Andrew Clavin argues Trump’s presidency has been "scandal-free" despite relentless media bias, contrasting it with ignored Democratic scandals like Benghazi or the IRS targeting under Obama while exposing FBI Director James Comey’s politicized leaks. Brigadier General Robert Spalding warns China’s 5G dominance—via forced backdoors in tech—threatens U.S. surveillance and economic control, reshaping democracies into authoritarian systems. The episode exposes media double standards and China’s "stealth war," revealing systemic threats overshadowed by partisan noise. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, summer is drawing to a close and here in California the leaves are turning from green to still green as autumn comes sweeping in bringing with it the same temperatures as always.
But in the news business, everything is changing as journalists say goodbye to months of becoming hysterical about Donald Trump for no apparent reason and look forward to becoming hysterical about Donald Trump for apparent reasons that are actually no reasons at all.
Over the summer, of course, reporters covered such important stories as a recession that might be coming but didn't, but would be Donald Trump's fault if it did, a war that might be starting but wouldn't, but would be Donald Trump's fault if it would, a scandal that might be uncovered but wasn't, but would have been Donald Trump's fault if it was, and a storm that might be forming but hasn't, but will be Donald Trump's fault when it has.
Another big summer story was that time Trump said something completely true, but used an unfortunate choice of words, which revealed him to be worse than Hitler would have been if Hitler had ever stooped so low as to use that choice of words.
There was also that tweet that Trump sent out that was clearly a joke, but if it had been serious, would have revealed that the president was unfit for office.
And there were the reports from anonymous sources that the president said something absolutely outrageous that will quickly fade from memory as no one bothers to either confirm or correct the report.
As the winds of September come blowing into Washington, bringing with them flotsam and jetsam and politicians, or possibly more flotsam, it's hard to tell, we can look forward to important news stories like Adam Schiff pretending he has evidence he doesn't have, Jerry Nadler starting an investigation into some damn thing, and Nancy Pelosi talking like a crazy lady you sat next to once on a bus.
All of which will provide apparent reasons to become hysterical about Donald Trump for no apparent reason.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Ship-shaped hipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
James Comey's Memos Released00:12:30
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
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It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
No Ease in Clavin.
I just make it look this easy.
You know, when I was briefly a newspaperman way back in the, oh my God, it's the end of like the 1970s, Watergate had only recently happened.
It was only about five years, six since Watergate had happened, and newspaper people were just absolutely full of themselves.
We thought we were the best of the best.
We were the guardians of liberty.
We were the unmaskers of lies, exposers of corruption.
We had a job that was actually mentioned in the Bill of Rights.
And anybody who hid stuff from us for any reason was the bad guy.
We just knew that.
But today, I look back, and the Watergate scandal seems completely different to me.
Nixon covered up some minor spying raid on his Democrat opponents, and he had political dirty tricks, and he kept an enemies list and all that.
And all of those things still seem creepy and wrong to me.
But now I ask myself, was that really the great scandal of the day?
Or was the great scandal the fact that the leadership of the Washington Post, the paper that uncovered all that stuff, was the great scandal, the fact that the leadership of the Washington Post covered up for the previous presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Democrats, who unleashed the IRS and the FBI against their political enemies.
They covered that up, and then they went after Nixon for his misdemeanors.
Because in context, when you look at it that way, that's not actually great reporting.
That's insidiously targeting a political enemy.
Our press stinks.
Our press is for the Democrats and against the Republicans, and they only do their jobs well when it hurts the Republicans.
Then afterwards, they pound their chest and say, look how well we do our jobs.
Look what heroes we are.
Then Hollywood backs them up by making movies like All the President's Men and the paper in which these cheap Democrat hacks are presented as guardians of our freedoms instead of cheap Democrat hacks.
The story of our day is the story of communication elites telling us the news they want us to hear, covering up the news that hurts them, and then telling us what heroes they are for their consistent record of deception.
You can like Donald Trump or hate him, but the real problem we have is that half the country is othered and unheard, not because of the color of their skin, but because of the content of their politics.
That is the real scandal.
All right, we got the Clavenless weekend coming up, so stick with us here.
Suck out all the Claven goodness you can get so that it will keep you like a camel moving.
So don't worry about anything that comes after that.
