Ep. 785 dissects Blizzard’s Diablo 4 as a metaphor for corporate betrayal, then pivots to Trump’s re-election risks amid GOP infighting over Syria and Pelosi’s alleged Russia ties, while Kimberly Strassel exposes "Obamagate" surveillance abuses. The Horowitz report is framed as a distraction from deeper FBI/DOJ scandals, with Republicans unified against partisan impeachment—yet warns of precedent-setting institutional damage. A shift to culture critiques Democratic atheism ads and Pew’s 12% Christian decline, tying secularization to progressive policies like late-term abortion, before ending with a call for religious revival as a counterforce. [Automatically generated summary]
Video game company Blizzard Entertainment is trying to win back fan support after it came under fire for banning a gamer who cheered on the Hong Kong freedom fighters.
The company released a statement saying, yes, it was true, it had abandoned every principle of decency and political morality for profit.
And yes, it had betrayed the cause of liberty in order to bury its fat corporate face in piles of yuan like a giant hog looking for truffles.
And yes, no gamer with even a moderately active conscience would ever consider spending money on one of its products ever again.
But never mind all that, they'll be bringing out a new version of Diablo.
So hooray!
Diablo 4, this time we suck, will be released in time for Christmas in order to squeeze every single penny out of any gamer so mired in moral slime he would think of buying it.
The new game follows the journey of the hero Crapheart, who fights for the forces of good.
Unless there's money to be made, then screw it.
Crapheart's enemy is the evil demon Diablo, who has unleashed an unholy conspiracy to give people in Hong Kong human rights, even though their wonderful Chinese overlords treat them so kindly, it's impossible to imagine why they would even need human rights.
In the final battle, Crap Hart and Diablo meet in the skies above the Great Wall and are about to come to blows when Diablo offers Crap Hart a couple of bucks and the hero goes home figuring what's the use of fighting evil if it's just going to offend people.
And anyway, look how much money I made.
Blizzard says it will also team up with the NBA and NFL to create the new sports franchise Kowtow Like a bitch, in which players kneel on one knee during the American national anthem to demonstrate their political courage in the face of absolutely no consequences and then kneel on both knees to apologize to the tyrants of Beijing lest they lose even a single paycheck.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Hoorah Hooray Conflict00:02:54
I'm the hunky donkey.
Life is tickety boo.
Birds are winging, also singing hunky donkey.
Ship-shaped dipsy topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
All right, I'm back, you know, but one of the things I like about traveling is it gives me a chance to talk to people outside of the chattering class echo chamber.
And one of the things I hear most often from conservative people or Republican people is a fear that Trump's sometimes over-the-top behavior will hurt him in the polls when policy-wise he's doing a good job.
I worry about that too.
I see Trump caught in a Trumpian bind.
If he weren't Trump, he wouldn't have won in the first place, but being so much Trump could cost him the second term, which could cost us our freedom by turning the country over to a now radical Democrat Party, a party much farther over the top in practice than Trump is in performance.
But it's not just the election the people I talk to worry about.
They're also concerned about the traditional cowardice of Republicans.
They're worried Republicans will do what they have done for decades, cave in to the media narrative, and in this case, back the Democrats in their bogus impeachment charade.
The press is pushing for that with all their biased polls saying Americans want Trump removed, which I don't believe for a second.
Their op-eds telling Republicans history will condemn them, and their anonymous source stories saying the GOP is sweating bullets as the impeachment drive gains steam.
It's bunkum, meant to make the Republicans break ranks as they always have in the past.
See Nixon, Richard.
We on the right ask a lot of Republicans.
We ask them to adhere to the founders' vision of a limited government when they're in government and therefore naturally prone to let it grow.
When Republicans actually do stand up for the founding principles, they're swimming against the tide of human nature, history, and government itself.
It's a lot easier for Democrats.
They're just riding the waterfall into the usual top-down governance that works really well if you like slavery, poverty, and world wars.
