Ep. 773 – I Get No Kick From Ukraine skewers Democratic impeachment efforts as a politically weaponized farce, with Andrew Clavin exposing the Ukraine call whistleblower complaint as likely a Schiff-led setup and media outlets like MSNBC rewriting Trump’s dialogue to falsely tie him to Hunter Biden. Jenna Ellis Reeves slams Pelosi for rushing impeachment without evidence, warning of electoral backlash, while Ryan Lovelace draws parallels to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation battle—where $5M from Demand Justice (a Hillary Clinton-linked group) fueled media-driven attacks over due process. The episode frames both as institutional sabotage, closing with a critique of corporate "woke" pandering and a warning that partisan warfare risks eroding public trust entirely. [Automatically generated summary]
Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the European Union has announced it is refusing to give Britain back to Britain.
EU President Ivan Power from the make-believe country of Make Believia says the British people's vote to leave the EU is tantamount to an act of war, and as a result, he will from now on start wearing a pickelhau, which is one of those German helmets with the spike on top, which not only looks marvelous on him, but allows him to store important papers by putting them on the spike.
President Power released a statement by firing it from a cannon in the general direction of London, saying, quote, the British people voted to give their country to Europe, and they can't just come over here to Brussels and take it back when we're not finished ruling it.
All through European history, the British have been spoilsports who refused to participate in European-wide events like the Inquisition, the Thirty Years' War, the Napoleonic conquests, the surrender to Hitler, and of course the collaboration in the Nazi destruction of the Jews.
Why can't they just play along like the rest of us, unquote?
British members of parliament joined with President Power by voting to censure the British people for stupidly voting against the interests of British elites who wish to retain their grasp on power without the responsibility of actual governance.
In a move to block Brexit, British opposition leader Simon Peter Collins, Simon Harry, Ludington Collin Peter III told a room full of screaming legislators swinging from the rafters and hurling feces at one another in the time-honored parliamentary tradition that he was hereby invoking King Alfred's proclamation of 876 AD, which declares all referendum results shall be null and void until the last dragon has devoured the final wizard from the Harry Potter series.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson responded that the opposition has come too late and Britain has already left the EU, or maybe it's just him.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boom.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Ship-shaped ipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
We like to address the big questions here, and one of the big questions is if your car is broken, how do you get to the car parts store?
Well, you don't have to.
You go to rockauto.com.
It's a family business.
They've been serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
Go to rockauto.com to shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.
You know what?
You know as much about this as anybody at the auto parts store.
They're just going to look in the computer.
So why don't you just look in the computer?
Because rockauto.com has everything from brake parts, tail lamps, motor oil, even new carpet, whether it's for your classic or the car you drive around every day, get everything you need in a few easy clicks delivered directly to your door.
The rockauto.com catalog is unique, remarkably easy to navigate.
You can quickly see all the parts available for your vehicle and choose the brands, specifications, and prices you prefer.
Amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car will ever need at rockauto.com.
Go to rockauto.com right now and see all the parts available for your car or truck.
When you get to their how did you hear about us box, so write Klavin so they know not only that we sent you, but so they know you know how to spell clavin because it's K-L-A, V-A-N, do not forget.
All week long, as the Democrat press has pushed the Democrat Party to the brink of an impeachment process that will serve its base instead of the country, I've been thinking out loud about the way the news media has become corrupt as a system.
That is, corrupt beyond the responsibility of any one person, so that everyone who works at, say, NBC News is participating in NBC's corruption without himself necessarily being corrupt, because he's inside a corrupt system.
Systems become corrupt whenever personal interest replaces teleology.
That is when people or corporations begin serving their own interests instead of the purpose of their enterprise.
The purpose of the news is to give the people of a republic the facts so they can make their own decisions.
But corporate news operates in the corporate interest of supporting the big government that big corporations love.
If they put that interest before their true purpose, they become corrupt and they corrupt the people within the system.
In a fallen world, there's always tension between interest and purpose.
News organizations have an interest, for instance, in making money.
The corporations that own them have an interest in making money.
But if they mistake that interest for their purpose of fairly reporting the news, if they say we're only here to make money, they lose their moral way and they take everyone down that sinkhole with them.
Still, the tension is legitimate.
We all need money.
Moral action can legitimately cost you.
Christianity teaches us to put God, purpose, and morality before money, before interest.
And it also teaches us that if you do that, you could get yourself crucified, which can ruin your whole day.
Less dramatically, you could lose a promotion or a raise or a sponsor or something you really, really want.
In my personal life, I look back to those moments when I put integrity over money with quiet pride, but I also wish I had a lot more money.
We make choices every step of the way, and we pay for each one of those choices in some sort of coin or other.
Clearly, though, the Democrats and the news media, but I repeat myself, are now so out of balance.
They have put their interest, power, so far above their purpose, which is governance in keeping with American principles.
They're doing a truly terrible thing to this country.
This Ukraine scandal is nonsense, and it looks increasingly to me like a planned setup.
I'll talk about that in a minute.
The impeachment process that the Democrats seem hell-bent on, it can go nowhere, and it can accomplish nothing except to drive Americans even further apart.
I still believe there's a chance they'll pull back from the brink, but it's only a chance.
