you've got to say to him, listen, I don't know if you're living with him.
I don't know what, but you've got to say, look, I'm walking away.
You've got to change this.
You've got to change this.
You've got to bring me a guy who's not addicted to pot, who's not addicted to video games, who works and works out and takes care of himself.
I mean, that will show up in his weight, but you do not want to marry an addict, and that's what this guy is.
And he's got to, and marrying an addict, I mean, like they say, the three A's that justify divorce are adultery, abuse, and addiction.
And this guy is addicted.
And, you know, sitting around smoking pot is not okay.
That is not okay.
You know, if you think that having an occasional reefer is fine, you know, what can I tell you?
But like to do that all the time, come home and just smoke dope, that is drug addiction.
And that's what you're seeing.
And the gaining weight is just an effect of that.
Don't marry him if he doesn't change that pattern.
From Sam, dear three-eyed Clavin, you have mentioned before how even though there's no religion in Tolkien's Middle-earth books, the fantasy world he created essentially proclaims the existence of an almighty and good creator mirroring his own Catholicism.
Game of Thrones, on the other hand, has seemed to create the illusion of realism by presenting a nihilistic fantasy, a fallen world in which there's no good or evil, but only power.
If Westeros does indeed seem to evoke more of a true illusion of reality than Tolkien's, then does that suggest our own real world has more in common with Westeros than Middle-earth and its implicit morality?
If not, then why is it the nihilistic stories seem more real than those that more clearly reveal the truth of a moral world?
Well, look, we live in a tragic nihilistic world.
We have faith that there is more to that world than what we see.
That is our faith.
That is why when you see nihilistic stories, it has this kind of hard, brute reality that strikes you that way.
But it's also true, for instance, that when you got to the end of Game of Thrones, you knew who the good guys were, you knew who was doing wrong, you knew implicitly there was nothing he could do to make destroying a city good.
There was nothing he could do about that because we know what's right and wrong.
We have an inherent sense of what's fair and good, and that is what speaks to us of a logic beyond logic, right?
If there were no life beyond life, then the sensible thing to do would be to get everything you could in this life no matter who you hurt.
But we don't feel that way.
Nobody thinks that's a good thing.
It's not just game theory that makes us feel that way.
It's because we understand that there is a greater logic than just our lives.
Now you can say, you can argue that it's the logic of the whole of humankind and not the logic of a life beyond life.
You can argue all kinds of things, but you can't argue that that morality doesn't exist.
So you can tell a story in which the bad guys win, in which everybody, all the bad guys are happy at the end and all the good guys lose, and it has a resonance because we know that really happens in life.
That really happens in life.
And the artist, right, may have faith, and that may affect what he writes, but he can't change reality in the name of his faith.
He can't change reality in the name of his faith because then we know it's false.
That's my beef with all those happy talk Christian movies, which I've been told not to pick on so much, but still, that's my beef with them, that they are saying something, they're telling you something as fact that we only know in faith.
And it's fine to depict faith.
It's fine to depict a world that looks like the world faith imagines, but it's not fine to depict faith as fact because it just doesn't grab you as realistic.
It's really interesting that we know when we deal with Tolkien that we're dealing with a vision of the world.
We know when we're dealing with Game of Thrones that there's something wrong that doesn't hold together with the vision.
Who are the dead?
Who is the Lord of Light?
It just goes away.
There are all these things in there that go away.
That has a certain realism to it too, but it speaks to the fact that they haven't thought out their metaphysics very well.
And I thought that was one of the underlying problems with the show.
But it did have the reality that power corrupts.
It did have the reality that people will do almost anything for power.
And that is just really resonant.
I hope that answers the question, long answer.
From Justin, I'm a 40-year-old married Catholic with six kids ranging from 19 and out of the house to eight years old.
My marriages have been shaky for five years.
My wife can be very controlling.
She says she's not and sometimes physically abusive.
I'm not perfect, made my share of mistakes, but I've never laid a hand on her first, but I have defended myself.
A week ago during a fight where she was telling me who I can have as friends on Facebook.
