Ep. 710’s The Feds Fire Back pits Dr. Geraldo von Zippity Noodle’s absurd "all-caps Twitter reality" theory against FBI investigations into Trump, where Mueller’s redacted report and Comey’s op-ed clash with claims of deep-state bias—while Kellyanne Conway fires back, calling it "panicked." Listener dilemmas range from a grieving Christian doubting God to a soldier torn between duty and love, all framed through Andrew’s rigid faith-based advice. Meanwhile, polls’ reliability is questioned as Ed speculates minorities hide Trump support, exposing the gap between perception and reality. [Automatically generated summary]
Leftist scientists working around the clock have developed powerful new tools for altering reality.
In a speech to the Society for the Promulgation of Irrational Hysteria, left-wing physicist Dr. Geraldo von Zippity Noodle told a gathering of empty chairs, he can now confirm that writing a statement five times over in all capital letters and posting it on Twitter transforms that statement, no matter how absurd, into the truth.
In an experiment that has been reduplicated in multiple peer-reviewed imaginations, scientists posted the words, trans women are women, five times in all caps on their Twitter feeds and discovered from that time forth, men who wore dresses not only became real women, but were actually able to conceive and bear children if no one looked too closely.
In a transcript of his speech released through UCLA's Office of Collecting Undeserved Paychecks by Repeatedly Using the Word diversity, Dr. Von Zippity Noodle said, quote, the key to changing reality through repetitive Twitter capitalization, or RTC, is to ensure that no one damages the results by demanding proof or using such phrases as nonsense or applesauce or utter and complete horse manure of the purest race arene.
If people using such words can be banned from Twitter or silenced through intimidation, then the proper reality change can take place undisturbed, or if not, who is there to say?
Unquote.
In a related experiment, journalists at CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and all three television networks were induced to claim that climate change would destroy life as we know it in 12 years, while simultaneously declaring that if anyone on Fox News denied this fact, they were corrupt racists.
The result was a fundamental transformation of reality so that climate change will now, in fact, destroy life as we know it in 12 years or never, whichever comes last.
Leftist scientists say they will continue their experiments until reality has been so fundamentally transformed that leftist ideas begin to improve people's lives.
Trigger worry, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Obstruction Charges Bombshell00:08:03
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boom.
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Ship-shaped dipsy-topsy, the world is ippity-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
So look, it isn't yet entirely clear what happened to start the FBI investigation into Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
Some say it was a flagrant attempt by the deep state to support one political party and spy on and subvert the lawful efforts of the other party to win office.
And other people are lying through their teeth.
But seriously, it's important that we do not make the mistake of our friends on the left and get all worked up about Attorney General Barr's investigation into the investigation before the facts come to light.
And that's why I think it's reasonable to give a fair hearing to the unholy gang of themes and turncoats who tried to subvert our constitutional system.
If I could just be actually serious for a minute, and apparently I can't, what I'm trying to say is that Robert Mueller has made a statement and James Comey has written an op-ed for the Washington Post, where democracy dies in narcissistic self-regard coupled with bias to the point of intellectual corruption.
And both former FBI guys have made it clear that they do not like Donald Trump and they think their investigations were absolutely peachy clean and peachy keen and maybe possibly clean as well.
And I think we should listen to what they have to say before we make a final decision as to how many of them we can send to prison where they belong.
We'll talk about that and consider it in first a minute, but let me talk first about a wonderful new sponsor.
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All right, so as we're coming on the air, and this was just happening, and you know I hate breaking news, but this time it's pretty simple.
I pretty much know what I think about it.
Robert Mueller came on and made a statement about his investigation.
So let's take a look at some of the stuff he said.
I want to play cut number 14.
This is kind of the bombshell, I guess, from it.
He's talking about obstruction of justice charges.
If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.
We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.
The introduction to the volume two of our report explains that decision.
It explains that under long-standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office.
That is unconstitutional.
Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that too is prohibited.
The special counsel's office is part of the Department of Justice, and by regulation, it was bound by that department policy.
Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.
Okay, so now this is a real knockback on Bill Barr on the Attorney General, who basically has said, first of all, that there was no proof of obstruction of justice.
That's what he's talking about.
And he also said that Mueller told him in private conversation that what he was not saying was what he just said, that he was not saying that if it hadn't been for the regs from the Department of Justice, he would have charged him.
Barr says that Mueller told him this, that that was not why he didn't charge him.
He just wasn't sure whether there was enough evidence.
And in the report, he talks at length about why he wasn't sure whether there was enough evidence, and he discusses the law differently.