Systems matter.
They matter a lot.
The greatest invention of the American founding is not the ideals of freedom or equality.
Those ideals have been thought of before.
They've been around for a long time.
The great invention of the founders is a system, the constitutional system, whose purpose is to preserve the ideals of freedom and equality in spite of the self-interest of human beings in power.
This has worked for a long time, but no system can stand when the people within it have lost their moral way.
The left has spent the last 50 years making sure that would happen, and we're watching that effort come to fruition now.
We'll see how far it gets in just a minute.
You know, we're going to bring on the wonderful Jenna Ellis Reeves in just a second.
But first, I just want to bring you up to date what's happening.
The acting director of national intelligence, Joseph McGuire, is testifying on Capitol Hill.
He's the guy who said that this whistleblower complaint against Trump's conversation in the Ukraine was not worthy of a criminal investigation.
He's the guy who said it didn't have to be passed on to Congress.
He came on and he said, look, I'm not a political guy.
I'm just a public servant.
I'm proud of my public service.
I've had this public service through various presidents of different parties, and I've served them all.
And the thing is, at first, he was under a lot of pressure because the whistleblower's complaint had not been released.
But just before he went on, they did release this whistleblower's complaint.
And I'm looking at this complaint.
And look, again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist.
When I talk about conspiracies, the things that are in plain sight, the things that people are actually saying.
But I look at this thing, and it's not the document of a whistleblower.
It's not a guy who said, I see something wrong.
In fact, he says that he did not, was not on this phone call, but multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, Zelensky, have accused Trump of pressuring the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help his 2020 bid.
This is a lawyer's document.
This document was gone over by a lawyer.
It has footnotes.
It's written in legal language.
It is something that this whistleblower had help preparing.
And One of the things I want to know is where this came from.
Is this part?
Was this, did it come from Adam Schiff?
You know, who did it come from?
Who wanted this thing to go forward?
Because this is more and more looking to me yet, like yet, well, not more and more.
It did from the very beginning.
I mean, at this point, we should be suspicious from the very beginning.
This looks like another empty attack on President Trump because they don't want him in office, because their base is hysterical, because some of them are hysterical.
And it's a process that is now carrying, like a snowball rolling downhill.
It is now carrying the Democrats downhill into this impeachment process, which is, in my opinion, absolutely absurd.
Have we got Jenna?
Jenna, I'm not even going to introduce you anymore.
I'm sure everybody, you're on Fox every time I turn it on at this point.
You are like, yes, and I'll be back on right after this.
Actually, you can tune into Charles Payne on Fox Business Side and Trish Regan tonight and Fox and Friends tomorrow morning.
So, it's going to be a busy weekend.
We are humbled by your presence among us.
You're my favorite, though.
You know that.
I, of course, I've been for years.
And your opening, your opening, Drew, is absolutely brilliant in terms.
I mean, you don't even need me actually, but it's absolutely true what the Democrats are trying to do.
And they are perverting this system that is supposed to be non-partisan, non-political.
Impeachment should not be a political action.
This should only happen when there is credible evidence that a president has gone against the interests of the United States of America, treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.
That's the key terminology, and other.
This isn't just, you know, we think of misdemeanors as, hey, I ran it, you know, I ran a traffic light and I got a ticket.
That's not the constitutional context.
This is from the old English common law language, meaning offenses against the crown, against the sovereign.
This is something that should have an absolutely credible legal basis here, not simply because the Democrats hate President Trump.
This is dividing the country.
This is ridiculous.
I mean, everyone who votes for impeachment, if they do, should themselves be impeached for going against their oath of office to defend and protect the United States Constitution.
You know, the point that you just made that these are high crimes and misdemeanors against the sovereign, and we should just add for the people that the sovereign here is the people, right?
The idea, they had a sovereign who is the king or the queen, but we have a sovereign who's us.
And when they're not making an offense against us, now let me ask you something.
Last night, we did one of these backstages, and Ben asked me if they found videotape of Donald Trump, you know, picking a guy up by the front of his shirt and throwing him against the wall and saying, listen, Buster, you know, if you don't, if you don't go and investigate Joe Biden, I mean, and there's nothing even remarkably, even vaguely resembling this, but if you don't investigate Joe Biden, I'm withholding military aid.
Would that in your mind be an impeachable offense?
Actually, no.
I mean, let's not forget that President Trump, as the president of the United States, can literally threaten to bomb a country, right?
I mean, these are things that threats in and of themselves are not necessarily illegal, right?
It depends on whether you can legally carry out that threat.
So, like, for example, on behalf of a client, I, as an attorney, could threaten legal action.
That doesn't mean that a threat inherently is bad.
It simply means is the substance of that threat something that, in his capacity, as the president of the United States, cannot do legally.
And so, we have kind of this conflict here because the Democrats want to try to paint him as he's only looking for opposition research.
And this is against, you know, election and campaign finance laws and all this, you know, this quote-unquote thing of value.
But let's not forget that even though, yes, he's running for reelection, he is still the sitting president of the United States and has to carry out obligations.