Trump, in his craziness, sometimes on purpose, sometimes as an act of strategy, swims upstream toward freedom.
It's the thing I like and admire about him most.
And as a freedom guy, I stand with Trump against the socialist Democrats, even when I disagree with some of what Trump says and does.
I'm a simple man.
If the football is moving toward the freedom goalposts, no think tank or intellectual theory or self-aggrandizing moral stance is going to convince me things would be better if the football were moving in the opposite direction.
That just doesn't make sense.
And I don't know what Republicans will do, but I know this.
If they abandon this president over this Ukraine nonsense, it will be the end of their party and their individual careers.
I think it'll be the end of the party forever.
This is politics.
You can't dump your leader for a daydream.
There is no constituency for ditching Trump and freedom to save your political backside.
All right, we're going to talk about what's going on.
Nancy Pelosi's Pattern00:17:26
A lot of hilarious news and some not as hilarious as others, but let's talk about calming comfort.
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All right, two pieces of news I'm not going to cover because they're just breaking.
One is that there is apparently a Brexit deal.
It obviously has to be voted on.
Really interesting, but I just don't have the details yet and I haven't had a chance to really study it.
So we'll talk about that next week.
And the other, of course, is the death of Elijah Cummings, which, you know, what can you say?
The man is dead, a big Trump foe, a big American story, a guy who came up from being a sharecropper's kid and became a congressman despite all kinds of adversity.
You know, there's political ramifications.
I don't want to parse them before the man is buried and gone.
And obviously, I disagreed with him on almost everything, but he's beyond, just as obviously, he's beyond my judgment now.
And God bless him and his family.
And we'll come back and look at the politics of that later.
But let's look at the politics of what was going on.
It was a big show.
Oh, and by the way, if I haven't mentioned it, Kimberly Strassel is going to be here.
And we're going to stay on so you can watch that.
She has been doing an amazing job, an amazing job of covering both ObamaGate and the nonsense of this Ukraine impeachment.
She is probably the best reporter on what Obama did in spying on Donald Trump.
We'll talk to her about that.
She's got a new book out called Resistance at All Costs, How Trump Haters Are Breaking America.
And we'll talk to her about that as well.
If you're not reading her Friday column in the Wall Street Journal, you really should.
It's indispensable stuff.
The House Republicans deserted Trump yesterday to oppose his withdrawal of troops from Syria.
I'm reading this part of this from the Wall Street Journal.
They passed a House measure.
It passed by a 354 to 60 vote, unanimously backed by Democrats and joined by 129 Republicans in a rare display of GOP opposition to Trump.
And this was condemning pulling our troops out of Syria and what's going on there now.
Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are in Ankara.
They're going over to talk to Erdoyan.
We're sending all our mics.
Everybody named Mike in the government is headed over there.
And so after the vote, after this vote, there's a meeting.
The congressional leaders with Nancy Pelosi and the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, they met with Trump at the White House, right?
And all of this went out bad.
Trump had just sent Erdoyan this letter.
I got to read you a piece of this letter.
Trump sends the president of Turkey this letter.
Let's work out a good deal.
You don't want to be this Islamic strongman, right?
He says, let's work out a good deal.
You don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy.
History will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way.
It will look upon you forever as a devil if good things don't happen.
Don't be a tough guy.
Don't be a fool.
This is the letter he sends to Erdoyan.
I got to admit, like, I love Trump when he's like this.
I'm not sure it's the right thing to do.
I'm not sure this is going to move.
Erdoyan's looking at this going, what is this guy talking about?
But still, still, you got to love the guy when he's so out there like this.
It is hilarious.
So they go into this meeting, and it's about a 20-minute meeting.
I'm getting some of this from the New York Times.
They had the Democrat side of it.
Obviously, they had the Democrat sources saying what happened, but they reported it pretty fairly, I thought.
So they go in, and Trump is grumpy.