It's really a different, this is really a different story than he told before.
And now he's saying it wouldn't have been, I mean, this is kind of crummy, really.
This is cut number 15.
He says it wouldn't be fair to charge the guy if he can't be tried.
The opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.
And beyond department policy, we were guided by principles of fairness.
It would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge.
Now that's really stinky, in my opinion, because essentially what he's saying is if it weren't for the regulations, we would have charged him, and it's not fair to charge him without trying him, and now I'm charging him.
I mean, that really is what he's saying.
I mean, this is the investigator.
This is a special counsel.
This guy has authority when he speaks.
This is a very, very strange thing for him to do.
It is almost impossible for me to not see this in connection with Donald Trump's allowing Barr to declassify information about how this investigation started.
This does seem like a bit of running defense.
And the other thing is, I think, actually, you know, this is true with Comey, too.
I don't think Comey meant to put Hillary Clinton and the Hillary Clinton campaign in a jackpot the way she did, but this puts the Democrats in a big jackpot, okay?
Because now the Democrats, the forces in the Democrat caucus that want to impeach are now supercharged.
Because I just don't see how you can hear what he just said and not hear him saying that this was not, the legal process was not supposed to deal with obstruction of justice, but impeachment would be the way to deal with that.
I don't figure out how you can not hear him saying that.
So now Nancy Pelosi, who's been like Benur on their chariot trying to keep this impeachment chariot from running around the track, because I don't think she thinks it's a very good political idea with the economy doing so well, with us at peace, with the country doing well.
Does the country really want to watch the Democrats impeach Donald Trump when they know it can go nowhere because the Senate is going to spit in their eye, right?
I mean, the Senate is going to throw, it's kind of like, remember, they got to get two-thirds vote in the Senate.
There's no chance of that.
So it's actually like they're basically going to go through this.
They're going to tear the country apart.
They're going to set us all against each other.
They're going to give the newsmen stuff to talk about.
Everybody's, the whole treason brigade is going to be out there shouting at Trump again.
And then it's going to be like, yeah, nothing.
Forget it.
Get out.
Really?
Do they really think they can pull that off?
Well, maybe, maybe they can figure out a way to do it.
Listen, just because it didn't work when the Republicans did it to Clinton doesn't mean it won't work now.
Trump obviously thinks it's a great idea.
He's waiting.
He's goading them.
He's waiting for them to do it.
And now it just seems to me Mueller just put him in a position where that side of the caucus is going to be much, much more powerful.
Finally, the last thing Mueller said is, screw you guys, I'm out of here.
Preparing for Emergency00:03:35
My report was my mic drop.
I'm gone.
We appreciate that the Attorney General made the report largely public, and I certainly do not question the Attorney General's good faith in that decision.
Now, I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak to you in this manner.
I am making that decision myself.
No one has told me whether I can or should testify or speak further about this matter.
There has been discussion about an appearance before Congress.
Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report.
It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made.
We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself.
And the report is my testimony.
I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.
In other words, that's what I got to say.
I said what I have to say.
You know, you figure it out.
I think he did add this little bit of a bombshell, which is no bombshell whatsoever because it contradicts a lot of what's actually in the report.
A, and it also not only contradicts what's in the report, it contradicts what Barr said he said.
The investigation and the IG investigation, it's not just the John Durham investigation in which Trump has said Barr can declassify stuff and Durham is a guy who studies dirty cops, as Gorka put it yesterday, so politely.
And of course, the IG investigation, Horowitz, has got a great reputation.
So that's going to proceed.
All that is going to proceed.
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How do you spell Clavin?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
No ease in Claven.
I just make it look like that.
I just make it look like there's ease in it.
All right, so anyway, you know, it's hard for me to stop joking about this because it just doesn't really hold water for me.
It doesn't hold together.
CIA Links to Russia Collusion00:14:12
The Mueller report investigate, you know, his job, his job was not to determine whether or not Trump could be charged.
That was not his job.
His job was to determine whether or not Trump, Mueller's job, was to determine whether or not Trump should be charged.
And he obviously absconded on that job.
He didn't do that job.
And to just say, oh, well, we weren't going to be able to try him, so it wouldn't be fair, it just doesn't hold together for me.
And it does, to me, it puts the Democrats in the jackpot because now the forces of impeachment are all that much stronger, and it doesn't become any better a political idea than it was before.
Then we have James Comey, who is a far, far less attractive character than Robert Mueller.
Mueller has kept his head down.
He did do his investigation.