And so, that would be like saying whenever he uses Air Force One to get around the country, that somehow that's a thing of value that goes against campaign finance.
simply not the case here and so even though like you said we have no nothing remotely uh in terms of any actual evidence the federal bribery statute that is one of those terms in the constitution talks about bribing a united state federal officer it doesn't actually go to any sort of communication or interrelation on foreign policy or dealing with other countries heads of state america has in our history threatened action of some sort,
threatened to withhold military aid for whatever reason.
And that's something that the president of the United States can incredibly do.
We have a treaty with Ukraine that we can investigate corruption, that we can each investigate corruption for the other.
So he's actually now looking at this from the Democrat side.
Has anything happened?
I mean, they use the word impeachment and everybody rushes to their camera and they're having the, you know, these having their one shots out in the White House lawn and everybody's yelling about.
But have they done anything?
Has there been a vote?
Have I missed something or is it all show?
No, it's completely all show.
And that's the question I would really like Nancy Pelosi to answer is when are you going to call a vote?
If you actually think that impeachment, if you're not just trying to, you know, straddle the fence here and satisfy the hyper crazy leftists who have been calling for impeachment since, you know, before President Trump was even sworn into office, you know, once he won the election, is she willing to actually call a vote right now?
They haven't even formulated a resolution in the House that would initiate formal inquiry proceedings.
All they're doing is saying, hey, let's run these camera circus kabuki theater hearings like today, where Schiff was simply trying to manipulate and spin legal terms into common usage.
It was boring.
It was ridiculous.
It was completely politically partisan.
Nothing has actually happened to initiate formal impeachment proceedings.
So when are they going to do it?
Are they going to do it?
Nancy Pelosi has to decide.
That's my last question, and then I'll let you go because I know you've got to go to Fox.
Well, you know, it's okay.
I mean, the other thing that was said on the backstage last night was Ben was saying he thinks there's a 0% chance now that Pelosi can avoid impeachment.
I don't agree with that.
I think that she has pushed the snowball downhill.
I just want to get your take on it.
I know I bring you on for legal questions, but I'm just interested as an observer, what you think of Pelosi's chances of pulling out of this.
You know, I think that she put definitely the cart before the horse by her statement that she made her public statement.
I think that was, you know, just a couple of days ago.
And she, before they actually saw the transcript, before she saw the whistleblower complaint saying, yes, there is something somewhere that happened.
I mean, by her saying that and saying we are moving forward with impeachment, she's kind of painted herself into a corner.
I think she can get out of it.
I think she would be well advised to say, you know what, we were advised wrongly.
We kind of, you know, now after looking at this, even though I fully disagree and, you know, she can slam him and paint him unethical and whatever, you know, partisan terms she wants to say.
But if she wants to retain any hope of the Democrats not losing a lot of seats in districts that are very important to them in 2020, and impeachment historically has always done that for the impeaching party.
America doesn't like this.
They don't like this, especially when there is no smoking gun.
There is no obvious instance of President Trump doing anything wrong.
Making Up Dirt on Hunter00:14:56
She would be very well advised to come up with some sort of statement, rein it in and say, you know what, we will remain hyper-vigilant and we're going to do our oversight job, but right now is not the time.
And we should hope that she has the intestinal fortitude to do that.
And I know that that's kind of inherently in conflict with the term Democrat, but we'll see what happens.
Jenna Reeves, it's always great to see you.
I thank you for coming on.
You're doing great on Fox, by the way.
You're elevating the station.
So it's great to see it.
And President Trump tweeted my clip from Tuckel Carlson.
I saw it.
So thank you to the president.
And hopefully he will tweet out this clip as well because you even give me more time.
I know he watches every day.
I'm here.
He does, absolutely.
I'll see you later.
Thanks so much, Jeremy.
I just want to follow, of course, the news media and the Democrats are always working in concert.
And now as they gear up and they become more and more hysterical because they lost the Mueller report, the Russia hoax made them look bad.
They have been, it has been, since the Mueller testimony and since the Mueller report, it has been one thing after another to try and cover up that complete implosion of the narrative they were selling.
And they're working with the press in hand.
And one of the things that is happening that I just think is absurd, is absolutely absurd, is the news, the Washington Post did it.
I believe the New York Times did it.
CNN, we expect it from MSNBC.
They are editing the text, the transcript of this phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president to make it sound, they're cutting out like a page of text to make it sound like he said, do me a favor, investigate Joe Biden's son.
Okay, that's what they're making it sound.
What he said was, do me a favor, look into the corruption surrounding the 2016 election, something the Democrats have been urging him to do.
He was talking about crowdsourced, the Democrat thing that looked into who hacked the DNC computers, which was supposed to be Russia and Ukraine.
And he was asking him about that.
And as it went down, the conversation turned around to Rudy Giuliani and he said, yes, and there's been all this corruption you guys have had over there and you should look into Hunter Biden.
And they're just editing.
Here's an example.
Here's Wolf Blitzer talking to Jim.
Look at me, I'm Jim Acosta on CNN.
Just listen to them edit the page right out.
And let's not forget, in this summary that was released by the White House, the president specifically quoted as saying to the Ukrainian president, I would like you to do us a favor.
And then it goes into an investigation into the Bidens and the Democrats.
That's right, Wolf.