He says, they said you wanted this meeting.
I didn't want this meeting, but I'm doing it.
And several of the lawmakers reply that the White House had reached out to them in efforts to brief them on the administration's Syria policy and they hadn't been briefed.
Trump then passed around this letter he'd sent to Edoyan.
He said, I sent him a nasty letter about what he's doing.
So he's playing it, you know, kind of both ways.
He pulled out, but he told Erdoyan when he pulled out not to get too mean to the Kurds.
And if he did, he was going to hurt their economy.
So now he's trying to get, he's got the mics over there negotiating, and hopefully maybe he can stem what looks to me like a bit of a fiasco.
Looks to me like the Turkish people are out, Turkish army is out of control and a lot of bad stuff is happening.
But it is such a complicated situation because these Kurds, who you keep hearing there are allies.
Yes, there are allies, but they were also part of this communist terrorist group in supporting this communist terrorist group in Turkey, also ostensibly our NATO ally.
And as Mike Doran explained on our program, you may not like Erdoyan.
I don't like Erdoyan, but he's not bad in the context of the region, right?
As these strongmen go, there aren't that many good people there, so we've got to back the guys we can.
So Pelosi says to the president that she tells him about this resolution that they passed condemning him.
And Schumer says, this is Schumer talking.
He says, I told the president that we're particularly aware of the problems, the terrorism that an organization like ISIS couldn't create because we're both from New York.
And he said, he talked about General Mattis saying that ISIS has been enhanced and the danger of ISIS is so much greater.
And according to the Democrats, Trump then said that Mattis was the world's most overrated general.
And he says, you know why?
He wasn't tough enough.
I destroyed ISIS.
Mattis said it would take two years, but it was over in one month.
Okay, and so this conversation just goes downhill from there.
And Pelosi starts saying that the Russians have always wanted a foothold in the Middle East and now you've given it to them.
And Trump says, I hate ISIS more than you do.
And Pelosi says, you don't know that.
And Trump says, you're just a politician, right, to Pelosi.
And Pelosi says, well, I wish you were a politician.
Sometimes I wish you were a politician.
And Mr. Schumer says, Chuck Schumer says, it's no good name-calling.
Trump says, is that a bad name?
Being a politician?
Is being a politician a bad name?
And he then turns to Pelosi and says, you're not a politician.
You're a third-rate politician.
She says he called her a third-grade politician, but obviously it was a third-rate politician.
And she storms out of the room.
So that went well.
I'll give you Pelosi's version of it in just a minute, and then I'll give you Trump's.
But first, let's talk about Express VPN.
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You do not want anybody to know that you're searching how do you spell clavin.
You're supposed to know that by now, and you don't want people mocking you, saying, dude, it's K-L-A-V-A-N.
So let's listen.
Do I have my, yes, I do.
Here's my sheet.
Let's listen to Pelosi describing what happened in the meeting.
This is cut five.
What's really sad about it is I pray for the president all the time, and I tell him that I pray for his safety and that of his family.
I think now we have to pray for his health because this was a very serious meltdown on the part of the president.
I expressed my appreciation for what our troops have done in Syria and by all accounts from the generals.
They have just really done the job very well that he's now pulling out.
The explanation for that is what we asked for all members of the House to hear.
And that was supposed to be tomorrow, but now they somehow postponed it today.
My concern that I expressed to the president is that Russia has for a long time always wanted to have a foothold in the Middle East, and now he has enabled that to happen.
And I have concerns about all roads leading to Putin, whether it's a foothold in the Middle East, whether it's placing in doubt any military assistance to Ukraine, which is to the benefit of Putin, whether it's placing in doubt our commitment to NATO.
See, the one place I disagree with Trump on this is when he calls her, if indeed he called her a third-rate politician.
She's a first-rate politician.
I don't like anything she stands for at all, but she's a first-rate politician.
She went out there and she sold her narrative.