He did what he was sent to do, which remember was not about obstruction of justice.
It was about the Russia collusion case.
Comey has just been a sanctimonious pain in the butt.
I mean, he really has.
He's been a partisan.
He has completely destroyed any reputation he might have had for wisdom or self-containment.
He has just been a complete self-justifying, sanctimonious.
He's the kind of guy you like, if he shows up at dinner, you're rolling your eyes thinking, I'm sorry we came to this place.
So he writes a piece in the Washington Post where democracy dies in rampant self-regard.
It's called No Treason, No Coup, Just Lies and Dumb Lies at that.
So if you have any, any doubts about James Comey's investigation, you are dumb.
And here's some of my favorite parts, okay?
He says, it's tempting for normal people to ignore our president when he starts ranting about treason and corruption at the FBI.
I understand the temptation.
I'm the object of many of his rants, and even I try to ignore him.
Nyuck, gnuck, gnuck.
But we shouldn't because millions of good people believe what the president is saying.
It's not healthy now.
In normal times, that's healthy, but not now.
And the president is a liar who doesn't care what damage he does to vital institutions.
We must call out his lies that the FBI was corrupt and committed treason, that we spied on the Trump campaign and tried to defeat Donald Trump.
We must constantly return to the stubborn facts.
Russia engaged in a massive effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Now, by the way, Mueller said this as well.
And in Comey's piece, he links, he puts in two links, right?
One of them is to Mueller's indictment, in which he had defendants posing as U.S. persons, creating false U.S. personas, operated social, how they operated social media pages from the indictment and groups designed to attract U.S. audience.
I mean, this is what they did.
I find it hard to believe they don't always do this and that we don't do it back to them.
Essentially, they did what Americans do, which is they tried to put forward ideas and they did it.
They keep saying they did it to help Trump.
It's so important to remember this.
No one on the face of the earth thought Trump was going to win.
No one.
Some of the people who did had no idea what they were talking about.
Guys like Henry Olson, who thought it would be close, they did have ideas.
They did have ideas what they were talking about.
But the fact is, Vladimir Putin could not have had any idea that Trump had any chance of winning this election.
And so what I think he was doing is just starting trouble.
The idea that he was supporting Trump is kind of ridiculous.
I think what he was doing is supporting Trump because he thought Hillary was going to win and he wanted to delegitimize the next president of the United States.
That's what he thought, okay?
So that's the first thing.
He links to the indictment, and then he links to another Washington Post story saying that James Comey says that there was Russian interference.
So he's linking to himself, although he may not have set up the links.
But anyway, we accept that the Russians did tamper with the election.
Nobody has any problem with that, and nobody has any problem with the FBI investigating it.
In April 2016, that advisor talked to a Russian, I'm sorry, in 2016, I want to make sure, in late July, when we were hard at work trying to understand the scope of Russia's effort, we learned that one of Trump's foreign policy advisors knew about the Russian effort seven weeks before we did.
In April 2016, that advisor talked to a Russian agent in London, learned that the Russians had obtained dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, and the Russians could assist the Trump campaign through the anonymous release of information.
This, of course, is George Papadopoulos.
And I know this stuff gets incredibly complicated, but just in case we can clarify it a little bit, right?
George Papadopoulos worked for the Trump campaign for three months as a foreign policy advisor.
He had a meeting with this guy, Joseph Mithsud, who is a very, nobody even knows where he is anymore.
He seems to have disappeared.
They keep saying that he's a Russian agent, but there's also some evidence that he, in fact, and his lawyer, Mithsud's lawyer says this, that he worked for the FBI.
So we don't even know where this information came from, right?
We the public, we the people don't know.
James Comey can say it, but James Comey has lied before.
He says I don't do weasly things like leak.
Then he came back and said, oh yeah, I leaked information because I was angry, I got fired, and now I got Trump, got a special counsel to attack Trump.
Lucky me, right?
Papadopoulos, I mean, we know this now from the New York Times as well, has been like this poor, he's been like this guy caught in this government investigation, which included not just people trying to wire his girlfriend who has now become his wife, according to Papadopoulos.
He says they came to her and asked her to wear a wire against him.
This woman, Azra Turk, who seems to have been maybe a CIA operative.
He says she tried to seduce him.
She acted in a seductive way to get information.
I mean, this is very, very strange, over-the-top stuff.
So Comey's argument that, oh, we were just doing our hard, diligent work, maybe, maybe, I'm willing to say that that remains a possibility, but it sure doesn't sound like what was going on.
This guy works for the Trump campaign for three months.