And the president never really asked, you know, or answered the question.
I tried to ask the question as he was walking out of the room.
What did he mean by, can you do us a favor?
He never really explained what he was talking about with respect to that question.
And I think what you saw during this press conference is that the president is really just stewing with anger over all of this.
He feels frustrated that the press largely overlooked what he did at this United Nations General Assembly.
But once again, I think that responsibility lays at the president's feet.
I mean, this was something that they were stonewalling Congress on a week ago.
And then as soon as the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw down the gauntlet and threatened impeachment, all of a sudden transcripts are being offered.
And now the whistleblower complaint.
Now, as always with Jim, look at me, I'm Jim Acosta.
You have to ask yourself, who cares what you think?
Who cares who you think the responsibility lies with?
That's not your job.
It's not your job to tell us who's responsible for your not covering the UN.
You didn't cover the UN, and you're blaming Trump.
That's not news.
It's not news that you think Donald Trump's to blame for your malfeasance.
That's not news.
But that's not the point.
The point is they edited that transcript.
So wait.
So the press is editing the transcript.
They're taking out a page of text to make it sound like Trump said, do me a favor, look into Hunter Biden, which he did not do.
That's not what he said, had nothing to do with that.
That's the first thing.
But now, Adam Schiff at this hearing with Maguire, the DNI, the acting DNI, Adam Schiff now just starts making stuff up.
He rewrites.
So help me.
I'm not making this up.
He rewrites the text to make it say what he wants it to say.
This is the essence of what the president communicates.
We've been very good to your country.
Very good.
No other country has done as much as we have.
But you know what?
I don't see much reciprocity here.
I hear what you want.
I have a favor I want from you, though.
And I'm going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good.
I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand lots of it.
On this and on that, I'm going to put you in touch with people, not just any people.
I'm going to put you in touch with Attorney General of the United States, my Attorney General Bill Barr.
He's got the whole weight.
of the American law enforcement behind him.
And I'm going to put you in touch with Rudy.
You're going to love him, trust me.
You know what I'm asking, and so I'm only going to say this a few more times in a few more ways.
And by the way, don't call me again.
I'll call you when you've done what I asked.
So to be fair to this McCarthyite weasel, to be fair to him, he did later apologize for this and said it was supposed to be a parody.
He was auditioning to do the open for my show.
So he says it was supposed to be a parody.
It was supposed to be comedy.
But come on.
This is what they're all.
This is what they're doing.
This is what they're doing.
They're rewriting this.
It's yet another Russian collusion hoax.
Look, Trump, when he calls this stuff a witch hunt, he is absolutely right.
When he calls it a hoax, he's absolutely right.
And again, if they find him saying, you know, do this or we'll withhold aid, we'll come back, we'll revisit it.
But there's no, in the meantime, this is a non-story.
The fact that they're talking about impeachment, a non-story.
And at this point, even if they move to impeach, they will have gutted the process of any real meaning, as Jenna just explained why, but also because they've been doing this from the very start.
They were talking about impeaching him before he even took office.
Meanwhile, some of this stuff is just absolutely hilarious.
Meanwhile, the press continues to cover up for Joe Biden.
And I've said this, I said this from the very start.
This is the end of Joe Biden's campaign.
You know, Ben said on this backstage, he said that he believed that they had made that calculation.
The Democrats have made that calculation.
If we can get it, Trump, it's worth getting rid of Biden.
I think this is way beyond strategy and calculation.
I think, like I said, this is a snowball rolling downhill.
Nancy Pelosi has lost control of the process.
The Democrats have lost control of the process.
They're serving their base.
They're serving the cameras.
They're standing in front of the cameras and posing and saying dramatic things.
And it's gotten away from them.
But on MSNBC, and I don't hit MSNBC that often because they're an openly leftist station, but what's her name?
Nicole Wallace.
Is that her name?
She actually interrupts the president.
Say it's like Kanye West with Taylor Swift.
I'm going to let you finish, Mr. President.
I'm going to let you finish.
But first, I'm going to tell Nicole Wallace, I'm going to tell people the fact that you are lying about Joe Biden.
And again, we played something like this yesterday from Chuck Todd.
Her excuse is that the Ukraine has already investigated Joe Biden.
You know, if you can't trust the Ukraine, where corruption is rife, you can't trust anybody.
Listen to this.
We hate to do this, really, but the president isn't telling the truth.
These allegations against Joe Biden and Hunter Biden that he's repeating have been investigated by the Ukrainians.
None other than the Wall Street Journal included in their report on Friday that the Ukrainians view this issue as having been investigated and adjudicated.
And what's amazing is that what Trump appears to be trying to do is to turn his own impeachment into a big deflection.
Yeah, he's trying to change the story.
I think we should say two things.
First of all, the question on the table here is not about Joe Biden.
It's not about Chris Murphy or any other senators he's talking about.
It's not about the whistleblower.
It's about his conduct and whether his conduct as president is impeachable or not, whether it amounts to misconduct.
But as it relates to Joe Biden, it's important to note that this story has been looked at and thoroughly debunked by everyone involved.
Joe Biden's son served on the board of a Ukrainian company.
That Ukrainian company was investigated by the Ukrainian Attorney General.