Her narrative, and this is a narrative that they're trying to sell to the Republicans as well behind the scenes.
The narrative is that Trump's mental health is deteriorating.
And you're going to see this coming into the paper more and more because this is what they're selling.
My feeling is: if Trump is going crazy, how would you even know?
How would you know?
Trump is so out there.
Like he would have to be hanging upside down from the chandeliers before I'd say, yeah, that's an odd day.
This was an odd day.
You know, I mean, this is Trump.
Trump is being exactly Trump.
He does what he does.
He's not making any friends.
And this is the thing about him.
He's literally not a politician.
He is not making friends behind the scenes.
This thing in Syria, I mean, even if you just consider the timing of it with this impeachment thing, you know, it is problematic in terms of the timing.
She's selling the thing that he's in league with Putin again, which is just a nonsense.
Come on.
That is just a nonsense.
He has been straight up with Putin.
He's done what he does, but he doesn't care if Putin is in the Middle East.
He wants us out.
That is the thing.
He thinks if Putin goes into the Middle East, the more fool Putin.
That's what he's thinking.
But she's selling that narrative.
So the GOP House leader, the House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, he came out and he pointed out it's a show.
I see a pattern of behavior with Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
She storms out of another meeting, trying to make it unproductive.
The other Democrats stayed and actually had a very productive meeting with the general from the Joint Chiefs, with the Secretary of Defense.
And the president in this meeting stated what his number one goal is, to make sure America is safe.
We talked with the general, listened to the plan.
Very productive between the Democrats who actually stayed in the meeting.
All right.
And let's, so that's, look, obviously that's right.
A politician of Pelosi's quality, and she is a high quality, she is not a third-rate politician, she's a high-quality politician or she wouldn't be where she is.
A politician of her quality does not storm out of a meeting without thinking how it's going to play.
And then there was this picture of her standing up and pointing at Trump before she stormed out.
And Trump tweeted it saying she's out of control.
She lost it.
She totally lost it.
And she put it on her Twitter feed saying, you know, basically saying, oh, look at the feminists, the one woman in the room standing up to the president while the Republicans cower.
So it's all about how you look at it.
That picture is all about how you look at it.
Trump is smart enough to play the narrative his way.
She's smart enough to play the narrative her way.
And we know which way the press will play the narrative.
Here is Trump defending his Syrian policy.
Trump is not articulate when he does this, but I hear what he's saying.
And it's not as if he doesn't have a point of view.
This is cut number two, right?
Our soldiers are not in harm's way, as they shouldn't be, as two countries fight over land.
That has nothing to do with us.
And the Kurds are much safer right now, but the Kurds know how to fight.
And as I said, they're not angels.
They're not angels.
If you take a look, you have to go back and take a look.
But they fought with us.
We paid a lot of money for them to fight with us, and that's okay.
They did well when they fought with us.
They didn't do so well when they didn't fight with us.
When I refused to allow the Americans a year and a half ago to fight with the Kurds against Iraq, I said, wait a minute.
This country stupidly just spent a fortune on fighting for, with, around Iraq.
Nobody knows how they spent it, but they spent actually, we're in the Middle East now for $8 trillion, if you can believe that stupidity.
But in Iraq, we're in for probably $5.5 trillion.
So they're telling me, wait a minute, we just spent $5.5 trillion fighting in Iraq and with Iraq, and now we're supposed to spend money to fight with the Kurds against Iraq.
I said, no, thank you.
See, that's a winning argument for Trump.
The people basically support this.
This is not an issue that's going to hurt him at the polls.
Henry Olson was writing about this in the Washington Post, best poll watcher I know.
The people basically agree with this.
More Republicans than Democrats, but most people agree they do not want American soldiers in harm's way while the people in the Middle East are fighting.
They can understand when it's ISIS and people are getting their heads cut off and they're staging terrorist attacks in America and they're attracting young men from all around the world because they've got a caliphate and they can understand that that's a danger to us.