All right, we got some breaking news.
The Justice Department's inspector general found that former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey violated the agency's policies when he shared memos about his interactions with President Trump with others, according to the report that was released today.
So you remember this, right?
This is James Comey, Mr. Higher Loyalty, Mr. I'm Better Than Everybody Else, this sanctimonious.
This is the guy who said to the, I guess it was the House Judiciary Committee, he said, just remember, we're not weasels.
This weasel, this weasel got fired by Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has the power to fire the FBI director, right?
This is an executive branch decision.
He can do it.
If he doesn't like James Comey's tie, he can fire him.
There's no, that's a zero scandal, an obstruction of justice.
It's just, I don't like your tie.
Get out, pal.
That's what he did.
He fired him in a very embarrassing way.
You know, Donald Trump, he's not Mr. Tacht.
He's not Mr. Tacht.
I think I can't remember what it was.
He was like, Comey was actually in public somewhere when the news came out that he had been fired without anybody telling him.
Comey was ticked off and he wanted to start a, he wanted a special counsel appointed to investigate Donald Trump.
That was his vengeance.
And so he took these memos that he had kept of conversations with Donald Trump that he thought showed Trump trying to obstruct justice by getting in the way of the investigation, by saying things like, hey, could you leave Michael Flynn alone?
He's a good guy.
Stuff that, you know, Trump, who had just come into office at that point, probably didn't even realize might be seen as obstruction of justice.
Obviously, Trump has got a big mouth.
He says all this stuff.
So Comey's taking notes.
Didn't do this with Obama, but he was taking notes with Donald Trump, then called his pal.
What was his name?
This is a guy, I guess, who later said he was his lawyer, and released this and told him, told him to release these memos to the press in the hopes of getting a special counsel appointed, which he did.
That was the Mueller report.
That was how the Mueller report got started.
So this comes out, and James Comey, let's just call him James Weasel Comey.
James the Weasel Comey tweets out, DOJIG, this is the Inspector General Horowitz of the Department of Justice, quote, found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.
I don't need a, and he then goes on to say, I don't need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a sorry we lied about you would be nice.
Here's my quick message.
You're a weasel.
Because what he did, now, the thing, the reason he calls this guy, he calls this guy his lawyer is because he didn't want him testifying against him, right?
So he released this stuff to this Columbia lawyer.
Let me just get his name so I know what I'm talking about here.
Richmond, his name was.
That's right.
He released these things to Daniel Richmond and basically said to him, release it, give him instructions to share the intel with a New York Times reporter.
This is the probe.
And this is what James the Weasel, Comey, is tweeting out that they found no evidence that he released any of this information.
That's not what they found.
So he said, I just want a quick message with a sorry we lied about you.
My quick message is, you are a weasel.
All right.
So some of these memos contained a little bit of classified information.
And when he sent them, he scanned them with a personal scanner, mailed them with his personal emails, violating the exact same statute that Hillary Clinton was accused of violating when she sent out all that stuff that was going back and forth between her and her pal, right?
So basically, this is the same thing that he got off.
Now, the DOJ has already said that they are not going to prosecute him for this.
And a lot of people on the right are really upset about this.
I actually am in favor of this.
This doesn't sound like it reaches the level of criminality.
Maybe it's true that if you did it, you'd be arrested.
And certainly it's true if you did it and Obama was in office and he didn't like you, you would be arrested.
We know that from Dinesh D'Souza, who violated some tiny campaign contribution law and they threatened him with 15 years in prison.
So we know under Obama, you'd be prosecuted for this.
But if we respond in kind and that's what the government becomes and we're living in a banana republic.
Obama devolved us toward banana republicanism by using the IRS on his political enemies and by prosecuting guys like D'Souza for nothing.
But we don't want to do that.
I do not want to actually see James Comey sent to jail for sending out a letter.
It just shows what a small, wormy little guy he is.
A little bit more.
I'm going to read this off.
I only got a chance to quickly go through the report because it was breaking as I was coming in.
But I'm going to go to Molly Hemingway, who has been doing great work covering this.
The memos violated, sending out these memos violated department and FBI policies.
And this is extremely important, right?
Because the FBI policies are there to keep the FBI in line from breaking the law.
They've got incredible power.