That investigation was closed before Joe Biden ever asked for the Attorney General to be fired.
The problem with this is that, not to interrupt them to say it's not true, is it's not true.
But by the way, MSNBC has the right to do commentary, but when you hear the guy say, this story is not about Hunter Biden, it's not about Joe Biden, it's about Donald Trump, who is he to say that?
Who is he to determine what the narrative is?
I mean, that is what this whole thing is about.
It's determining the narrative.
Look, the people are too smart for this.
They have so much power, these guys.
They have so much communication, so much control over the communication machinery in this country.
And yet, and yet the truth has a voice.
They are not going to get away with this.
I'm telling you, they are just not.
It's absurd.
John Solomon, I believe it is, at the Hill, says he is in possession of hundreds of pages of official documents showing, debunking, debunking Joe Biden's claim that he wasn't, that the prosecutor that he manipulated the Ukraine into firing was not investigating Hunter Biden.
Listen to what he says.
He's got all these documents that he says disprove what Biden is claiming.
There are documents from Hunter Biden's legal team, the legal team from America trying to assist Burisma to get out of this investigation.
They show unequivocally that that prosecution, that legal team, told the prosecutors as soon as Mr. Shokin was fired.
In fact, the day that Shokin was fired, the Ukraine team, the Biden team was trying to reach the new prosecutor.
So people say there's no connection between the event.
Why was Biden's legal team rushing to talk to the new guy immediately?
But when they got that chance to talk to him, here's what they told that prosecutor.
They told that prosecutor the story about Shokin being corrupt, not doing reforms, was not true.
It was a made-up story by U.S. officials.
They called it false information.
That means Hunter Biden's legal team, Burisma's American legal team, was telling the prosecutors the basis upon which Joe Biden said he just fired Chokin was not true.
So this is still an open story.
And again, I think Biden's finished.
I think this thing is going to blow back on Biden.
I think it may blow back on whoever helped this intelligence guy prepare the whistleblower's complaint.
I think it's going to blow back on them too.
Remember, this is not an intelligence matter.
President Trump is not part of the intelligence community.
It is not up to the intelligence community to keep track of what President Trump is doing.
He has very wide plenary powers in dealing with foreign policy.
So if he wants to chat up the president of the Ukraine, they shouldn't even release it because they should have the right to have a quiet, private conversation.
But he is not part of the intelligence community.
And getting back to this again, I have to reiterate this.
Impeachment itself is damaging to the polity.
Impeachment itself is damaging because it takes away the vote of the people.
It nulls and voids the vote of the people.
And you better have a damn good reason for doing that.
It is not enough.
It is not enough even for if President Trump dented a car on his way to work and didn't leave his phone number.
That's not enough to impeach the president, even though that's against the law.
You know who used to know this?
The Democrats.
When 1998, when they were impeaching Bill Clinton.
And by the way, just so I can say this, I was opposed to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
I was opposed to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, even though I knew he had committed perjury.
I thought, you know, the guy was elected.
He's the president of the United States.
You do not nullify the vote of the people on a matter like sexual malfeasance.
You just don't.
It makes him a slime ball.
He is a slime ball.
He was then, but he's not, it's not crimes and misdemeanors against the sovereign, us, right?
Here's Jerry Nadler.
Actually, it's about three Jerry Nadlers.
The guy was about 500 pounds.
I'm fat-shaming.
I'm fat-shaming Jerry Nadler.
I admit it.
I admit it.
I am fat-shaming Jerry Nadler.
Looks like a float in the Thanksgiving parade.
Here he is saying what he should now remember.
That an impeachment of a president is an undoing of a national election.
And one of the reasons we all feel so angry about what they are doing is that they are ripping from us.
They are ripping asunder our votes.
They are telling us that our votes don't count and that the election must be set aside.
So let's end with President Trump here.
This is clip number three when he points out that this really is not a good thing that the Democrats are doing.
I mean, it is in and of itself the fact that they're doing it.
Listen, politics is politics.
And I understand it's not beanbag.
And I understand they're going to fight for power and they want power.
But you've got to play the game by the rules because the system matters.
The American system matters.
And they're not playing the game the way it's supposed to be played.
First of all, when have they passed any legislation?
When have they done anything during this presidency that helps the people, that does anything for the people they haven't?
They keep throwing up these kabuki laws that they know aren't going to get passed, that they know won't get signed if they do get passed, that they aren't going to get through the Senate.
So what are they doing?
Zip zero nada.
Except this.
This is what they're doing.
It's divisive.
It's ridiculous.
It's not going anywhere.
The president is not going to be convicted even if they impeach him.
Here's what Trump says.
And our people are being hurt and our country is being hurt when a Nancy Pelosi allows her position to be taken over by radical far-left socialists or worse.
That's pretty bad.
That's pretty bad.
Especially when the senators and all of these other people have actually done what they're accusing me of doing, which I didn't do.
Which is absolutely true, right?
They did use the Steel dossier.
They did use Russian intelligence, Russian disinformation to try to stop Donald Trump.
It's how they started the investigation, the Russian collusion investigation with this steel dossier.
It's how they got the Pfizer warrant.