But now that the danger is gone, they don't want our soldiers there forever.
And you can say, well, you know, we have soldiers stationed in Germany, we have soldiers stationed around the world.
Not the same thing.
This is a volatile area.
People are killing each other over things that we really do not understand as just American voters.
And so this is a winning argument for Trump.
None of this is about Syria.
It's all about the impeachment thing.
What the Democrats realize is because the Republicans, in conscience, are opposing Trump on this, it makes it look like he's being abandoned.
It gives them more power to go in and say, hey, this guy is losing it.
You know, this guy's not doing a good job.
When we impeach him, Yodick, think about having a trial and really maybe going up to Trump behind the scenes and saying, Look, buddy, like Richard Nixon, the same thing they did to Nixon.
You don't want to get impeached and then convicted, so you better leave now or just don't run again.
I don't believe this is going to work for a second.
And I believe if they do, it'll be the end of the Republican Party.
There is no Republican Party that wants Trump gone.
That is not what's happening in the Republican Party.
It's what's happening in the Washington establishment.
The Washington establishment never wants to pull out of wars, always thinks we should be overseas, basically.
And I'm not saying they're wrong about everything.
I'm just saying that that's where they stand.
But the people basically understand they want our soldiers home most of the time.
What this is really about is the impeachment narrative.
And this is the secret star chamber that's going on.
This cannot be, cannot be fair, what they're doing to Trump in this thing where they're interviewing witnesses behind the scenes and then leaking it to the New York Times, what the Democrats want to say.
They leak the parts that the Democrats want to say to the New York Times.
So here's Trump talking about impeachment and why he thinks it's going on.
And this is also an argument that I think will resonate with his voters.
This is cut three.
I'd say this: I think that she's done this country a tremendous disservice.
She's created a phony witch hunt, another one.
First one failed.
They're all failing.
This one is just absolutely crazy.
All you have to do is read the transcript of the call.
Read the transcript.
This is an open and shut, simple case.
They're desperate because they know they're going to lose the election.
They're desperate to do something because they know they're going to lose the election.
This administration has created the strongest economy in the history of our country.
We have the greatest stock market.
We had over 100 times we broke the record for stock market.
People's four, if you look at people's stocks, their 401ks.
If you look at anything you want to look at, they're far better off now than they probably ever have been in this country.
See, this is the thing, and this is why we're going to bring on Kimberly Strassel in just a minute, because she's the one who knows more about it than I think anybody in the country at this point, including the people in Washington.
Delegitimization Campaign Insights00:15:13
Here's the Democrats' problem: their argument is this: their argument is Obama bugging Trump's phone and spying on his campaign, good.
Trump going after Biden corruption, bad.
I don't see how that argument makes any sense.
I do not see how they can make that argument.
Once the IG report comes out from the DOJ, once the Inspector General's report comes out from the Department of Justice about what went on, and once the Department of Justice's investigation into what went on during the campaign in 2016, once that comes out, people are going to look at that and say, well, if Obama was doing that and that's not a problem, why is it a problem that Trump gets on a phone call to the Ukraine and says, look into Hunter Biden a little bit while he's talking about other things.
It's just not going to play.
And that's why this whole Syria mess.
I mean, if Trump were a better politician, if Trump were an actual politician, I don't think he would have done this Syria thing at this moment.
But he's just doing what he's doing.
He's being Trump.
He's always being Trump.
All right, we're going to talk.
Kimberly Strassel will put all of this into context for us.
And like I said, she knows more about it than the people who are actually doing it.
But first, we've got to talk about rockauto.com.
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The first thing you want to do is drive to the auto parts place and just ask them to look in their computer and ask them, how do you spell Clavin?
It's k-l-a-v-a-n.
There are no ease in Clavin.
I just make it look this easy.
Kimberly Strassel, i'm always so happy to talk to her.