They can investigate you.
If you lie to them, that's a crime, right?
If you lie to me, that's not a crime.
The FBI has tremendous power, and so they have to behave in certain ways that keep them within the law.
The IG said that when Comey labeled these documents personal or private, that didn't alter the fact that they were official documents, that they were used in transaction of public business, and so they were covered by this policy.
He violated FBI policies and the requirements of his FBI employment agreement when he sent the copy of memo 4 to Richmond with instructions to provide the contents to a reporter.
Here's what the IG report says.
The civil liberties of every individual who may fall within the scope of the FBI's investigative authorities depend on the FBI's ability to protect sensitive information from unauthorized disclosure.
Now think about this for a minute, right?
And it says former FBI director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility.
Now think about this for a minute.
You're an innocent guy.
You're under investigation.
The FBI doesn't know whether you're innocent or not, but it starts gathering information about you.
This is happening to you, okay?
This is you.
You're going about your business, but something comes up that the FBI thinks you're guilty of.
They start finding information.
Oh, maybe they find out you're cheating on your wife.
Maybe they find out you're doing something else, but you're innocent of the crime they're investigating.
If they want to get you and start releasing this information to the press, right, they have become a lawless operation.
In order to wield the kind of power they have, their investigation has to remain secret until it becomes clear that they can indict you, that you are going to be indicted for a crime.
Comey, to get back at Donald Trump, to get back at him, broke that rule and released this stuff.
It's really ugly, and the IG says it.
Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees.
Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees and the many thousands more former FBI employees who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.
Every one of these 35,000 people has an opinion.
Every single one of them, every single one of these current FBI employees and all the thousands of former FBI employees has an opinion about who's a good guy and who's a bad guy.
They can't just start releasing information.
The IG goes on to say, in a country built on the rule of law, it is of utmost importance that all FBI employees adhere to department and FBI policies.
In other words, they're really giving it to this guy.
This is a beatdown, okay?
This is slapping this guy around.
I noticed the Wall Street Journal is kind of playing this down in their release.
This is a beatdown.
This is taking this guy out to the woodshed and smacking him around.
Comey's own staff, when they were interviewed by the IG, they used words like surprised, stunned, shocked, and disappointment to describe their reactions to learning what James Comey, Barack Obama's FBI director, had done.
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And if you write Clavin in their how did you hear about us box, they will know we sent you and they will continue to keep our lights burning, which is very important.
So the most important thing is to remember how you spell Clavin.
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
So this is a genuine beatdown of this guy.
And what it shows you is that he confused his own feelings with the good of the country.
He confused his own worldview with the world.
He confused the fact that he thought Donald Trump was not somebody who should be in office with how he should behave as a former FBI director with all this power.
That was his confusion.
This is what the press does every day.
This is what our news media does every day.
They have confused their worldview with the world.
Now, it's a left-wing idea.
It's a left-wing theory that there's no way you cannot do this.
And this is the difference between the left and the right, okay?
This is very important.
It is their theory that there is no such thing as objectivity.
There is no way to approach the world objectively because wherever you are, you are a product of your society.
And since they believe this society is a racist, sexist, evil society, as opposed to what, I don't know, someplace they've never been, Norway.
Yeah, Norway.
I've never been there, but that's a perfect society.
You know, that's the way they think.
They feel that that's what has shaped your points of view, and so you can't be objective.
Now, listen, there's some truth to that, except for the fact that there's nothing to say that our way of looking at things is not a good way of looking at things.
I think it is.
I think it's provably a good way of looking at things.
I don't think Aristotle was just making stuff up.
He was using reason to get where he got.
I don't think the gospel writers were just making stuff up.
These things shape our ideas, and we believe them to be the good.
And in that broader sense, we can't be objective in the sense of ditching these things that over time, over thousands of years of history and thought, we have developed as ideas of the good.
We don't just ditch those things, but you can still be objective within that context.
And this is the problem with the left, because I've talked about this before, when you don't have God, all you've got is analysis.
All you've got is the power to take things apart because you have no holistic way of looking at things.
And if you do that forever, everything comes apart.
We build things.
We build things over time.
We have ideas over time.
You don't just throw away the traditions of thousands of years because suddenly you have this sudden wonderful power of genius to say, oh, it was all wrong.