It's exactly, it is exactly what they're accusing Trump of doing, which, as he says, he apparently didn't do.
There's certainly no evidence that he did it.
It really is sad.
You know, when Donald Trump is the adult in the room, that's not a good look for the Democrats.
That is not a good look for the Democrats.
This is a misuse of the American system.
It's damaging to the American system.
And the American system basically is all we got.
Kavanaugh Hearings in Public Opinion00:10:30
If you're near the University of Southern California tonight, head over at 7 p.m. to the Friends of USC Library Lecture Hall, and there will be a speaker there that you will not want to miss.
It is none other, none other than our own Michael Knowles.
He is there with his latest speaking engagement on the Young Americas Foundation, his topic, Men Are Not Women, and other uncomfortable truths.
Who knows?
Who knows what kind of leftist tears may fall as Michael Knowles talks on that subject?
For more details, go on over to yaff.org events slash events and go enjoy the show.
That's yaf.org slash events.
Go listen to Michael Knowles.
Who knows?
This may be the day when he says something you want to hear.
I'm going to stay on so you can hear my guests.
I want to talk about this more and also the Kavanaugh nonsense.
So we're going to bring on Ryan Lovelace to talk about that.
But first, go over to dailywire.com.
All the more reason for you to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
It's a lousy 10 bucks a month, a lousy 100 bucks for the year.
You get the beautiful leftist tears tumbler.
We've got a new site.
This new site looks great.
And we've got an app coming on, which will be a benefit to all of you who subscribe.
It's a lot.
You get a lot for your lousy 10 bucks plus we get your 10 bucks, which is the whole point of the enterprise.
Ryan Lovelace is the author of Search and Destroy Inside the Campaign Against Brett Kavanaugh.
He covers legal news in Washington as the DC business of law reporter at the National Law Journal, American Lawyer, and ALM Media.
Ryan, thank you so much for coming on.
It's great to have you.
Thanks for having me.
You know, I've got to key this in a little bit to what's going on right now.
Is there, when you're looking at what's happening in Washington at this moment, this new attempt to quote unquote impeach the president, do you see a relationship between this and the attack on Kavanaugh?
I do.
I do.
I think in the first two years of President Trump's administration, we saw attacks on two things, the presumption of regularity and the presumption of innocence.
The first one with the presumption of regularity was all about suggesting that President Trump was acting in bad faith, acting at the behest of a foreign power.
First, it was Russia, now Ukraine.
And in the second year, we saw an attack on the presumption of innocence in that Justice Kavanaugh wasn't afforded the same opportunity that other Supreme Court nominees have been in coming before the committee and being presumed innocent until guilty, as has always been the case in a court of law.
But that hearing was tried in a court of public opinion.
And I really think all of these things are aimed at attacking American institutions, long-standing pillars of American society.
And when those things are eroded and public confidence and faith and trust in institutions is eroded, we've seen what starts to happen.
Yeah, no, it really is.
Brom, when you were researching this book, when you were researching Search and Destroy inside the campaign against Brett Kavanaugh, what did you find out about where this attack originated from and how it got started?
Well, I found out a lot of different things.
And one of the most important was that this was going to happen regardless of who the nominee was.
One of the biggest groups on the left that has come out organizing around the courts for the first time that was new to this last fight with Kavanaugh is Demand Justice.
They're a dark money group.
Demand Justice is led by Brian Fallon, a former Hillary Clinton campaign flack.
And they said they were going to spend $5 million opposing whomever President Trump would have selected.
And they formed just before Justice Kennedy retired.
And so they were right there, ready to go in a way that they hadn't been before.
And they were the biggest outside force influencing things.
And then in the months that followed and in the legal team that was surrounding Christine Blasey Ford, we saw Deborah Katz, her attorney, come forward and explain that when she has cases like this, she doesn't look the law.
She has to have a press strategy, a legislative strategy, and utilize those organized forces to accomplish the outcome her client wants, which is a political agenda in this case.
Was Blaze Ford implicated in this at all?
I mean, is she somebody who actually had this complaint and they found her?
Or was she somebody who went looking for them?
Or how did that shake out?
Well, there's a few interesting details about that in my book that I reported out in Search and Destroy.
And the first of which is Christine Blasey Ford first approached the Washington Post and they weren't interested.
And she went back to them and she said, you know, I've been advised to go to the New York Times or senators.
And then at that point, they had eventually responded and tried to get her in touch with a reporter, but they still didn't run with her story.
And that's one of the things that makes this so different from every other Supreme Court nomination fight is the way in which this allegation traded up the chain of the press.
First, a blog called The Intercept said, oh, there's an allegation alleging an incident, purposely vague, tells us nothing.
Then Senator Feinstein, the top Democrat in the Judiciary Committee, says, oh, yes, I've heard of that.
And I've referred it to law enforcement.
But all of this happened months after the allegation was first made.
And it was then that the national press picked this up and rather looking into the truth or falsity of the matter, simply said, will this help him?
Will this hurt Judge Kavanaugh?
How will it affect things?
And no one ever bothered looking into it.
And that's how these cases are now litigated in the court of public opinion, as opposed to an actual court of law.
When you saw this recent New York Times piece based on the book by two reporters, I mean, I found it startling.