I'm friends with my ex's kids, not my ex.
She was accusing me of still loving my ex from over 20 years ago.
I do not, and saying that I shouldn't be friends with them because it's a way of me holding on to the past.
During the fight, she pulled her gun out of her safe and said that if I didn't unfriend them, she would kill herself.
She didn't have any gun, bullets in the gun.
Our marriage has been bad for the last five years, but I wanted to stay for the kids and to honor our marriage.
Any suggestions?
Yeah, I do have a suggestion.
First of all, stop justifying yourself.
Everything in this letter is trying to communicate to me that she's nuts and yes, you've made some mistakes, but you are in the right in every one of these arguments.
That's not the problem.
You are in a sick system.
Your marriage is sick.
Your marriage is a system that is creating violence and havoc and badness and you are both in it.
This is so bad.
What you're describing is so bad that I don't like to recommend therapy except as a last resort because I think people can solve a lot of their own problems, but you need help.
And it's not she who needs help.
It's not you who need help.
The marriage needs help.
Now, maybe when you go in and talk to a marriage therapist, they're going to say, yes, you also need to go into individual therapy.
But this is a very, very sick, very ill marriage.
It's a very ill system of which you are part, okay?
You can say she's wrong about this and you're right about that and she does this and you don't and all that stuff.
But this is a sick system of which you are 50%, right?
So I think this is a time when you have a moment of calm between you to sit down and say, look, it's not you, it's not me, it's us.
Something is wrong.
Let us go and get help for us, for this system.
You got kids at home.
This is gunplay.
That should not be going on.
She shouldn't have a gun.
Anybody who pulls a gun and points it at herself should not have a gun, should not have ownership of a gun.
But that's not the big issue.
The big issue is this marriage is ill.
You need to fix this marriage.
Stop justifying yourself.
You're going to find out that you were part of the system in some way, and she is part of the marriage.
It's a 50-50 thing.
You have built this thing together.
Go fix it together.
And hopefully, I pray for you.
That's a very painful, very broken system that you're in.
From Michael, dear Lord of the Multiverse, I greatly enjoyed your recent piece in City Journal.
Can we believe?
As a Christian myself, I agree with your premise that we are far better off with Christian beliefs than without them.
However, we seem to be heading towards a period reminiscent of the Jewish Babylonian exile, where we Christians and our beliefs will not be in the majority, and in fact will increasingly be considered irrelevant and extreme.
What, if anything, do you think could lead to a Western Christian revival and turn the situation around?
Well, either Christianity is true or it's false, right?
My whole point in this article, Can We Believe, in City Journal, is that we've been sold the idea that religion may be helpful, may be good for us, but it's not true, that you can't defend it.
And my argument was that argument in and of itself has not been made.
It has not been sufficiently made.
And there is a very, very powerful argument that our religion, Christianity, is true.
It may contain things that are not true, but it also, but it is basically a true, I would say the true religion, and we have no reason to be talked out of it.
So that's the argument we have to start having.
I think we should start doing this personally, where we gather together and discuss our religion and talk about it in realistic terms.
I think we should stop talking about it in what the philosopher Schopenhauer called, what did he call it, banal optimism.
You know, everything is right.
There's a reason.
Everything happens for a reason.
God is, everything is good when you believe in God.
That's not the way it is.
It's still a tragic world.
It's still a tragic, screwed up world where the good guys lose sometimes and the bad guys win.
We believe that our moral sense is talking to us of a life beyond life, that that life is spoken to us in matter, that I, Andrew, am spoken in this body, even though I am not entirely this body.
This is the language.
The body is the language that expresses me, that God expressed himself in a body.
Those are arguments that we can have and talk about and we should put them forward.
I think one thing that I would like to see Christians rethink for a minute is how much of our we are frequently maneuvered into expressing Christianity as what we don't like.
We don't like gays.
We don't like out-of-wedlock marriage.
We don't like this.
We don't like that.
