Andrew Clavin’s Screwed skewers political irrationality through Hillary Clinton’s satirical meltdown—blaming a "Chardonnay wizard" for her administration’s failures—while critiquing Trump’s Syria betrayal, the NBA’s China kowtowing, and NBC’s Lauer-Weinstein cover-up. Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA counters leftist indoctrination by framing America as uniquely free, citing Trump’s economic wins and warning that "woke" culture war tactics alienate young conservatives, who now see Reaganite principles as the antidote to institutional leftist dominance. The episode ties moral decay to systemic power grabs, from media corruption to globalist priorities over patriotism. [Automatically generated summary]
Hillary Clinton says she may decide to run for a second term as president of her imagination.
I beat Trump once, I can beat him again, said Mrs. Clinton, before falling off her barstool, rolling under a table, banging her head on a chair leg, and lapsing into a period of unconsciousness during which she dreamed that she really was president and all the people loved her so very, very much.
Mrs. Clinton made the remarks after Donald Trump sent out a tweet reminding his followers of Clinton's history of corruption going back 40 years.
Those are all old, old stories, Mrs. Clinton told a lamppost while trying to figure out how to put on her coat.
The feds have been trying to nail me for years and the lousy screws have never put a finger on me, see?
So eat lead, John Law.
Yeah, that's right.
That's what I said.
To hell with you, G-Men.
If you think I'm going to die in some hellhole of a prison, think again, coppers.
Mrs. Clinton then climbed to the top of a gas storage facility, waving a Tommy gun and shouting top of the world, ma, before the facility exploded in a blinding ball of flame.
When Mrs. Clinton recovered consciousness, she issued a statement to what was either a bevy of reporters hanging on her every word or a collection of cabbage-patched kids arranged on chairs to look like reporters, saying, quote, ever since I beat Donald Trump in the last election, I've done such a great job as president.
It's a shame my administration was invisible to the American public because of the veil of illusion cast by an evil wizard who lives at the bottom of a bottle of Chardonnay.
But one day, so help me, I'll find that bottle and this nightmare will come to an end, unquote.
Elizabeth Warren said she was eager for Hillary to join the race so she'd no longer be the biggest liar running.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Erdoyan's Risky Move00:15:03
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Shipshape, dipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
You know, I was just thinking for those who are not watching but are only listening and in the song, there's a little cartoon that goes on.
It has a cartoon me singing the song.
And I don't have a beard, so either I should shave or somebody should just draw a beard on the little cartoon.
If you are not listening to Another Kingdom, you are missing a great, great podcast.
Listen to Another Kingdom.
It's a fantasy suspense story narrated by the one and only, thank heaven, Michael Knowles.
It is really, it really just sounds great.
They've done such a great job with it.
You have to hear it.
You can just listen to the first one and you will know that you want to hear the rest of it.
It's going to be playing all through the fall and into the winter, so please get started on Another Kingdom.
One of the things I love most about politics is the fact that it's almost entirely irrational.
Because that's hilarious.
Politics reveals on the big stage what we see in our own little lives every day, that almost everything people believe is untrue.
Their ideas bear no relation to reality and their emotions are keyed up to very high levels about issues that don't really mean very much while the really important issues get ignored.
If you don't find this funny, you're going to live a very grim life because it is life.
It's what life is like almost everywhere, almost all the time.
In politics, in America at least, you can watch this clown show on TV while sitting at home eating popcorn, instead of, say, running down the street while some lunatic with a machine gun tries to kill you for disagreeing with his great political plan, which is certain to destroy everything in its path once he murders enough people to implement it.
Are you not entertained?
Today, I'm going to take a look at some people who are getting screwed.
The Kurds in Syria, American basketball fans, and any ladies at NBC who came anywhere within the clutches of Matt Lauer.
Each of these cases, I think, exposes ways of thinking that don't really make any sense.
And I'm going to do my best to get at how they don't make sense and how we might think about things that do make sense.
The reason I do this from time to time is that irrationality is like the BB gun your mom wouldn't let you have for Christmas.
It's lots of fun until someone gets hurt.
And when people are irrational, someone always eventually gets hurt, and then it's not funny anymore.
And I take that personally because I'm here to be amused.
So we're going to look at these things in just a second.
But first, we are going to talk about Ring.
One of the things I really, really enjoy is not getting robbed.
It is just such a delight to be able to sit in my house and not have it burgled, not have someone come in and take everything.
And that is why Ring is so effective for guarding your house.
Ring's mission is to make your home and your neighborhood safer.
And with the season changing and school in session, it's more important than ever to keep an eye on your home and those you love from no matter where you are.
That is what a ring doorbell does.
It connects you to your home no matter where you are.
All you got to do, somebody rings the bell, you look at your phone, you can see them, you can talk to them, you can find out where you're there.
You can even make sure your children make it to the bus on time and get home safe at the end of the day.
That is a pretty good service to have.
As a listener, you have a special offer on a Ring starter kit, which is available right now, that will give you a Ring video doorbell, the Ring Video Doorbell 2, and motion-activated floodlight cam that turns on a floodlight when people step onto your property.
The starter kit has everything you need to start building a ring of security around your home.
Just go to ring.com slash clavin.
That's ring.com slash clavin.