He talks to a guy.
We don't even know if he worked for the FBI or the Russians or both.
We don't even know where he is.
I mean, it's just, it needs to be investigated.
It should not be that a self-important, sanctimonious buffoon like Comey decides that he is going to wire people to talk to advisors in an opposition campaign.
We now know that he's a Democrat.
We now know, I mean, we know that he supports, he hates Trump.
He supports the Democrats.
You know, that can't go uninvestigated.
I'm sorry.
So he says, so now he says this is really dumb.
He says, the first problem with Trump's whole treason narrative, if we were deep state Clinton loyalties bent on stopping him, why did we keep our investigation secret?
Well, because they all would have been fired on the spot.
It would have been a major scandal.
Even if the Times tried to bury it the way they do now, even if CNN tried to bury it, if they had said, oh, yeah, we're investigating Trump, people would have hit the roof.
That's not a very good excuse, and that doesn't make it dumb to be suspicious.
He says, we investigated.
We didn't gather information about the campaign strategy.
We didn't spy on anyone's campaign.
Well, if you're listening in on people's phone calls and you're trying to get people wired, yes, you did.
Yes, you did.
I mean, that is just not right.
Finally, he says by late October, the investigators thought they had probable cause to get a federal court order to conduct electronic surveillance of a former Trump campaign advisor named Carter Page.
And that was the Pfizer warrant that they used this stupid steeple document about Trump and the hookers in Russia.
So again, he leaves out all the stuff that we're suspicious about.
You know, again, maybe they acted in a justified way.
We've got an IG report from a guy who seems pretty trustworthy.
We'll see what he says.
This guy, John Durham, seems trustworthy.
Barr seems trustworthy to me, but Durham has worked for both sides of the aisle.
He investigates bent cops.
This is what he does.
I feel satisfied that we'll find stuff out.
And the idea that Barr can now declassify stuff, which seems to have, I mean, listen, you know, let's listen to Kellyanne Conway's response to Comey's op-ed, because I think it's a legitimate hit.
Let's listen to what she says.
Methinks he doth protest too much.
So there sounds like there's panic in the world of Jim Comey.
Who cares what he thinks?
We said no collusion for two years and they couldn't take us at our word.
We had to waste $40 million of taxpayer money, 22 months, 500 witnesses, 2,800 subpoenas, and the list goes on and on, 1.4 million documents to come up with what we said all along.
No collusion.
I stood here many times and said that as the campaign manager, no collusion.
And yet we're just supposed to read Jim Comey in a friendly, favorable news outlet, say, no corruption.
So let's find out.
Those who said transparency, facts first, accountability, let's have it now.
I can probably come up with $35 million in 20.
I got 22 months.
How about you guys?
I can't wait for 500.
Yeah.
Well, and the other thing is I really resent him saying just good people trying to get to the truth.
We already know that Andy McCabe, his number two, lied.
We already know that Jim Comey is a liar and a leaker.
We already know that they wrote books that are basically on the fiction list.
Yeah, that is the other thing.
We do know that Peter Strzzok and Linda Page had those.
Lisa Page, I can't remember his lover's name.
But anyway, we do know these lovers hated Trump, hated the people who voted for Trump, just looked down on them, thought they needed an insurance policy.
There's plenty of reasons, plenty of reasons to do this investigation.
And Kellyanne is right.
He sounds panicked.
He points out that he hurt Hillary's, Comey in the op-ed points out that he hurt Hillary's campaign by going public.
But that was just incompetence.
And again, nobody thought Trump could win.
So he thought he was absolutely in the clear.
He did not think, I mean, would any of this have gone on, any of the Russia collusion stuff have gone on if Hillary had won?
I don't think so.
And the way that Comey handled Hillary's campaign, giving people immunity, saying she needed to have intent to be charged when she didn't, the offhand way he threw that out and the evidence that we have that he cleared her before he even interviewed her, really shows that he treated these two people very, very differently.
All I'm saying is there is plenty of reason to investigate.
And, you know, I think that Sebastian Gorka has a point when he says these guys sound panicked.
Listen to John Brennan, the CIA guy, who's been, he's been this guy throwing out treason.
How is he going to complain that Trump has now thrown it back in his face?
It is a very, very serious and outrageous move on the part of Mr. Trump, once again, trampling upon the statutory authorities of the Director of National Intelligence and the heads of the independent intelligence agencies.
And I know that my former colleagues in the intelligence agencies are looking upon this with great concern and worry.
Again, I implore Dan Coates, Gina Haspel, and others to stand up to this, I think, unprecedented act on the part of Mr. Trump.