And for me, so much of what Christianity is, is about the love and forgiveness with which we enter the world and how we transform the world in that love, in that forgiveness, because it is the love and forgiveness that God shows to us.
And I think so much of that that is positive is something we should be working, a muscle we should be working on developing as we argue.
If Christianity is true, then it's worth believing in whether the majority believes in it or not.
It will never be extinguished because of its truth.
We will be a remnant who believes.
But I think I'm actually more hopeful than that.
I think the ideas opposed to Christianity are actually falling apart.
Relativism, postmodernism, they don't make sense.
They don't hold together like we were talking about earlier in the show.
Only reality holds together.
The Christian approach to life holds together.
And I think that's going to be a very powerful weapon for us, tool for us, as we go forward.
This has happened before, as I've argued before.
This is, you know, the Christianity seeming to be on the ropes has happened before, and it has always come back because it describes reality accurately.
From Clayton, dear knower of all things and speaker of absolute truths, I'm a college student who recently graduated from basic training for the Army.
I graduated as the honor graduate in my company and did very well in the crucible of endless training, but I was plagued every night in my bunk by my ex-girlfriend.
I was a recovering drug abuser who almost ruined the relationship, saw the error of my ways, joined the Army to prove my love for her and secure our future.
And shortly after I signed up, she ended our four-year relationship that was getting close to marriage and started dating another guy in the military.
I'm a depressed mess.
I can't get over her.
I think about her every night.
I get overwhelmingly sad, no longer wish to be alive.
How do you move on from losing someone after giving them years of as much love as you could?
And they left without even a hint of regret.
First of all, I'm really sorry.
It's incredibly painful to have your heart broken.
Most of us have experienced something like it.
It's no small thing.
It's not in your imagination.
It's the real deal.
It doesn't just go away.
You've got to get over it.
You have got to get over it.
She's not coming back.
She made her decision.
Your heart is broken.
That's painful.
Experience your pain.
Understand your pain.
Live with your pain a little while, a little while, you know, a few days.
Experience your pain.
And then listen to what you said, okay?
You went into basic training, which is very hard.
And thank you for your service, by the way, but basic training is a very hard thing.
You call it yourself a crucible.
You graduated as the honor graduate in your company, okay?
You have enormous resources of discipline.
You have enormous resources of strength.
You have enormous resources that give you the power to move on.
And that is what you have to start to do.
You have to leave her behind.
You're going to be in pain.
You've suffered a wound.
You're going to have a scar.
You know, maybe you're even going to have a limp, spiritually speaking.
But you have the power, as you proved in basic training.
You have the strength, the discipline, and the power to move on.
Start to use it.
Don't look at her, look her up on Facebook.
Don't call her in the middle of the night.
Don't go back and look at your pictures.
Get rid of the pictures.
Start to go out and join groups that will give you new friends and new possibilities of romance.
Start to date again.
Go out with other girls.
Don't compare them to this other girl.
There are going to be days when your discipline falters.
Seal it back up again and move forward.
It is a thing you have to do.
Moving forward is not something that you're just carrying forward in time without wanting to be, but to move forward emotionally, you have to do it.
You have the discipline.
You've proved you've had the discipline.
You've proved to have the strength.
You just have to put that strength to use.
The pain that we suffer in the past, you can't let it go until you stop loving it.
You can't let go of the pain until you stop being friends with the pain.
You have to put it aside yourself.
Some of us get into a romance with the pain, a romance with the agony of the past, or a romance with our hurt, and our romance with our bitterness, and our romance with our heartbreak.
You've got to let it all go.
Like I said, you've got the discipline.
You've got the power.
Put it to use.
You know what you have to do.
Now you've got to do it.
I'm out of time, but we will be back tomorrow.
Put Strength to Use00:00:58
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Adam Sajovitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
And our animations are by Cynthia Angulo.
Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
A new survey of IQ scores throughout the West shows us that our intelligence is plummeting.
You only have to look around at the 2020 Democrat presidential candidates or the farce of congressional testimony on the hill to see that this is very likely true.
We ask the question, are we all just getting stupider?