Everybody was all wrong before me.
So because they don't believe in objectivity, they have now confused their ideas, their philosophy with the facts.
And this is the difference between the right and the left.
We on the right believe, yes, we do have a system of values, but within that system of values, there are disagreements, and those disagreements need to be covered fairly.
If somebody says to me, we need a, even if somebody says we need a vast socialist state like Bernie Sanders wants to bring basically communism to this country, he has a right to be covered as a political candidate.
I don't cover him that way because I'm a commentator, but if you're a newsman, you don't have to say, you know, Bernie Sanders, that idiot, that commie idiot, came out and said this.
You say what he had to say.
You report on what they have to say against him.
That's how it's done.
The left has lost this train of thought.
They have lost this train of thought.
Chinese Influence on Technology00:15:32
They're out to get Donald Trump.
And that is why they have become so corrupt and so dishonest and weaselly like James the Weasel Comey.
You know, there's these two montages I always like to play.
And I've played them again and again.
But I want to play them together.
I think it's worth playing them together so you can see what I'm talking about.
Here is a montage of how the press has covered Donald Trump.
Donald Trump's done.
He's done.
There's no question about that.
He's done.
Breaking news.
A bombshell.
Today is a turning point.
Today was historically bad for President Trump.
Today was a turning point.
Turning point.
We're at a turning point here.
The beginning of the end for the Trump presidency.
The beginning of the end.
Breaking news.
We have another bombshell.
Mike Pence might have to assume the office of the presidency.
The call for impeachment.
Rumblings of the word impeachment.
Breaking news.
Another bombshell out of the White House.
I believe this is the beginning of the end.
I do too.
It's really the beginning of the end.
The beginning of the end.
He may be feeling the walls closing in on him.
All the walls closing in on him.
The walls closing in on him.
Breaking news, a new bombshell.
One astrologer says this means the beginning of the end for President Donald Trump.
The beginning of the end of the Trump presidency.
Trump will resign.
Trump is going to resign.
Is this the tipping point?
I know we've said it over and over.
You think this is a tipping point?
And over and over.
This is a tipping point.
And over and over.
Breaking news, President Trump off the rails.
It was the beginning of the end day.
It's the beginning of the end.
It reminds me a lot of the last days of Nixon.
Breaking news tonight, new bomb show.
This is the beginning of the end.
The beginning of the end.
The walls are closing in.
The walls closing in.
The walls closing in.
It's constant scandal.
And it has an effect.
It has an effect.
People are saying, oh, we've got to get back to normal.
We've got to get back to normal.
This is the way they covered Barack Obama at the end of his presidency.
And he's been scandal-free, frankly, in the White House.
We haven't had that for a while.
He ran an administration that was largely scandal-free.
There's a White House that takes pride in being scandal-free.
That in the Obama years, which are remarkably scandal-free.
A lot of people were talking about how he's going to be remembered for the scandal-free administration that he ran.
The president has been very rightfully proud of the lack of scandal in his administration so far.
There's been no major scandals around top aides.
But President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him.
These chosen people who have been pretty scandal-free.
This has been a scandal-free administration for the last eight years, and oftentimes people don't even talk about that fact.
So one is a bombshell every day.
But the fact is, it's Donald Trump who's scandal-free.
I can't think of a single scandal that has landed, a single punch that has landed on him, unless you count personal scandals that took place before he got to the White House like Stormy Daniels.
You know, it's a legit scandal that you sleep around on your wife with basically, well, with a stripper, let's call her that, with a stripper.
I guess that's a personal scandal.
That's the kind of thing that, you know, gets you a little bit sweat stained when that comes out there.
But in terms of his handling of the presidency, in terms of his handling of the presidency, Donald Trump is scandal-free.
The Russian thing, nothing.
Every other thing, the emoluments thing, they've got nothing.
They're looking and looking, all these investigations.
They keep saying, oh, we're going to impeach, we're going to impeach, we're in an affordable.
Now it's a formal impeachment.
They keep bringing it.
They got nothing.
They got nothing.
They have not laid a hand on him.
You know, when Trump was running in the primaries, and I just hated him.
I just thought he was terrible and I was worried about him.
I used to say, you know, he sounds like a tough guy.