Not only do I like her personally, but I really read her friday column in the WALL Street Journal and sometimes unsigned editorials is really the best way to find out what is happening behind the scenes in this investigation to Obamagate.
She has got her new book out is the next book i'm going to read, resistance at all costs, how Trump haters are breaking America.
She's also the author of the best-selling book The Intimidation Game, which I did read, which is just terrific.
Uh, on the ways the Democrats shut people down when they disagree with them.
She writes THE Potomac.
Her column is called Crossing The Potomac.
Potomac watch at the WALL Street Journal on friday.
Anyway Kimberly, you're there.
Yes hi drew, how are you all right?
I'm sorry I can't pronounce your column, the name of your column, no.
So, by the way, I was on a show recently with Greg Gutfeld and he called it the Potomac Watch.
It's all good.
It's all good.
It's a hard column name.
It's a tough column, it is a great column.
It is an unmissable, indispensable column at this point.
Um and uh, and i'm really looking forward to reading resistance at all costs before.
Before we talk about what's happening now in this impeachment thing and the media and what they're doing, before we talk about that, I just want to put it in context with the what Obama did during 2016, because people get confused about it.
It's such a deep uh story with so many different names and moving parts.
Can you give us a simple explanation about what happened during the 2016 election, what the Obama administration and their intelligence services were doing?
Well right, and it's actually quite simple, and I, I put this in the book I I, my working theory is that Jim Comey came down with the first undiagnosed case of trump derangement syndrome.
Um, and because he was a person though, with immense authority and power uh, unlike most Americans, he was able to do something about that, and the way he did it was, he took the unprecedented step of opening a counterintelligence investigation into a sitting presidential campaign.
Um, he did so uh, and and when they they couldn't find anything, they moved on.
They never expected Trump to be president, uh.
When he was elected, uh.
They then moved to try to make this sound better by exploding this narrative out on the public uh, and then maneuvering to get a special counsel, in part, to justify their actions.
Country was put through two years of this pain and agony, only to find out that none of it was true because, by the way, it was largely based on opposition research from the rival Clinton campaign, you know.
But, and along the way, we had American Citizens who were surveilled.
I heard you say earlier about the double standard with Trump asking about Biden corruption.
That kind of almost made me laugh because this is so small by comparison to what the Democrats did.
In fact, the only way it would be equal is if Trump had ordered his FBI to open investigation into Biden and was currently wiretapping Biden's campaign, which, by the way, I would like to say for the record, I hope is not happening and I don't think is happening.
But, you know, that's the magnitude of the goal here.
That is what gets me.
Now, how much of this do you think will be in the IG report?
And how much of it do you think will be in the Durham report?
I mean, obviously, the Durham report is a long way off.
They keep promising the IG report any minute.
How much of this information do you think will be in there?
Well, I keep tempering expectations in one regard on the IG report because do remember he's an IG, so he doesn't have the power to impanel a grand jury.
He doesn't have the panel.
He doesn't have the power to subpoena people.
He can only speak to people, in fact, who are existing Department of Justice employees or people who willingly agree to come to him.
And he was also told to look very specifically at the question of potential abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Now, I have every reason to believe that Horowitz is a straight-up guy.
The first two reports he put out on Comey and McCabe were pretty brutal.
So I don't think he's going to pull his punches.
And I think this is going to be a pretty good explanation of an important part of this abuse power.
But I think we're going to have to wait for Durham to get information about the origins of the investigation, the degree to which perhaps the CIA was involved or other foreign intelligence agencies.
And I think the good news there is that we've now got reports that both Barr and Durham have been making contacts with the countries that seem to matter in this story.
So you're the first person to point this out to me, but it was so obvious the minute you said it, I realized it had to be true.
This Ukraine thing, a lot of it is targeted at the people who are going to uncover what Obama did, what the Obama administration did.
Is that a fair thing to say?
We are witnessing a massive delegitimization campaign right now.