Additional terms may apply, like you may need to know how to spell clavin.
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
So let's take a look at this.
Let's start with Syria because it's such a complicated story.
I've been joking about how complicated it is.
Hard to know what the right thing to do is.
None of us wants to be tangled in the endless hatreds in the Middle East.
Trump pulls out our, whatever it is, it's like 15 guys.
They're on the northern border of Syria, right?
Which borders Turkey.
And we're fighting with the Kurds against ISIS.
That's how we eradicated ISIS.
The Kurds came and they helped us eradicate ISIS.
But at the same time, the Kurds want a homeland, and there are communist Kurds within Turkey who have been terrorists in Turkey.
And so Erdoyan says, well, these guys on my border are essentially helping the terrorists in my country.
I don't want them there.
I want to build a buffer zone on that northern border, just push them back from that border.
Trump, we have guys who are fighting with the Kurds, standing with the Kurds.
Turkey is a NATO ally.
I know we don't like them.
I know they're not very nice, but they are a NATO ally.
And they're saying, Turkey is saying, hey, we want a buffer zone because these guys who are terrorist friendly are on our borders, even though you're allies.
Trump, who hates being anywhere except here, he pulls the guys back.
And it's something, it's under a thousand men.
It's under a thousand fighters are pulled back.
And Erdoyan immediately invades.
Trump says this is not a good thing, and Kurds start getting killed.
The guys we're fighting with yesterday and who are there guarding those ISIS fighters who are there.
There's something like 10 to 12 ISIS fighters are there and then like 50,000 of their camp followers, families and things like that.
So they're all there and the Kurds, if they have to fall back, are not going to be able to guard those positions.
So that's one side of it.
That is the way Erdoyan sees it.
And obviously, Erdoyan, the head of Turkey, convinces Trump that this is a rational way to see it.
I said this before.
I believe that's going through Trump's mind.
It's just a guess.
But I believe what he's thinking is if the shooting starts and our ally Turkey starts killing American soldiers, and an American soldier gets caught in the crossfire, obviously Turkey's not going to go to war against us.
But that doesn't mean an American soldier won't get caught in the crossfire.
He doesn't want to have to explain to people at home what he's going to do with Turkey.
I think that that's what's bothering him.
And he just hates being out there.
The other side of this, of course, is our Kurds are our allies, and they have been helping us fight the ISIS caliphate and eradicating the ISIS caliphate, which stretched because Obama pulled out, just like this, it stretches from, it stretched for a while from Baghdad to Syria.
I mean, it was taking in many different countries, millions of people.
These guys were head-cutting madmen.
These ISIS guys are the worst of the worst of the worst.
And so the Kurds eradicated us.
And now it looks like, oh, yeah, thanks a lot, pal.
We're gone.
You're dead.
And Trump is saying, well, Trump, let's take a look at the first thing that Trump said.
Trump was asked at a press conference, aren't you concerned that Erdoyan is going to wipe out the Kurds?
And his response is, this is cut number four.
I will wipe out his economy if that happens.
I've already done it once with Pastor Brunson.
I'm sure that he, I hope that he will act rationally.
You do have to understand they've been fighting each other for many, many decades.
Actually, for centuries, they've been fighting each other.
And it was time for the Americans.
We did a great job.
We took care of ISIS.
We captured 100%.
You remember I was thinking, John, of leaving at 97 and 96%.
And that last 3 or 4% was the hardest part.
And they told me it would take a year to two years to do it.
And I did it in a month.
Remember that?
I flew to Iraq and I met with a lot of great generals there, great generals.
They said, sir, we can do it in two weeks to a month.
And we did it in two weeks to a month, and we took it.
And in the meantime, we've been watching over a lot with the Kurds, watching over a lot of prisoners, some very bad, some very bad people.
So then basically they ask him about our ally, aren't we betraying our allies, the Kurds?
And Trump channels my pal, Kurt Schlichter, who wrote a column basically defending Trump's decision.
Schlichter is very Trumpy, loves to stand behind Trump, and he stood behind him in this, even though Kurt is kind of a hawk.
And he said, look, they never stood, these guys are not our longtime heart allies.
They didn't stand with us at Normandy, and Trump starts channeling Kurt.
Now, the Kurds are fighting for their land, just so you understand.
They're fighting for their land.
And as somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today, they didn't help us in the Second World War.
They didn't help us with Normandy, as an example.
They mentioned names of different battles.
They were there, but they're there to help us with their land.
And that's a different thing.
In addition to that, we have spent tremendous amounts of money on helping the Kurds in terms of ammunition, in terms of weapons, in terms of money, in terms of pay.
With all of that being said, we like the Kurds.
Fighting for so long.
They've been fighting for so many.
This is like Israel and the Palestinians.
Okay?
There are only one difference.
Maybe the hatred's even greater.
Is that possible?
Maybe not.
But this is a very, very serious hatred that's come over many years.
I campaigned in ending the endless wars.
We're all over the world fighting wars.
Half the places, nobody even knows what they're doing over there.
And I feel that we are doing the right thing, and I think the country feels that too.
We've had tremendous support outside of the Washington, Little Washington area.
And even in Washington, people are saying you're doing the right thing.
A lot of people are saying he's not doing the right thing.