You know, these sexual, these accusations of sexual malfeasance are serious.
They do serious damage to a person's reputation.
They really, I'm sure, make your family life uncomfortable.
And their story was that two unnamed sources told them that a guy who wouldn't talk to them said that a woman who didn't remember had been molested by Brett Kavanaugh.
I mean, that is a startling, that's the kind of thing I would expect to see some YouTube nut come out with instead of the New York Times.
So this fight is obviously continuing.
Is this being funded?
Is this something that you think is coming from outside the Times?
Or is it something that is simply part of a news media crusade?
Well, for those two women in particular, it's personal.
And I think you've identified it correctly in saying that they're accusations.
You know, I'm even reluctant to call them allegations because, as you say, the alleged victim doesn't even think it happened to her.
But in this particular instance, it really is personal.
Robin Poggerbin, one of the authors of the book at the New York Times and the authors of that piece, is a former classmate of Brett Kavanaugh.
She went to Yale at the same time as he, and that was her whole authority for writing this book.
You know, she wasn't a legal reporter.
She wasn't an investigative reporter.
She didn't know anything about sexual assault allegations and how to properly report out some of these things.
And I think that's part of what caused some of these problems is doing that due diligence that reporters that are familiar with that kind of story would have done had they had the opportunity.
I want to get to some of the ramifications of all this because you have some very interesting thoughts about that.
But I just want to pause for just a sec to talk about Susan Collins.
We've been talking about the purpose versus self-interest on this particular show.
And she really did go against her own interests.
I mean, she is a pro-choice, an advocate of Roe v. Wade, and she knew that Kavanaugh might be a vote against that or to weaken that.
And yet she stood up for him.
Was that, I mean, it was such an amazing moment.
I hesitate to even believe in it.
Do you feel that she was actually acting purely on integrity or did she have some interests other than that?
I think she was doing the due process and going through and doing the deliberative methods that the Senate was always expected to do with advice and consent, which frankly is what I had expected.
You know, in watching this all unfold, I expected the typical advice and consent process that had rejected Merrick Garland when President Obama picked him and confirmed Justice Gorsuch to unfold again.
But that's not what happened here.
Search and Destroy is.
And I think Susan Collins really started facing threats even before accusations began to emerge against Judge Kavanaugh last year at this time.
You know, really, she began getting mailed coat hangers and the rest of it to remind her about abortion.
And still throughout all of that, she stood tough and then went and did the due process and deliberative means to go about vetting the Supreme Court nominee.
And in talking to Republicans, particularly those in the Senate and around then Judge Kavanaugh's team, what I really heard was it was both Susan Collins and a combination of what Michael Avenatti did that really helped conservatives and Republicans to hold ranks and be able to kind of not have any breakaways and confirm Ben Judge now Justice Kavanaugh.
Yeah, it's always nice to see somebody actually show up like that.
It was a beautiful thing.
So where is this taking us?
What are the ramifications of this kind of attack?
And do you think it's going to continue?
I think it is going to continue.
I think if there is another vacancy before the 2020 election, it's only going to get worse.
I think we're going to see Supreme Court fights be fought like presidential campaigns in a way that we haven't before.
And I think we're going to see presidential politics dominated by issues of the Supreme Court in a way we haven't.
You know, in 2016, it was an animating issue for so many conservative voters that were skeptical of President Trump.
And in 2020, we've already seen groups like Demand Justice get involved in a 2020 race and try to affect the Democratic nominees by pushing them towards ideas of expanding the court and diluting the votes of Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, President Trump's elections.
And I really think that's something that's going to continue, and it's only going to get worse as we get closer to next November.
You do think it's going to continue the efforts to pack the court, that they're serious about this is not just a way of intimidating John Roberts or making them toe the line.
I do.
And for a couple of reasons.
The first of which is Demand Justice in particular has been spending money against its own side, against Democratic candidates.
It spent $15,000 against Michael Bennett, a candidate who was pulling at 0%, spent that money in New Hampshire.
And he has not much of a chance there, but they're still willing to attack their own to make sure that everyone buys into that far-left agenda.
And the second component of it is it's part of a furtherance to delegitimize the authority and legitimacy of this Supreme Court.
You know, with Justice Gorsuch, the left said he sits in a stolen seat.
It's a stolen seat that belongs to Merrick Garwin, President Obama's pick that the Senate rejected.
And now with Justice Gorsuch, or with Justice Kavanaugh, rather, they're saying he has an asterisk next to his name.
And that's particularly coming from Deborah Katz, Christine Blasey Ford's attorney, who's saying he needs to have a Me Too asterisk next to his name.
If they can successfully undermine those two men and try to expand and dilute their vote, if they can't undermine them, that's the left's agenda in trying to attack and undermine the Supreme Court.
It's really, you know, it wouldn't be half as frightening if the press weren't backing them up 100%, but it is, it's pretty frightening.
Ryan Lovelace, the book is Search and Destroy Inside the Campaign Against Brett Kavanaugh.
Really interesting.
Thank you very much for coming on.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
All right.
I mean, this is amazing stuff.