He makes this noise like a tough guy.
But the way someone sounds and the way he is isn't necessarily the same thing.
Which is true.
True.
I mean, it's not necessarily the same thing.
There are a lot of things about Trump that I think are not so tough, but never mind, never mind.
That was what I was saying about him then.
But in fact, also, he has the sound of this belligerent, authoritative, authoritarian guy who panics people, but he's not.
He hasn't, I mean, he just hasn't violated any of the rules of American governance in the way that Barack Obama did.
I mean, Barack Obama's administration reeked of scandal, the abuse of the IRS, Benghazi, the lying and lying and then lying about Benghazi and how that happened, Fast and Furious scandal, the stonewalling that the Attorney General did over Fast and Furious, the Iran deal where he shut down, where Obama shut down a major, major investigation into drug dealing because it was traceable back to Iran,
and he didn't want to embarrass them while he was arranging that stupid, incredibly stupid deal.
And now maybe the worst scandal of all, which is Spygate.
You know, it's really interesting.
I have a guest I want to bring on and talk about some other things, but I'll come back to this at the end.
That Spygate is a genuine possible scandal, which isn't being covered at all, not only not being covered, but is also being covered up.
It is being covered up.
People are basically saying, oh, this is a conspiracy theory, when in fact, it's really not.
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I want to bring on and talk to Brigadier General Robert S. Spaulding, the third.
He has served in the military for over 15 years.
He's currently the special assistant to the U.S. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff.
His new book is called Stealth War, How China Took Over While America's Elite Slept.
It's not out till October, but I wanted to talk to him while China is still in the news, although I'm sure it will continue to be on the news.
General, you on the line?
I'm here.
General, thanks so much for coming on.
I appreciate it.
Glad to be here.
So you talk about China waging a Trump war.
All we've heard about for two and a half years now is Russia.
Is China the real thing we have to fear?
Yes, and that's what we talked about in the National Security Strategy.
You know, everybody's focused on the military threat, tanks, ships, planes, but in reality, our society is being undermined every single day through finance, economics, trade, information, media, politics.
It's all blended together in this blend of, you know, where our technological innovation's gone, but also the business models are right on top of that.
All of globalization and the internet essentially has been used to hack the West and slowly change us from a democratic society to more of a totalitarian one.
Okay, could you unpack this a little bit?
How has that been used?
So we're all on the internet.
We do have a global society, whether it's run globally or not.
We're still a global society.
How is that being hacked into exactly?
What exactly does that mean?
Yeah, so it's very simple.
It's about financial and economic relationships actually influencing corporate and individual behavior.
So the one topic or the one example I always give is the man in Omaha, Nebraska, that essentially was fired from his job at Marriott Corporation for liking to tweet because the Chinese called up Marriott and said, if you don't, this guy liked a tweet about Tibet.
And essentially, the Chinese called up Marriott Corporation and said, not only do you need to fire him, you need to apologize.
And they did.
I think the latest example of that is CAFE.
So, you know, the story of Roy Jones in Omaha is being played out, not just in the United States, it's all over the world.
It's really about using financial and economic relationships and the internet to really influence populations and individuals and corporations and politicians everywhere to do things that the Chinese Communist Party wants.
Wow.
Well, I know this is happening in Hollywood.
I mean, I know in Hollywood, you don't offend the Chinese because you want their audience and you want their money.
What is the Confucius Institute?
Well, so there's three issues with the Confucius Institute.
One, it's used just in the same way to suppress speech.
So if you say something as a student or as a teacher and the Chinese students hear you, then they go and complain to the administration.
All of this is controlled through the Confucius Institute, where the consulates and the embassies are very closely linked to them.
So they want to not only suppress speech that they find unfavorable, they also want to monitor and control the students so they don't become too Americanized.
And so they're constantly told, hey, make sure that you don't become too Americanized because you won't get a job when you come back to China.
And if there is an issue, they'll go to their parents' house and they'll have their parents call them, as happened to the student in Maryland that gave the commencement speech talking about how great it was to live in a free country while she's been a student there in Maryland.
So suppression of speech, control of the students, but also because there's so many of them, there's almost a half million in our university system and they pay full tuition.