So that's not entirely true.
Listen, Kurt came under a lot of fire.
Kurt Schlichter came under a lot of fire because when Obama pulled out of Iraq, fulfilling a campaign promise, which I had said his campaign promise was wrong, fulfilling it was wrong.
Kurt attacked Obama for fulfilling his campaign promise.
And with Trump, he says, oh, well, he's fulfilling his campaign promise and we've got to get out of these endless wars.
I don't attack Kurt for that.
Kurt has said to me on this show, and he has said to me privately, these are not the same guys.
I don't trust Obama to stand up for America.
I think Obama is working against our best interests.
I'm not judging them on the same terms.
I'm going to be more defensive of what Trump does than I am of what Obama does.
That's politics.
I agree with him.
I agree with him.
You make excuses for your guy if he's standing up for America.
However, your excuses have to make sense.
And some of these things do not make sense.
Here's what doesn't make sense to me.
The endless war argument doesn't make sense.
If we've got 250 people keeping the peace in a foreign country, that's not a bad thing.
That is looking forward to what that's saying, basically if we take them out, it will get worse and we'll have to go back.
So having a few guys over there, I know they're at risk.
I know they're not my children.
I know it's not me.
And that's fine to say that, but that doesn't make it wrong.
And it doesn't mean I have to shut up about it.
It's still my country.
They're still my fellow Americans.
And they're a volunteer army.
These guys want to do the job.
They like their allies, the Kurds.
When I was in Afghanistan, they worked with, what do they call them?
TERPs, interpreters who were Afghanis.
They liked them.
They knew that they were operating out of self-interest like the Kurds, but they also knew that they were good guys who were helping them out.
And so they don't want to abandon them.
It breaks their heart to fight shoulder to shoulder with these guys and walk away from them.
So those arguments, the endless war argument, doesn't really make sense.
Keeping the campaign promise, again, doesn't make sense.
The thing about Trump is he has kept a lot of campaign promises.
He has been really good.
The judges, the taxes, the regulations, the economy.
He's even building the wall very quietly.
He's building a lot of wall.
He's rebuilding and building the wall.
We would have forgiven Trump if he had said, look, now that I'm here behind the Oval Office.
He said this once before.
I think it was about Afghanistan.
He said, now that I'm here in the Oval Office, things look different.
I have to change my mind.
We'd have forgiven him for that.
If the campaign promise is wrong, shouldn't keep it.
I got to be honest with you.
What I care about is American freedom.
I don't get sentimental about the Kurds.
They don't keep me up at night.
I'm going to be honest about it.
I think we should be true to our allies.
So the brave Kurds and what great friends they are, I think that's right, but I'm not sentimental about it.
I'm much more worried about your freedoms being taken away, my freedoms being taken away, than I am about the Kurds.
But as a practical matter, if we expect people to coordinate with us and work with us, they have to be able to trust us at least to some degree to know that we're not going to pull out.
He didn't say to the Kurds, get the hell out of that region.
He didn't say, I'm going to give you a week, two weeks to pull out to move the prisoners back from the northern border and let Erdoyan have his border.
He didn't say those things.
That's the way you handle that.
And he didn't do it.
And that was wrong.
All right.
And the other thing that does make sense was what he said was these, we don't want our guys, even though it's not an endless war, we don't want our soldiers entangled in a war that's so complex we don't even know what we're fighting for.
All in all, my feeling right now when I parse all these different arguments, what makes sense and what doesn't, is I feel that Trump made a mistake, all right?
He's operating on his isolationist instincts, which I respect.
I don't entirely agree with him, but I respect that he's the commander-in-chief.
He was elected.
He's an isolationist, basically.
He wants out.
He does not want to be tangled in these things.
However, however, if ISIS rises up again because of this, it is on him.
And it will be a nightmare for us because our guys have to go back in and start fighting again.
And this time, it's going to be very hard to convince the Kurds to come with us, okay?
So I think this was ill-considered.
I think he could have done it in a different way.
He could have backed the Kurds up.
He could have said, look, you're going to have to give this border zone to Erdoyan because he's got a terrorist problem and he is our NATO ally.
He could have done this in a rational way, but he did it like in this Trumpian way.
And I think that was a mistake.
I am not a hawk.
I got to tell you something.
I am like happy not to be at war at any time.
I'm happy for our guys to be doing drills in some fort in Tennessee.
I do not need them overseas getting shot at for no reason.
I understand.
I'm at the age where I understand this is somebody's son.
I want that guy as safe as he can possibly be, except when he has to do his job, just like a cop.
I want our cops to be safe, but I know sometimes they have to do dangerous stuff.
So Mike Duran from the Hoover Institute made a big argument in the Wall Street Journal.
I wanted him to come on today to discuss it.
He believes that Trump is doing the right thing.
He's traveling today.
He'll be on on Monday, and we'll give him a shot to tell us the other side of the story.
But right now, I have to say that rationally, I think Trump made a mistake because I think he's risking the rise of ISIS again.
That's mainly it.
I think he's risking the rise of ISIS again and making it very hard for us to keep faith with our allies so that they'll come back and fight for us.
And that means we'll have a bigger problem on our hand.
You know, if you rip off a band-aid and your cut gets infected, it's a bigger problem.