You know, it is amazing stuff to watch our institutions under attack by the people, you know, not just the people who are supposed to be in the institutions, because you understand politicians are motivated by power.
Gender Confusion Criticized00:04:12
They're motivated by self-interest.
They're motivated by party politics.
And we all understand that.
But one of the checks and balances that was in the Constitution is the freedom of the press.
And the press is supposed to hold their feet to the fire, not just when they're Republican, not just when they're white, and not just when they're male, but also when they're black, also when they're female, also when they're Democrats, also when they agree with the reporters.
And they simply do not do that.
It's not, as I have said a million times, it is not just the way they're treating Donald Trump.
It's the way they're treating Donald Trump after the way they treated Barack Obama, the scandal-free Barack Obama administration that used the IRS to silence opposition, that obviously now it seems used the intelligence community to go after a political opponent.
That's the problem.
It is not the problem that they hold the president's feet to the fire, that they go after these guys.
It is the problem that they only hold one side to account.
And it's a lot of power that the press has, a lot of corporate money behind them.
And it really is, it's really sad stuff to watch.
It's a little frightening, but I believe in the truth.
I believe in the American people.
I think we'll be okay depending on how long the Clavenless weekend lasts, because one of these days there's going to be an eternal Claveless weekend.
We're in big trouble.
I got to tell you about this as a final reflection, because it's really interesting.
Mattel has put out a gender-neutral Barbie.
And I just think this is hilarious.
Mattel is a struggling, struggling company.
Barbie has been keeping them afloat.
It was just, I don't know, it was not that long ago, last month, I think, or earlier this month, I can't remember, when they put out a report that Barbie had kept them afloat profit-wise.
And then about three days later, it turned out, no, they weren't making a lot of money.
So they've put out this thing, this gender-neutral Barbie doll, obviously to serve these left-wing parents who are been convinced that there's something wrong with gender, that somehow they're oppressed.
I've seen this.
I mean, I've seen this.
And, you know, like in Brooklyn, the heart of darkness, you know, you'll see these parents who are worried that they are teaching their, oppressing their children with gender identities.
You know, it's really interesting.
Bill Burr, in his new comedy special on Netflix, tells a heartbreaking story.
And some of his comedy has gotten very poignant as he explores himself and his life.
And he tells a heartbreaking story of when he was a child and his father, to punish him for whining, gave him a Christmas present of a doll as if he were a girl and ruined his Christmas.
And obviously, he talks about it as if it's still affecting him today.
The whole idea of taking away from your boy child his right to be a boy and his responsibilities in being a boy is incredibly destructive.
Establishing gender identity is one of the tasks of young people.
So this is not just wrong.
It is deeply, deeply wrong and destructive.
Now, the only interesting thing I think about this is I don't think, I think this is going to hurt Mattel.
I think Mattel is probably going to crumble.
But the one thing about it is I don't think they're doing, I think they're doing something wrong.
But when we're talking about purpose versus interest, they're not doing something in their own interest.
I don't think this is going to work.
I think it's going to hurt them.
The guys who created it said, you know, we realize, he said, one of their spokesmen said, I think being a company today, you have to have a combination of social justice along with commerce, and that balance can be tricky.
Now, I disagree with that because I think social justice is not justice.
I think this gender confusion is a stupid and a bad thing.
I do understand that some people have gender confusion.
You know, I'll go beyond that.
I do think that sometimes people can get too obsessed with, you know, be a man or be a woman or be girly or whatever.
You know, that you can be too obsessed with gender too.
Everything is balanced as Aristotle teaches us, right?
Everything is going on that golden mean.
So I will say that.
It's not about that.
But I think that this attack on gender, attack on gender identity, which is a very important person part of a person's identity and a person's substance and his steadiness, I think it's a bad thing.
But I think at least they're not serving money.
They're not serving mammon, I don't think.
Balancing Gender Identity00:02:00
I think they're serving their lights.
They're living by their purposes.
I simply think their purposes are misguided.
So that's a different thing, right?
And it's one of the things that's dividing our country so much is our basic assumptions about what this country is, what it stands for, what it means.
And that's why we're having such a hard time communicating with one another.
And that's why people in meta jobs like the media, like in entertainment, should be serving both sides to let us work it out.
They should be trying to be above that fray in order to let us work it out as we go forward.
We were going forward, but now we hit the Clavenless weekend.
It's like a dark, stormy sea full of sharks, full of death, destruction.
You'll be in it.
I won't because I am Clavin, so I don't have Clavenless weekends.
But if you survive, we will be back here on Monday.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
is The Andrew Klavan Show.
And if you want to help spread the word, give us a five-star review and also tell your friends to subscribe too.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro Show, the Matt Walsh Show, and the Michael Knoll Show.
Thanks for listening.
The Andrew Clavin Show is produced by Austin Stevens and directed by Mike Joyner.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
And our supervising producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
Assistant Director, Pavel Wydowski.
Edited by Adam Sayovitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
Animations are by Cynthia Ngulo.
And our production assistant is Nick Sheehan.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
If you prefer facts over feelings, if you aren't offended by the brutal truth, if you can still laugh at the nuttiness filling our national news cycle, well, tune on in to the Ben Shapiro Show, where you'll get a whole lot of that and much more.