If there's a problem with the university, the consul or the embassy can call the university president and say, if you don't stop what you're doing, we're going to pull all our students out.
And immediately the university goes in the red.
This is happening all over the country.
So, you know, when Mueller was investigating Russian collusion, the indicted, kind of this meaningless indictment of Russians for taking out a couple of Facebook ads that were sort of meant to set Americans against each other, are the Chinese doing that sort of thing or worse?
So they are beginning to do it.
Of course, the Russians have been doing things like this.
So they had the lead.
But of course, the Chinese are picking it up.
They own all Chinese language media around the world now, the Chinese Communist Party.
They're absolutely dominating Taiwan's media, for example, now.
You see that going on in Hong Kong with essentially trying to label the protesters as terrorists.
They're doing it in our society.
Of course, the tech companies have started to catch on to this and are starting to find some of this activity going on.
But it's not only going through the internet, they're also putting full court press on Wall Street, corporate America, the think tanks, politicians.
It's pervasive throughout our society from the individual on up.
And it's all based on this globalization of the internet really connecting totalitarian societies fully to democratic societies in a way that we thought we would change their principles.
In reality, what's happening is there's a backflow in their changing ours.
We're talking to Brigadier General Robert Spalding, author of The Stealth War, which is coming out in October.
I want to talk a little bit about the Trump administration's policies.
For instance, they're penalizing Huawei, worried that they will sell us tech equipment that can be used to spy on us.
Is that a genuine threat?
It absolutely is.
And that's actually because of Chinese cybersecurity law, which says if you're a Chinese company, you have to build backdoors into your equipment.
Not only that, but essentially Huawei is involved in creating 5G technology and 5G standards.
So it actually applies to equipment makers if they use Chinese standards.
So it's a big problem.
And I mean, just to take it to its logical conclusion, would that mean that virtually any phone, any iPhone that you were using that used that technology would be accessible to the Chinese if they wanted to spy on anybody?
So it's funny because when you say that, that context is the 4G world.
That is not the 5G world.
The 5G world really builds that kind of technology, all the sensors and things that are in your phone into the world around you.
So think about the 4G world.
The platform for that is the smartphone.
Now, the two dominant players in that industry are Apple and Google.
And so Apple in particular built their smartphone to be a very tightly integrated hardware software device so that it could actually protect your data.
That was before they added in iCloud.
So it was an encrypted device.
It was supposed to protect your data.
And that's because Apple was an American company.
Chinese companies, on the other hand, have to give their technology up to so the government can see the data.
So the network, the 5G network, takes the platform away from the smartphone and builds that computing into the network architecture itself.
So China saw this.
They said in 2009, we're going to dominate 5G.
And when we do, slowly Apple and Android will be pulled out and then they'll be doing the computing on the 5G network.
And then we'll be able to build our app services and business models on top of that.
Now that's Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.
So think about the power of the network plus all the tech companies that are riding on top of that data.
And because they have all of the data, government data and corporate data and individual data, and they can pool that together and create insights, they can take those insights and begin to influence you in ways that actually contribute to what China wants, not just from an economic perspective, but also from a political and social perspective.
So is what Donald Trump is doing in terms of this trade war that he's in with China, is he addressing this at all?
Are we addressing it at all?
I think we're slowly addressing it.
So it's fully addressed in the national security strategy.
The problem with democracies today is they're conflicted.
You have the business side that is really much, very much wants to ally itself with China because of their large market, because of the large financial incentives they can earn.
And the governments are trying to secure themselves.
What they're finding is because we've allowed technology to kind of seep into our lives in a way where the government wasn't involved, they're having a very difficult time to actually control that.
And the reason is because if you don't design it initially into the technology, the fact that you come later and add a paper law on top of that is not actually useful.
GDPR, the general data protection regulation in Europe, actually is unenforceable because if you fine a company a certain amount of money, but the company is making twice that amount, they're just going to keep doing that activity.
And some of the Chinese companies won't pay the fine anyway.
So you actually have to build those kinds of controls into the technology layer if you want to have the type of society that we live in in a physical sense.
Fines That Don't Deter00:10:55
Okay.
And in terms of this trade war, do you have an opinion on it?
Do you think that the administration is doing the right thing or not?
So tariffs are absolutely a part of this effort because China essentially creates a market disturbance because they have non-market-based economic goals for their companies.