I think that's what he did.
But we'll listen to Mike on Monday and we'll find out if there's a better argument that I'm not quite seeing.
NBA Statement on Hong Kong00:02:11
Basketball, the NBA is just covering itself in shame and it's doing it with intensity and it's doing it with passion and drive.
And it is disgusting.
More basketball fans are saying that they took pro-Hong Kong signs to a game and they were confiscated.
Two Sixer fans say they were booted from a game because of their free Hong Kong signs.
The NBA put out a statement on Sunday night in both English and Chinese.
And apparently, I can't translate it, but apparently people who can say they were two different statements.
Remember, this started when the Houston Rockets general manager, Darrell Murray, put out a pro-Hong Kong tweet.
It said something like, free Hong Kong.
And the NBA has been apologizing profusely over and over again about this.
And so they put out a tweet in English that said, we recognize that the views expressed by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Murray have deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable.
But on the other side, in the Chinese version, it says we feel greatly disappointed at Houston Rockets DM Daryl Murray's inappropriate speech, which is regrettable.
And I mean, that's pretty squirrely.
Tucker Carlson had Jason Whitlock on, who has a Fox sports show called Speak for Yourself.
I have to be honest, I've never saw him before, but he is obviously a highly, highly intelligent and insightful guy.
And this is what he said about this.
You really have to understand the shoe companies, Nike, Adidas, they run American basketball from the high school level all the way to the pros.
And the shoe companies are dependent on the China market.
And that's where all of this is coming from.
You see NBA players constantly over the summer during their offseason running to China to do the bidding of their shoe companies and to sell their shoes in the China market.
And so the NBA is really being exposed as not nearly as much of American business as it is a global business, with China perhaps having more influence over it than even America.
So this exposes, Guy is obviously really on top of this.
He knows what he's talking about.
Globalism's Moral Flaw00:04:14
This exposes to me the flaw in the globalist free trade argument that Trump has been attacking and the people who have attacked Trump for it are clearly in the wrong.
When I complain about the fact that all this globalism left our workers in the middle of the country out of work, their communities destroyed, their families on opiates and killing themselves on heroin and killing themselves in all kinds of self-destructive way, other ways using other means of self-destruction.
And right-wingers, conservatives said to me, oh, hey, it's free trade.
It's free.
What are you going to do?
You're going to let the government control.
What's the matter?
Are you going to let the government control the economy?
Crap.
It's crap.
You know, free trade is not the answer to everything.
And capitalism itself is not the answer to everything.
If you don't act morally within a system, the system doesn't matter.
I don't care.
And all the people who write to me about Ayn Rand, when I say you write a book in which an architect blows up an orphanage because he's offended that his artistic vision wasn't fulfilled, crap.
I mean, I'm sorry.
I am sorry.
This is irrational.
Let me explain.
You know, principle is a funny thing.
People talk about you have to stand on your principles, but you got to stand on your principles in the world, right?
Your world, the principles exist in your head.
In principle, I'm against welfare.
I'm against the welfare state in principle.
I don't see why anybody in the government knows any better how to spend my money than I do.
I made the money.
It's my money.
It's not Nancy Pelosi's money.
It's not AOC's money.
Look at AOC.
Do you think she knows how to do anything better than I do except put on cosmetics?
No.
You know, these people are not morally better than you are.
They're not smarter than you are.
They don't know more than you do.
It's your money.
You know how to spend it.
You know what you want to say.
They don't have any right to control your speech.
They don't have any right to control your actions except to protect other people.
I am in favor of freedom.
I'm against the welfare state.
However, however, if you remove the welfare state entirely, people will not support freedom.
They will get panicked and afraid the minute the market goes down, the minute the job, the minute the job market collapses, the minute the economy gets bad, they will panic.
We have seen this throughout history.
The welfare state, a little bit of it, keeps people from panicking, gives them a safety net so they're not starving in the streets.
It matters.
It keeps my greater principle alive to compromise my principle a little bit.
That's real life.
That is real life.
That's how it works.
It is not.
It is not rational to stick to principles if they destroy the greater principle.
It makes no sense.
And so what you're seeing now with the NBA betraying everything about America for their stupid sneakers, for their stupid sneakers, what you're seeing is the flaw in the system.
If you don't stand first on moral righteousness, on righteousness, then you are not going to get anywhere.
And if you don't do that in a real world way, you're also not going to get anywhere.
It's simply that.
And this is why I've been yelling at the right about this and why I have had sympathy with what Trump is saying and what his voters are saying.
Raycon, I just got some new Raycon earbuds and I really like these things.
First of all, they work as good as the most popular version of earbuds and you don't look like an insect when you wear them.
They're attractive and they're comfortable.
You can shift the size of the thing that goes in your ear.
The ones that they make normally, you just get one size and they don't really fit me very well.
The latest model is their best one yet.
It's got six hours of playtime, seamless Bluetooth pairing, more bass and a more compact design that gives you a nice noise isolating fit.
They really are.
They really are terrific things.
Go listening.
Unlike some of your other wireless options, Raycon earbuds are both stylish and discreet with no dangling wires or stems.
As I say, you don't look like an insect.
I really like these things and they're fun to wear.