But I am deeply, deeply concerned about what is going on right now.
So he's calling for a cover-up.
He's calling for Gina Haspel at the CIA not to declassify, to defy A.G. Barr when he tries to declassify things.
And they've sent out this entire meme that somehow Barr, who worked for the CIA at the beginning of his career, that somehow he's going to expose CIA assets and risk their lives.
And that's absurd as well.
That's just an absurd story that they're telling.
All I'm saying here is, look, there is plenty of reason, plenty of reason to be suspicious.
Yesterday, I played that cut from the Cold War thriller, Three Days of the Condor, in which, and this was a big meme in these movies in the 70s and 80s, where the CIA was guilty of malfeasance.
Maybe the FBI was guilty of malfeasance.
We certainly, they certainly never loved J. Edgar Hoover and the stuff he did against Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers.
And this was the idea that the press were the heroic people who were going to expose malfeasance in our government.
It is sickening.
It is sickening.
The most sickening.
It's not sickening to me that John Brennan, who we already know what he is, it's not sickening to me that he calls on the CIA to cover up.
It's not sickening to me that James Comey, because we already know what he is.
It's not sickening to me that he defends himself and calls us stupid for being concerned.
It is sickening to me that the press, which has put itself forward as the truth to power people, that has put itself forward as the constitutionally protected guardians of our constitutional rights, is suddenly like, CIA malfeasance?
Who cares?
Do we have to defend our sacred intelligence institutions, which, by the way, under the last president, lied us, quote unquote, into war by telling us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction?
It is really bad.
It is the greatest danger to our Constitution right now.
Not that cops sometimes do the wrong thing, not that the feds sometimes do the wrong thing, not that the CIA spies on private citizens.
All that stuff is dangerous, but it wouldn't be dangerous if we had a press that was out to investigate any abuse of power, no matter which side it's on, and we don't.
And by the way, some of this is on the right because the right, just like it doesn't fund movies, just like it doesn't fund women's magazines, just like it doesn't support the arts and culture, doesn't support reporting.
Where are the right-wing reporters except on the Brett Baer show?
And some at the Washington Post, but where are the, at the Washington Post, I'm sorry, the Wall Street Journal.
Where are the big institutions that don't just put out opinion, but actually pay for investigative reporting?
This is the stuff that's dangerous.
Comey's got no case.
Mueller, I don't know.
That was a little self-serving.
Making a Choice00:15:34
I'll look at it again and see if I can be a little kinder about it.
But I don't think so.
The point is, the investigation, Barr's investigation, is utterly, utterly justified, and the press should be on his back to get him to get to the bottom of it.
The mailbag is coming up.
That's just what I was going to say.
I was just going to say, you got to come over to DailyWire.com because you have to subscribe if you want to be on the mailbag.
You can listen to the mailbag, but if you want to ask questions and have all the problems of your life solved, you kind of come over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
It's a lousy $10 a month.
It's $100 for the year.
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And you get Matt Walsh.
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I mean, this really is a good deal if you subscribe to DailyWire.com.
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We want the money.
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The mailbag.
All right, from Caleb.
Dear Overlord Clavin, may the light reflecting from your head continue to illuminate the minds of conservatives and leftists alike.
Don't hold your breath.
I'm dating a single mother of two, and I love her and her boys very much.
I recently found out, however, that my dad has pancreatic cancer and will likely need a caregiver while he's being treated.
I feel every need to help my dad, but it puts me 130 miles from my girlfriend and my boys, and it troubles me to leave them without a father for a second time.
I'm a Christian, and my dad is a pastor, so living together at my parents is essentially out of the question.
My question, in short, is: should my loyalty be to being a good son or a good dad?
I don't see it.
Why don't you marry her?
If you love her boys so much.
I mean, you know, one of the things about going out with a girl with children is that you've got to be especially careful.
You can't love, love, love the kids and oh, sorry, now I'm gone, right?
That's not real love.
I mean, if you love the kids, you're going to be there for them.
We have an institution for protecting that.
We call it marriage.
And you might want to pull that off, and then you can go and live with your dad.
Conversely, you can move your dad to you and bring him to you where you can take care of him and still be with these boys.
You know, I don't think you should make that choice.
I really don't think you should make that choice.
You cannot abandon these children.
If you are committed to them, you can't abandon them.
If it's possible to marry them, if she's not still married or something like that, or if there's some other impediment, you should marry her.
That would secure your relationship with those boys and give them the father that they need.