And so the tariffs, you actually need to make them permanent, though.
If you go back to pre-WTO, China and the WTO, no major corporation would invest money or build anything over in China because each year they had to go through the most favored nation act and Congress would have to approve them having a lowering of tariffs for that year.
Once that went permanent with their entry in the WTO, all of our investment flowed to China to build manufacturing.
And none of it's going to come back unless we actually reverse that process.
So it's useful, but it's not complete.
Got it.
Okay.
Brigadier General Robert Spalding, author of The Stealth War, How China Took Over While America's Elite Slept.
Thanks very much for coming on.
Good luck with the book.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
I want to return.
I mean, this is very scary stuff.
And it points to it.
It goes, again, it points to the way no matter what Trump does, he is in the wrong.
And the way the press covers it, the left can do exactly the same thing.
And it goes unseen.
Just like when I was talking about Watergate, just like when I was talking about all these scandals that Trump really, that really don't exist in the Trump administration, all these scandals that do exist in the Obama administration, there was a story that caught my eye yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Gregory of the Epoch Times.
Now, the EPOC Times is a newspaper that gets run down a lot because it's very conservative and because the people who run it, the people who own it, are part of that religious group in China, the Falun Gong or whatever it's called.
I can never remember exactly what the name of it is.
But anyway, there's no reason that, I mean, there's nothing about that religious group that should take away from the credibility of the EPOC Times.
But anyway, the guy who was writing for the Stephen Gregory of the Epoch Times was complaining about the fact that MSNBC and NBC News, NBC News and his sister network had launched a series of attacks on them, trying to basically take them out as a competitor.
Some of this had real repercussions.
They were having a hard time advertising on Facebook, and they accused them of being conspiracy theorists.
And their conspiracy theory was spygate, was the idea that the Obama administration was spying on Donald Trump to keep him out of office.
And again, again, remember, the left feels that it is allowed to take its political opinions and just assume that they are opinions.
That's not a conspiracy theory.
That's not a conspiracy theory.
They did it.
It's suspicious because there was no criminal predicate when they started their investigation.
And Dean McCarthy was on talking about that.
And his new book talks about that.
And Obama must have known about it for that kind of investigation to take place.
It's not.
It's not a conspiracy theory.
And then when they want to report, so that is going to be covered up.
They're trying to cover that up.
Well, meanwhile, anything they get a hold of on Donald Trump, whether it's, oh, look, I can't, I don't, somebody is standing in front of the Martin Luther King bust in the Oval Office.
He must have sold it outside in a flea market or whatever they say.
Lawrence O'Donnell did this yesterday on MSNBC.
Lawrence O'Donnell had a story that President Trump's financial records show that some of his loans have Russian co-signers.
And the White House called him up and said, take it back.
It ain't true.
He was forced to do it.
Here is, listen to this apology, and you tell me if it's an apology.
Last night on this show, I discussed information that wasn't ready for reporting.
Repeated statements a single source told me about the president's finances and loan documents with Deutsche Bank, saying, if true, as I discussed the information, was simply not good enough.
I did not go through the rigorous verification and standards process here at MSNBC before repeating what I heard from my source.
Had it gone through that process, I would not have been permitted to report it.
I should not have said it on air or posted it on Twitter.
I was wrong to do so.
This afternoon, attorneys for the president sent us a letter asserting the story is false.
They also demanded a retraction.
Tonight, we are retracting the story.
We don't know whether the information is inaccurate, but the fact is we do know it wasn't ready for broadcast.
And for that, I apologize.
Stop the hammering. Stop the hammering. Stop the hammering. Stop the hammering.
You know, we don't know that it was untrue.
We don't, I mean, you can say that about anybody.
I'm tempted to come out with something, some atrocity that Lawrence O'Donnell committed and say, well, we don't know.
It's untrue.
I'm sorry we didn't vet it through our incredible Daily Wire vetting procedure, which I'll bet is 10 times better than MSNBC's and that like I actually check to make sure what I say is true before I say it.
So that already makes it better than MSNBC's.
But to say that something we don't know, something is untrue, which was Dan Rather's defense when he tried to go after George W. Bush.
This is our press.
This is our press.
These are our heroes of the press.