Now's the time to get the latest and greatest from Raycon.
You can get 15% off your order at buyraycon.com slash clavin.
That's buy as an B-U-Y.
Buyraycon.com slash Clavin for 15% off Raycon wireless earbuds buyraycon.com slash clavin.
You can even tap them and say, how do you spell clavin?
People Getting Screwed00:15:35
They won't answer.
But the answer is K-L-V-A-N.
They can't do everything.
They give you good sound.
They can't do everything.
Let's move on to one more story talking about people getting screwed.
Americans basketball fans are getting screwed.
The Kurds have gotten screwed.
And now I want to talk about the women who are getting screwed over at NBC.
Ronan Farrow's new expose is coming out.
It's called Catch and Kill, Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators.
And he is outlining, some of this has been released, and some of the stuff in the Ronan Farrow book has been released.
And he's outlining the connections between Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, who was said to have been abusing woman after woman at NBC, and the Clintons.
Harvey Weinstein, a big Clinton aide.
OK, so here is Savannah Guthrie talking about the latest charge that comes out in this book.
In this book, a one of Meredith Vera's interns says that she got drunk, went to Matt Lauer's room and that he forcibly sodomized her, even though she was crying and saying she didn't want to do it.
that she bled afterwards for days, and she feels that she was raped.
And here's Savannah Guthrie reacting to that.
You know, this is shocking and appalling.
And I honestly don't even know what to say about it.
I want to say that we, I know it wasn't easy for our colleague Brooke to come forward then.
It's not easy now.
And we support her and any women who have come forward with claims.
And it's just very painful for all of us at NBC and who are at the Today Show.
And, you know, it's very, very, very difficult.
See, I don't think that's enough.
And I'll tell you why.
Okay.
First of all, Lauer put out a letter saying the story Brooke tells is filled with false details.
Brooke is the intern, intended only to create the impression this was an abusive encounter.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I'm laughing because he's such a stinker.
There was absolutely nothing aggressive about that encounter.
Brooke did not do anything or say anything to object.
She certainly didn't cry.
She was a full, enthusiastic and willing partner.
And this encounter, which she now falsely claims was an assault, was the beginning of our affair.
He says he's just trying to get money out of him.
Now, I just want to point out that this was soshi, so it's 2014 during the Olympics.
I just want to point out that Matt Lauer is married with three kids.
So the argument that, no, I didn't forcibly sodomize her, it was just the beginning of an affair, he's still a piece of garbage, right?
He's still like a guy who was abusing his power.
So, you know, I don't know.
I wasn't there.
Listen, ladies, I'm not blaming her, but don't have six vodkas and go to a man's room.
That's a stupid thing to do.
It doesn't let him off the hook in any way, in any shape or form.
But come on, you know, I mean, that's like walking down a dark alley at three in the morning.
You get mugged.
It's the mugger's fault, but you shouldn't have done it.
But still, still, the guy is clearly abusive.
The rest of this story, right?
Harvey Weinstein tried to stop Ronan Farrow from getting the story on him, right?
By, first of all, by saying to NBC that he would expose Matt Lauer if they didn't pull Ronan Farrow, who worked for NBC at the time, off.
Ronan Farrow says NBC did everything they could to stop him from getting the Weinstein story.
And Weinstein had Clinton's PR person called them up and said, this is a concern for us.
This big story you're working on is a concern for us, the story about Harvey Weinstein, because Harvey Weinstein was a big donor.
So you've got Hillary Clinton's people trying to stop Farrow from getting this story.
You've got Harvey Weinstein going to NBC and using the fact that they've got a corrupt abuser on their staff and saying, you've got to stop Farrow from doing this.
Farrow claiming that NBC is trying to stop him.
This system, this network is corrupt to itself.
It's corrupt to its DNA.
The news network, NBC News.
I'm not talking about the entertainment side, which may have been totally different, but the NBC News side is corrupt down to its shoes.
And the reason it's corrupt is for a very similar reason to the reason the NBA is corrupt is because they put their politics above human beings.
If you think, you know, this is basic Christianity, all right?
Jesus says at one point, he says, the two most important commandments are love God and love your neighbor.
And all the scriptures are based on that.
All the scriptures are based on love God and love your neighbor.
So if you're reading the scripture and you're saying, oh, this gives me the right to abuse some guy because he's gay, or this gives me the right to abuse some guy because he's immoral, he's not a Christian, you're reading them wrong.
You're reading them wrong.
You've got to go back to the basic principles.
This is the same with the free market.
It's the same with your precious woke politics, okay?
Whatever you think you're doing that is right, that is causing you to cover up this kind of behavior, it's wrong.
This is the thing.
That's the principle you've got to stick with.
When I talk about sticking with principle, the principle of free market is great.
Principle of capitalism, great.
Principle about being against welfare, great.
But if you are not paying attention to human beings as they are in the image of God and broken and sinful and a problem, if you're not paying attention to that and making sure that you're acting in love, you are not making sense.
And that's where NBC went wrong and that's where the NBA went wrong.
And that's where it may be that Trump has gone wrong in Syria.
We'll see about that.
We have to see what happens now.
If ISIS doesn't explode again, I'll be happy to take it back and we'll have Duran on on Monday and talk about it.