All the love in the world is not going to help them if you are not dependable and you're gone.
And all this does, this crisis, and I'm very sorry about your father.
I know it's a horrible, virulent form of cancer, very tough to beat.
And I'm very sorry about that, and I feel your pain there, but you're only in this dilemma because you haven't committed to the boys and this lady.
So I think that that's how you solve the problem.
That's how you get off the horns of the dilemma by marrying the girl or at least making that commitment and bringing your father to you.
From Ed, Dear Andrew, having watched the recent episode with Dr. Sebastian Gorka, I always love talking to Sebastian because, you know, he's an honest, straightforward supporter of Donald Trump.
You know he's going to make the case for Trump, and he makes it very eloquently and very unabashedly.
And I don't always agree with him, but I respect him for that.
He says, I wonder what you think about his contention that people are lying to pollsters.
I tend to believe it, as I am from Michigan.
We elected Trump, but I have yet to meet anyone other than myself who voted for him.
Love the show.
Yeah, you know, I think there's something to it.
I don't know how much.
When I asked Henry Olson about it, he said really possible, but not that much.
I don't believe that polls at this point mean a hell of a lot at all.
I think as, you know, this is now, I haven't counted the months, but it's a long time.
And they say a week is a lifetime in politics.
This is truly many lifetimes away.
So I don't believe the polls are really indicative of anything.
I've had this theory, and I don't, this is not a prediction in any way, shape, or form, but I have wondered whether they have not made it so hot for black people and other minorities to support Trump that they may just completely say, yeah, yeah, I'm voting for whatever Democrat, and then actually go vote for Trump because they're doing really well under Trump and all this stuff.
And you can even hear the Democrats saying now, well, he's a racist, but things are going well for black people, and that's very dangerous to have a racist doing good things for black people, which makes zero sense, but okay, that's the way it feels.
So anyway, I will go with Gorka to the extent that I think the polls now are meaningless, that he's doing better than Obama did at this time and Obama was re-elected, and that a lot of these decisions will be made at the last moment.
And there's a very small pool of people who make those decisions, and they will probably hold off until the last moment.
And yeah, I think that there is some percentage of people who will lie.
What Sebastian was saying was that they do it for fun.
I think they may do it because they don't want to come out and say what they're going to do.
From Kirsten, dear Mr. Clavin, I am 17 years old and I work at a local bistro.
One of my coworkers is a 16-year-old girl who is constantly spouting leftist propaganda.
One time, she told me the conservative Christian homeschoolers, which I am, are some of the meanest people she's ever met.
I want to stand up for my beliefs, but I'm worried I might create a poisonous work environment, especially because I work with this girl a lot.
I'm attending the University of Dallas this fall.
My question for you is, should I stand up for what I think is right and risk working in a bad environment for the rest of the summer, or should I stay silent on issues that mean a lot to me?
Thank you, and I love listening to your podcast.
Hashtag CameForBen, State for Clavin.
Yeah, you're looking at this the wrong way, okay?
You do have a problem that needs to be solved, but I think you're looking at it.
You've got it in a dichotomy that's not the right dichotomy.
The way you're looking at it is, do I keep silent or do I stand up for my beliefs?
Those are not the only choices.
I don't think you should keep silent, and I don't think you should think about it as standing up for your beliefs.
I think you should think about it as being as free to express yourself as she is to express herself and not doing it in a hostile way.
You are, you say, a conservative Christian, then act like a Christian and treat this lady, this loudmouth, like your sister in Christ and treat her like a beloved image of God person, right?
How do you do that?
Okay.
You say to her at some point, maybe even sit down and say to her, listen, I really like you.
I think you're a great person.
But I just want you to know that I disagree with a lot of the things that you say, okay?
And I don't want to argue with you.
You don't have to argue, but just so you understand that you're saying things in the workplace and I'm not.
And I'm not saying those things.
But I do disagree.
And, you know, you don't have to change.
You don't have to do anything, but I want you to know that.
And I am a Christian homeschool girl.
And then just treat her with kindness and respect.
It may not work.
It may make her ticked off.
It may make your job harder.
And I understand you're going back to school.
Why make your job harder?
But I don't think that you should feel afraid to say who you are.
I just don't think you should put it in terms, you're not going to convince her, you're not going to change her mind.
What you might do is demonstrate to her that there are individuals in this world who utterly disagree with her, who will treat her with kindness and respect.
If you can demonstrate that to her, you may have an effect over time.
Don't expect that.
Don't expect that.
But just the point that I'm trying to make is that what you're trying to achieve is not standing up for your ideas, not fighting your corner.