You know, one of the constant benefits, if you were at will, of this whole flap over Donald Trump's telephone call is it allows the left and media to jump all over Bill Barr.
And Bill Barr has done nothing inappropriate.
Bill Barr getting in touch with other countries to pave the way for his Department of Justice employees to talk to their counterparts on the other side is absolutely routine and absolutely appropriate.
But because it has the little stench, as it were, as Democrats and the media are trying to make it have the stench of what they're doing with this faux impeachment proceeding against Donald Trump.
That's, yeah, exactly.
So when you're watching, I mean, you're doing all this reporting.
I'm not seeing anybody else doing the kind of reporting you're doing.
Molly Hemingway is certainly talking about it, but you're doing a level of reporting that I'm not seeing anywhere else.
Has the media, is the media in the midst of a cover-up?
The media has lost its marbles, Drew.
Like, that's the only way I can even describe it.
You know, we know, those of us on the right, that the media has always been biased toward the left.
But over the past three years, they've changed to become active participants in a partisan war.
And they're doing it in part because they disdain Donald Trump.
They're doing it in part because they support Democrats.
They're doing it in part because it's a personal, it's a grudge because they don't like the fact that Donald Trump calls him out.
But also, and this is important, they're doing it because their own reputations are at stake.
They were complicit in this Russia collusion hoax.
They ran uncorroborated, from one campaign they cover to Comey and the FBI.
They have reached how it would be.
That is going to come out when we see I think, some of it when we see this IG report.
So they have every reason to try to delegitimize these players.
When you talk to Republicans, Republican lawmakers, behind the scenes, are they losing their nerve?
I mean, I keep hearing these kind of reports that maybe they're thinking hey, this is our chance to get rid of this guy.
Maybe if we can make this look, as you know, as bad as it, as the Democrats, we can dump him.
Are you hearing that at all?
Yeah, so most of those reports you'll notice are in the same media that we were just discussing right now, because they would like that to be the theme out there, because they know how powerful those words are.
You know they, they understand how politicians think that if, if they think that their colleagues are all losing their nerve, they begin to lose their nerve.
In fact, I have not spoken to any politicians who are losing their nerve.
Quite the opposite.
I think one of the mistakes Democrats are making here is uh, the process of this impeachment and because they continue to do it it has really it's not just infuriated Republicans the the unjust nature of how this is happening behind closed doors, secret witnesses, you know, secret accusations, as it were, leaked snippets of conversations uh, not in the way that we've ever conducted an impeachment proceeding in the past, but it's.
It's infuriated Republicans made them realize that this is indeed part of the same pattern that we've seen for the last three years, where you you you, you already say someone's guilty and then you search for a crime.
Um, and so they're, they're very concerned.
I, I don't see anyone caving on this anytime soon.
I mean, you know, Mitt Romney is Mitt Romney, but but everyone else, I think is is pretty firm that that's really good to hear, because I think they'd be nuts.
I mean, I think they'd be crazy that people have got to be able to see that it's so unfair what Adam Shift is doing.
Uh, you know, let alone leaving aside questions of truth or falsehood, it's just not fair uh, to examine a man in secret like that.
Um well, don't forget too.
One other thing I would just add is that, you know, this is hardly I mean, this is raw politics too okay, people are saying oh, if Susan Collins doesn't come out and condemn Trump, she might lose the election.
Well, the the what they're forgetting is that if Susan Collins does come out and vote to impeach Trump, she will lose her re-election.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right um, so let's talk about the book.
Resistance at all costs, how Trump haters are breaking America.
I mean, that's a, that's a pretty um, how can I put it?
It's a pretty big title.
Do you really think that's what's?
Explain that?
Explain that title.
Why?
Why do you feel that's true?
Yeah well, the first thing I want to do is say that I use the word haters specifically.
Okay okay uh, the publishers wanted to say critics, how Trump critics are breaking.
But you know what?
I'm a critic of Donald Trump at times.