But these guys, the NBA and NBC, for all their wokeness, they are corrupt to the core and they really need to reconsider.
Let us bring on Charlie Kirk, a really good interview.
I want you to hear it, so I'm not going to break away, but please go on dailywire.com and subscribe.
You'll get another kingdom early.
You'll get the new, you can go on the new long-awaited Daily Wire app.
If you're a subscriber, you can access all of our content on this new app.
You get the articles, shows, and more straight from the app.
And if you go up another level and you're an all-access subscriber, you can get our new and exclusive discussion features where they interact directly with our hosts, writers, and other special guests.
The app is available on Apple and Android.
So download today, become a subscriber, and join the fun.
Charlie Kirk, you know him.
He's the founder and executive director of Turning Point USA.
TPUSA, it's a national student movement focusing on empowering young people to promote the principles of free markets and limited government.
He's also a best-selling author.
He was featured on Forbes 30 Under 30 and was the youngest speaker at the 2016 RNC.
We had a great talk.
Here he is.
Charlie Kirk, thank you so much for coming in.
It's great to see you again.
Thank you.
It's such an honor.
I listen to your podcast regularly.
You're brilliant and witty and it's an honor to be on the show.
Oh, well, thank you.
That stuff will rot your mind.
You got to liberate it.
Or liberate your mind.
Enlightened.
So tell me, I keep reading about you.
I keep seeing all this stuff on Twitter and everything about TPUSA, Turning Point USA.
What are you up to?
So I founded this organization seven and a half years ago.
We're a high school and college organization focused on educating and empowering students around very radical ideas such as American exceptionalism, free enterprise, and the Constitution.
So I get hurled the worst things in the world you could possibly imagine, insulted by the left.
The basics of this is that we believe that we're in the midst of an American culture war and the winners of this culture war will set the trajectory and set the bearings of the future of our country for the next many generations.
And never before have we had such an insurgency from within where a generation that has so much to be thankful for, does not embrace gratitude, but instead anger and the lack of gratitude.
And a generation that has so much blessing, so much opportunity, so much access to information, yet they choose by a default position hostility and the rejection of what has made this the greatest country and the greatest experiment in the history of the world.
And so our sales, you know, our sales pitch, if you will, or our kind of mission is to try to get students not to blame other people for their problems, but to look inwardly, to not say that government should solve all whatever they think is wrong with the world.
Well, large in part, it's government that actually has caused these problems.
But even more specifically, We believe that when people are allowed the opportunity to be free, then flourishing happens.
It's a tough sales pitch.
It's a lot easier to say, I'm going to give you a bunch of free stuff.
I'm going to take money from this person and give it to that person.
That feels good, but it doesn't always do good.
Right, right.
So when I visit universities, one of the things that strikes me is these kids have been stripped of their heritage, that they're not really taught what America is, where it came from, why.
They sort of feel all this freedom and wealth and power just kind of dropped on them because they're such wonderful people.
How do you educate them?
How do you turn that around?
So it's difficult.
So first and foremost, there's a multi-decade indoctrination campaign that now begins when students are two or three years old, not even students.
I mean, they're young kids.
And it's through the Disney movies and it's through Hollywood.
And you've done a wonderful job of kind of picking that apart and talking about the validity of telling better stories.
And you deserve to be commended.
I remember you talked at a retreat five or six years ago when I was first getting Turning Point started when conservatives weren't as critical as Hollywood as they should have been.
And you really spotted kind of how cancerous Hollywood has been to our culture.
So look, here's the difficulty is that how do you teach gratitude and how do you teach students to say, hey, this is actually exceptional.
The default position of the world is actually not that your life will get better and your kids' life will get better and your grandkids' life will get better.
In fact, you're usually born into some form of a caste system.
And the lack of freedom is actually the default position for a majority of the world.
And even the countries that have some forms of freedom, they don't have it like we have it here, where you have freedom of expression, freedom of private property, the freedom to have private property.
And so it's really interesting because I have, there's this unique entitlement that exists in upper middle class college students that have been given everything by their parents or by society that now tell us, that tell me and tell us that our country is racist, bigoted, homophobic, all these horrible things.
So there's some very logical ways that you can cross-examine it, such as for such a horrible country, why does the caravan go north to America, not south to Venezuela, right?
Why do people flee Havana, Cuba for Miami, Florida, but they're not fleeing Miami, Florida for Havana, Cuba?
If you have to keep people from leaving your country, you generally don't have a great country.
And so these are all very logical, rational ways to approach it, and we do do this.
But even beyond that, students will say, Charlie, I see so much suffering, see so much horrible things in the world.
How am I supposed to go about doing that?
And you have to tell a brutal truth that if you actually want to change the world, you probably won't, but you could change yourself.
And I always laugh, and this is one of Jordan Peterson's biggest things.
He talks about, I'll have these kids that they are very, they're very, let's just say, convicted to tell me how to live my life, but they've never done anything wrong, ever.
You can never dare question them.
And I'm sure you experienced that as well.
Well, I always wonder about these guys of the cancel culture who come out and say, you know, you won the Heisman, but three years ago you sent a tweet.
Have these guys never said anything that they were doing?
No, they're perfect.
No, they're absolutely perfect people.