That's not what you're trying to do.
What you're trying to do is to be a free person who can operate in any situation and be open about your beliefs as she is open about hers.
That's the American way.
And I think you can do that with kindness and with Christian love.
And I think that that is your best chance of not poisoning the workplace.
It might not work, but I think that is worth doing.
From Daryl.
Hi, Andrew.
I recently turned back to religion after the death of two friends, one by suicide.
I'm only 21, and they were close to my age.
Really sorry.
That is just absolutely terrible.
I'm sorry.
That's a genuine tragedy.
I still struggle with my faith, and especially with the belief that eventually God will get tired of my sinning.
Okay, what would you advise me to do when I have these doubts?
And how do I become a better Christian?
Thank you.
God bless.
P.S. Your advice has changed my life for the better many times.
Well, good.
Let me do that for you again.
First, here's the thing about struggles with faith, okay?
God is actually there.
God is not like Tinkerbell.
He doesn't die when you stop believing in him, okay?
He's there.
He doesn't need you to believe in him.
You need to believe in him because believing in real things is a better way to live than living in a fantasy where things just pop into being and there's no moral world.
That's a fantasy.
I understand that you can sit in a room by yourself and prove that fantasy to yourself through tenuous logic.
It can be done.
I understand that sometimes people feel that way, that life is meaningless.
But it doesn't really matter how you feel.
It doesn't matter if you can't believe in Brazil.
Brazil is still there.
God is the same way.
So put aside your feelings.
Put aside whether you have struggle with doubts or you can't figure things out.
We all struggle with doubts.
We all can't figure things out.
It's not important.
God is there anyway.
He's just there.
He is a actual person in the world or above the world who is present, whether you like it or not.
So now you have to decide what's going on.
What is going on?
How am I going to react?
What does God want me to do with this terrible, terrible tragedy that has hit you at a very young age?
When people your age die, it ain't right.
It ain't right.
That's not the way it's supposed to be.
When someone kills himself at your age, it's a terrible, terrible thing.
Now you have to figure out what does God want you to make of that?
What does he want you to make of that in the world?
Set aside your sinning.
Unless you're going around killing people, raping people, set that aside for just a second and just try to figure out what God wants you to make with the life that you have, that you've been given.
What would the God that you know from the gospels, what would he want you to do with that?
And what would he want you to become in that?
That answers your question of how to become a better Christian.
Start to act as if God were there because he is.
Some people say you should act as if God were there, even though we don't know.
I say you should act as if God were there because he is.
He is whether you feel him or not, whether you feel like you have faith or not.
None of those things matter to his existence, right?
You haven't got that much power, okay?
So who was it?
I think it was C.S. Lewis who said, you know, you don't want to act like a madman scrawling on the wall.
It's night and thinking that you put out the sun.
So I think that's quoting from memory.
But still, just because you lose the feeling of God's presence, God is still present.
So start to ask yourself, what does that mean for you?
What does that mean?
What do the gospels tell you to mean?
What do you do with these tragedies that have been put in your life?
What do you do with the other things in your life?
And if you start to think like that, if you start to think like God is there, you will start to find you have a much more realistic approach to your life and to your sins and to your faults.
And you'll start to be better.
And I think you pray, you talk to God about it, you read what God has to say in the Gospels.
You start to adjust your life according to that.
Don't be too sure you understand everything.
Don't be afraid to change your mind and your opinions and your interpretations and move forward like that.
You'll have a much better life.
Your life will go better and you will become a better Christian.
From, I hope that was clear enough.
I mean, I know what I'm saying, but I hope it came across clearly enough.
From Tyler, dear Lord Clavin, bringer of A's and destroyer of E's.
I'm 23 years old, engaged, employed, and depressed.
Depression is nothing new to me, but finding love and having a job with tremendous opportunity or R, I think deep down I know what I am currently doing is not what I'm meant to be doing.
I had dreamed of being in the military as a kid and a youth, but I never really considered it because I thought it was just that, a dream.
Whereas now I realize it is something I want to explore.
My fiancé has told me that she can't be in a relationship where I am away a lot of the time.
The times I've brought this up so far have ended with her in tears.
I feel as though I am in an impossible situation.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Well, you're not in an impossible situation.
You're in a situation where you have to make a choice.
Now, this is one of those situations where I can only tell you what I would do.
If it were my dream to be in the Army, I would be in the Army.
I would say, this is something I have to do.
Now, I don't know why that should just be a dream, why that should be out of reach.
I think the Army is looking for people.