This is all the president's men, Robert Redford.
You don't get any better looking than Robert Redford, any more appealing than Dustin Hoffman.
Pardon me.
This is who we've been told of these heroes.
And really the entire history of my time has to be rewritten to tell the story of what wasn't covered, of what wasn't covered when they actually went out and did cover things.
I just want to end before I get to my final reflection.
I just got to play this one thing from AOC.
Did I remember this?
Yeah, AOC put out another.
You know, these are the people we're being told to respect by the press.
While we're being told that our president is Hitler, now they're in that cycle with Donald Trump where he's crazy.
You know, they go into different cycles.
Now he's crazy.
He's unfit for office.
He's got dementia, whatever.
Then he'll go back to being a white supremacist.
And then we get to Hitler and then he goes back to being crazy.
I guess Russia is now off the table.
So that part of the arc, that arc of the cycle has gone off.
Meanwhile, here is Alexandria Occasional Cortex.
Well, listen to this, talking about the climate.
There are a lot of diseases that are frozen in some of these glaciers that scientists fear that there's a potential that a lot of diseases could escape these melted glaciers, things that were frozen for thousands of years, and that they're going to get into our water and that humans could contract them.
And they are going to be diseases that are thousands of years old, that have vectors that we are not prepared for, that we have never seen.
And so, you know, that's a concern.
Even if there are no diseases frozen at all in these glaciers, you have diseases that are spread by mosquitoes.
And now mosquitoes are starting to fly further north that carry diseases like malaria and a whole slew of other things.
And there are, you know, parts of the United States and things that are moving much further north that we're going to have to contend with.
Diseases that we haven't had to contend with in parts of the world before.
It's like gidget goes to Congress.
It really is.
Dope.
Remember, I said earlier this week, I said young women should have babies.
This is why God made young women foolish so they would sleep with men and have babies.
He made young men foolish so they'd like sit on rockets to Mars.
Oh, this is a good idea.
You know, I mean, this is why young people should not be running things.
All right, I just had to play that because it made me laugh.
All right, final reflection before we go in to the Clavenless weekend.
Yesterday in the mailbag, I made a point about Christian faith.
Somebody wrote in about the fact that he had experienced a lot of tragedy and he had lost his feeling that God was there.
And I was talking about the Christian belief that we live in a system that's broken, which is the fallen world, we call it, but that that system is contained in a greater system, God's system, that works.
And we know, St. Paul said, we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.
So we know all things, not things in your life necessarily, but all things together are working for good.
And Jesus basically was calling us to live in that greater system when he would heal people, when he would raise people even from the dead.
What he was saying is these things that look to you like incredible tragedies, incredible problems.
From my point of view, from God's point of view, it's all fine.
It's all going to be fine so easy that I can make it go away just like that.
I can make it go away.
And that's why he's constantly saying to people, you know, don't worry about the future.
Don't worry about where money's coming from.
Look at the lilies of the field.
It all works out.
It all works out.
And this is tremendously good advice.
If you can do it, it's very hard to do it.
How do you follow that advice?
How do you live in that world so that you're not consumed with anger, so that you're not consumed with envy, so that you're not consumed with worry, you know, more than anything, with anxiety and worry?
How do you live in that world?
Oddly enough, the Bible tells you that too.
The answer is love.
You love God and you love your neighbor and you will experience joy.
Love is like a keyhole through which you can see that greater world, that world that works, while our world is broken.
And if you ever pay attention to this, all your joy comes from love.
The big things that you love, like God and your children and your spouse, that gives you big joy.
And the other things that you love, like sports or music or gardening, those things give you the little joys that make worthwhile.
But even little joy is not little.
Even small joy is big, is a big thing because all joy, all joy leads you into, it shows you that world, that greater world that works, even as our world is tragic and broken.
And I point this out because you're about to enter the long Clavenless weekend, from which, let's face it, you're probably not going to come back alive.
So as you enter that chaos and darkness and the darkness closes in around you, remember to love what you love, to love what you love with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind, because this is it.
Even Small Joy Is Big00:01:22
You're done.
But the rest, everything else but love is just, just noise.
Survivors, gather here on Monday.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Have a wonderful Labor Day.
And I'll see you on Monday if you make it.
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