So one of the things I worry about, and I think a lot of people worry about this, Donald Trump, who I've kind of warmed up to over the years, I really disliked him when he started running, and then I've seen the way he's, I think he's done a good job as president.
But he's very off-putting to a lot of people.
And I think this, especially to people who are very sensitive, who are, as they say, snowflakes, you know, his blunt, sometimes even borish style puts people off.
Is that hurting you?
Is Trump hurting you in the universities or is he helping you?
It might surprise you to hear, since his presidency, we have seen an explosion in membership growth, interest, and students getting involved.
That's very encouraging.
And we have to turn away more students than we're able to accept into some of these rooms.
I was just at University of Adorino recently.
They had to open up the extra room behind just to allow for enough seats.
I'm a huge supporter of the president.
And I defend what he's done for this country.
I understand the philosophical basis of what his presidency represents, which is a reclamation of a corrupt government and a corrupt city-state.
Of course, and you and I agree on all these things.
You're talking about style.
No, and I understand all that.
And there are people that focus heavily on the style, not on the substance.
But more than anything else, we have more people, more young people that are interested in political conversation debate than ever before.
And I think that's a positive thing.
Now, there's a lot of misinformation around his presidency and around conservatives in general.
But when I would rather have students out there protesting me than not being involved in politics at all.
And that's quite a statement when you think about it.
I would rather have activism than apathy.
Okay.
Because at least they're part of the conversation.
At least people are interested and they're engaged.
And President Trump has done a tremendous job of that.
And I will say, in the early stages of Turning Point USA, we'd always talk about what conservative policies would look like.
It was very theoretical.
Now, we could point to certain states.
We could point to the success stories in Wisconsin or Michigan and contrast that with, I don't know, California, that has been a disaster.
But now we can say this is what happens when a conservative president cuts taxes, cuts regulation, when you have a booming economy, when you stand with your allies, you stand with Israel, you stand up to Iran, all of a sudden you're able to say this is no longer in theory, this is in practice.
Lowest ever black unemployment rate, lowest ever black poverty rate, all these sorts of things.
It's no longer in theory.
And it becomes a lot easier to be able to sell the ideas of free enterprise and American exceptionalism to a generation that is told that these things are not possible and not the correct public policy to pursue.
When people protest you, can you engage them or will they just shout you down?
Most of them will just try to shout me down.
So we have a rule, and I got this rule from the great Ben Shapiro that if you disagree, you're allowed to go to the front of the line and ask a question.
Despite that, I get interrupted all the time.
At my last campus event, five different times I was interrupted by different student protesters.
When they did that, I said, can you please come to the front of the line and let's have a conversation?
They want nothing of the sort.
But I'm convinced that they're doing it because it makes them feel good.
It makes them feel morally righteous.
It's virtue signaling in practice is really what it is.
Now, when you actually are able to have a conversation, have a rational conversation about, well, why do you feel that way?
What have I said that you might think is hateful?
They're never actually able to cite any specifics whatsoever.
And so, but if we are the ambassadors of decency and respect and discussion, which we should be, eventually those radicals will get pushed out of the general consensus of conversation.
What I love is I have these events, and I go very hard about the American after the American left, because the American left, they do not go out of their way to expel demons from their ranks or to denounce radicalism within their movement.
They are, they just become more radical.
Precisely.
Or they actually embrace it, and they are okay with it.
So what I find is there's these liberals that come up in line and they'll ask a question.
They always do this.
Charlie, I just want to make sure you get clear.
I'm not like them.
That's not what I stand for.
And I kind of laugh inside.
I say, well, good.
At least now you're beginning the process of what we conservatives have to do every single day.
We have to say first and foremost, we reject all these hateful ideologies.
This is what we're not and this is what we're for.
Radical Left's Evolution00:06:08
And we're actually forcing the American left to hopefully become more moderate and to become more decent.
But I will say this, that we end up finding more agreement with students who think they are liberal and think they're leftist.
Despite all the hostility and the backlash, there is more curiosity than there is combativeness.
There are more students.
The American socialists on campus, they are decreasing in number, but they're increasing in volume.
So there's some positive to that and some negatives to that.
And more students think they are liberal when they're actually more libertarian than they are liberal.
They don't trust the government.
They don't trust big power institutions have a lot of power.
And they think being a Bernie Sanders leftist or an Elizabeth Warren leftist is being on the side of freedom.
They truly believe that because the college professors are very smart.
They say, well, true freedom is being able to not have to worry about where your health care is coming from.
Right.
Right.
Are you really free?
Are you really free so you don't have everything given to you?
So the right, let's call it, just say the Republican Party for a minute.
The Republican Party has been very solidly in support of Donald Trump.
And one of the things that has been very encouraging is in spite of all the impeachment stuff and all the dirt they throw at him, the Republican Party has held their ground.
But the Republican Party is getting smaller.
And one of the reasons I think it's getting smaller is the demographics in the country are changing.
And young people are basically instructed from almost from the cradle that this is the evil party.
I was when I was growing up, I was told these are the evil guys.
Do you see with your eyes any sign that that is going to change?
That these guys, I'm talking about numbers, that numbers of growing numbers of people will switch over.
So I'm going to push back a little bit.
Okay.