I think the military likes people.
I don't know what your situation is, but I think that they always can use an eager recruit.
So that's something that's open to you.
That may mean you lose your fiancé.
But for me, if I were in your position, the opposite of that would be to marry somebody who did not want me to be who I was and did not want me to follow my dreams and burst into tears whenever I told her that she had to make a sacrifice for me to achieve my goals.
I'm not fair about this.
I think this is more important for men than it is for women.
I think that for men to do the work that is meaningful to them is much more self-defining for men than it is for women.
I don't want to go into why I think that, but I do think, and I know that's not fair, but tough.
And so I think that what you're saying, if this is truly the dream of your life, that's the choice, that's the decision you have to make, if this is truly the dream of your life, if this is truly what you think God made you to do, you have to do it.
That's the way I feel about it.
That would be the way I would approach it.
And then you have to make the choice before you make that decision.
You have to make the decision that you may lose this girl.
You may lose the job you have now.
Are you willing to make that sacrifice?
If you're not, if you're not willing to make those sacrifices, don't blame her.
Don't blame her if you're not willing to make the sacrifice.
It's all on you.
It's your decision.
It's your choice.
I've told you the choice I would make.
Now you have to figure out the choice that you want to make.
From Andrew, hello there, leader of the multiverse, Mr. Claven with No Ease.
I'm an engineering student currently on a work term who's always struggled with public speaking and approaching women.
I'm trying to use this time where I'm away from most of my friends to improve my self-confidence in both of these areas.
What suggestions can you pass down from your wealth of knowledge to help a young man like me improve, also keep up the excellent work on your hilarious daily monologues?
Toastmasters, I believe that's what they're called.
I have seen with my own eyes this transform people's lives.
It is an organization for teaching people to public speak with confidence, deals with, you know, here's the thing.
You're not the first person who's had this problem, all right?
You know, you're not the first person who's shy.
You're not the first guy who's had trouble approaching girls.
There are people who deal with this stuff and they deal with it successfully.
They know how to do it.
You know, it's like it's not rocket science.
It's not like how do I split the atom with my fingernails.
It's like a thing that happens to people and people solve the problem and help others solve the problem.
Toastmessers is the organization I know about.
Maybe there are others.
But I have seen with my own eyes people go into this and it's just transformative.
I mean, utterly, utterly transformative.
So, you know, look for help.
I mean, this is, like I said, you're not the first person.
Painful But Transformative00:02:26
You won't be the last.
Go get help and solve the problem because why should you live like this?
You know, this is your life.
Why should you live like that if it can be solved?
From Sarah, my daughter-in-law used to be a committed Christian.
She went through a woman's studies program at a major state university and became a leftist, even stating recently that she identified as queer.
I identify as odd.
I don't know if that's the same thing.
She now says she doesn't believe in God.
Her birthday is coming up, and I wonder if you have any suggestions of a book that will enlighten her without her disregarding it completely.
I pray for her daily and do not understand how lost she has become to give up on her religion.
I understand this is painful, but my recommendation is get a book called Mother-in-Law, Mind Your Own Business.
You know, it's painful.
It's painful to see somebody go down the wrong road.
The best thing you can do is keep praying for her, treat her with kindness and love, demonstrate the Christian love that you have for her and let her find her way.
I mean, it is not for you to change the way she is going, and you can't.
So, I mean, if you could, I would say maybe do it.
But the only chance you have of doing that is demonstrating your love for her, accepting her, even if she turns out to be queer, even if she turns out to identify and believe things that you hate.
If you can love her and treat her with kindness and show how that, and show, demonstrate, not tell her, but demonstrate how that grows out of your love of God and your belief in Christ, maybe that will have an effect on her over time.
But if not, it will be you doing the right thing, and that is worth it in and of itself.
But do not be giving her books and arguing with her and telling her which way she should go.
It's none of your business.
I know it's painful to you, but that still doesn't make it your business.
She has got to find her way.
I talked about this on the backstage yesterday.
The poet William Wordsworth had a phrase, wise passiveness.
There are times when not doing a thing is the wise thing to do.
There are times when letting people be who they are is the best thing you can do for them.
So again, love her in the name of Christ, and maybe she'll catch on.
I hope so.
That's it.
I'm out of time.
We'll be back tomorrow.
It's a short week, so that means a long clavenless weekend.
So get as much clavin-y goodness as you can tomorrow.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Hooray, hurry!
Daily Wire Production00:00:34
The Andrew Clavin Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
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Edited by Adam Sajovitz.
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The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
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