And you might enjoy it.
So why is the left becoming more radical?
And so my answer to that is a little unconventional.
Some people would say, well, they're embracing their roots.
I think there's some truth to that.
Yeah, it's built into the system.
If you're progressive, you've got to progress.
Sure.
I think there's another explanation, though, that Donald Trump took their original base away from them.
That pipe fitters, plumbers, people that didn't have a four-year college degree.
So I break the Democrat Party into, and this is, I didn't come up with this, but there's the beer part of the Democrat Party and the wine part of the Democrat Party, two different kind of quadrants.
Donald Trump has taken away a lot of the beer-drinking Democrats away.
And that's a positive thing.
So if you were to break American politics oversimplified into four quadrants, upper right quadrant would be social conservatives and fiscal conservatives.
The left quadrant would be social conservatives, but more fiscal liberals.
And then the bottom left would be all just liberals on every issue.
And then the bottom right would be kind of more libertarians and more kind of the establishment type Republicans, where they'd be fiscally conservative, socially liberal.
Donald Trump has gone into a quadrant that no Republican president has been able to go into successfully since Ronald Reagan in the 80s and a little bit of George W. Bush in 04 with his socially conservative stance, which is the Reagan Democrats.
And so I believe firmly that what Donald Trump has done is he has positioned himself for better as I am the candidate that will stand against the corrupt institution of Washington, D.C., which I have full agreement with.
And I'm going to stand for people that work for a living.
And I think we, as Republican conservatives, got a little bit away from the success of the Reagan Revolution.
Yeah, no, no.
Henry Olson says the same thing.
Yeah, in the sense, and I totally agree with Henry Olson when he says this, where there is something to be said that not everyone wants to start a business in America.
That the GOP talking points at times, like the Mitt Romney 2012 convention, says, yes, I did build that.
That's a great talking point for GOP donors.
And I actually think that entrepreneurs and billionaires are the basis in the backbone of a vibrant market economy.
I actually think billionaires should exist, unlike Britain.
Yeah, exactly.
But when people see that, yes, I did build that.
And there's a teacher that looks at that.
They say, that doesn't resonate with me.
Like, what does that mean?
Or a veteran.
I mean, okay, that's fine.
What does resonate with them is when President Trump says, drain the swamp, or let's make this country great once again.
So I would push back a little bit where I think in some ways the Republican Party has lost some appeal with suburban women and lost some appeal with younger people.
Well, that's what I'm talking about.
You're the people you're talking about.
Right, and younger people, and especially younger people of color.
There are certain portions of the population, though, that the students that we deal with, I will tell you right now that President Trump is far better for the young conservative movement than President Mitt Romney would have been.
Because he's bold, he's courageous, he's delivered on his promises.
He stands up to corrupt institutions such as Hollywood, the media, the cultural left.
They like this.
Of course.
Because young conservatives or young Christians that tend to be more conservative, they are under constant and hourly, if not minute-by-minute assault by the left for why they believe what they believe.
There's one thing that I think everyone can agree on that's even on the center right.
Donald Trump is the most effective anti-leftist president in American history.
No question about it.
He's amazing this way.
And this is the best thing about him.
Yeah, and so like Reagan united the conservative movement against the Soviets, right?
against the idea of communism where the libertarians, the establishment Republicans and the movement conservatives all played very nicely together because of the existential and real threat of Soviet communism and the revitalization of America.
President Trump, I think, has done the same thing where now the cultural left is the modern day equivalent of the Soviet Union, where where I think they actually interesting.
Well, I believe it that I think they actually pose a similar threat within our country.
Not militarily, I don't mean it that way, but culturally.
And in some ways, if they're able to get half of my generation to believe that we're a racist, bigoted, homophobic, horrible country, that's more harm and damage than an existential force could possibly ever do.
All right, I'm out of time.
I got one minute.
Tell me this.
What keeps you up at night?
What's your biggest problem?
My biggest problem, I believe that the left controls so much that they're not going to play fair.
Voter machines, lines of communication, social media, you name it.
And that really bothers me.
That potentially worries me.
It's tough.
That's tough.
It's nice to know you're out there.
I think you're doing a great job, and I really think you have a shot.
Matt Wall Show Highlights00:02:05
Thanks for the opportunity.
It's really good talking to you.
All right.
Really interesting conversation.
I really like the guy, and I think, you know, he's doing the work that has to be done.
No question about that.
I got to stop.
We're out of time.
But, you know, I wanted to mention, I was talking about the app and all-access membership.
If you are an all-access member to Daily Wire, Knowles and I will be on an Ask Me Anything session.
I think it's noon, is it, guys?
It's noon tomorrow, Pacific time, about Another Kingdom.
We will be talking, answering questions about another kingdom and attacking each other and probably insulting each other as New Yorkers must do.
Other than that, I will be back.
Listen to Another Kingdom.
It'll get you through the Clavenless weekend.
There are three episodes now.
There'll be another episode out today for subscribers.
That could get you through the entire Clavenless weekend.
Otherwise, you are doomed.
But survivors gather here on Monday.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Claven Show.
Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe.
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 Wall 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.
On the Matt Wall Show, we're not just discussing politics.
We're talking culture, faith, family, all of the things that are really important to you.