You're a critic of Donald Trump at times.
Most thoughtful people are able to look at a presidency and evaluate the good and the bad.
The haters are a different group Of people.
They just decided from the minute Trump was elected that he needed to be removed by any means necessary.
So they adopted the mentality that anything went as well, that they could break any tradition, any standard, any rule, any barrier just to get rid of them.
And that's why I say they're breaking American, because if you look through these institutions, we're seeing wreckage.
There's a reason that so many Americans no longer trust the FBI or the Department of Justice.
It's because of that investigation.
We have a Senate confirmation process that's a wreck because of the Brett Kavanaugh circus.
We now have impeachment, which is one of the most powerful and serious tools that the Constitution provides being used for partisan purposes.
Now, Donald Trump is going to be with us for one year or five years at most, but these things, they're going to be with us for a lot longer.
So where do you see this going overall?
Do you think they will succeed in damaging these institutions beyond repair or they have succeeded?
Where do you see it going in the future?
Well, so I think, look, on one side of that question is what my fear is, is that, look, you've watched Washington a long time.
I've watched Washington a long time.
Usually when a lower bar is set, we just then race to go even lower.
Okay.
And so, you know, that's one of the worrisome things.
And so, you know, I keep telling my friends on the left, let's just imagine Joe Biden gets elected next year.
Okay.
But let's imagine the Republicans take back over the House.
Are they going to move to immediately impeach him on Ukraine corruption?
You know, I mean, is this the new norm that we have set thanks to you guys?
So I think that damage is already there in terms of precedent.
On the other hand, when I go out and I talk to Americans across the country, increasingly they see this as not so much about Donald Trump next year's election.
They see it about these tactics.
And they are increasingly willing to go to the polls to vote against them just to send the message that it's wrong.
Wow.
So you're kind of hopeful looking forward?
Is that fair to say?
I am hopeful.
And, you know, and there are things that are already being done, I think, to try to rectify some of this.
Like, for instance, Bill Barr, who we were talking about, you know, he needed this job like he needed a hole in his head.
And he said that as much in his confirmation hearings.
He came back, I believe, entirely to take this job to try to restore some credibility to the Department of Justice and the FBI by telling the American people what actually happened and then taking responsibility for it.
So we need more people in office who are willing to do that.
Like one thing I think that's a problem is what we started this conversation on, the media.
The media is supposed to serve as a guardrail.
It's supposed to call out bad behavior on both sides.
And now that it's only playing on one side, we're going to need people in other positions of power to sort of reset those guardrails around what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
Media's Role Questioned00:07:10
No question about it.
Kimberly Strasser, listen, I really, I don't want to fanboy you, but I think you're doing just a great job.
That column is terrific.
And I can't wait to read Resistance at All Costs, How Trump Haters Are Breaking America.
Thanks for coming on.
Kim, I hope to talk to you soon.
I'm such a fan.
So thank you for having me.
Thanks a lot.
All right.
Just, you know, it's just a fascinating thing.
I really liked hearing that the Republicans are not buckling because again, as Kim said, those stories are coming out of the same press that is giving us the impeachment panic.
So it's really interesting to hear what's going on behind the scenes.
I want to go back a little bit and talk about something else, something that happened at the Democrat debate, which was just a clown show as far as I was concerned.
I covered it yesterday.
But in the middle of this debate, there was an ad Against God, starring Ronald Reagan's son, Ron.
And well, let's play the ad.
Hi, I'm Ron Reagan, an unabashed atheist, and I'm alarmed by the intrusions of religion into our secular government.
That's why I'm asking you to support the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the nation's largest and most effective association of atheists and agnostics, working to keep state and church separate, just like our founding fathers intended.
Please support the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
Ron Reagan, lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell.
I always love when people say something about themselves, like, I'm not afraid of burning in hell.
Like, that's like somebody saying to me, I'm not afraid of getting hooked on heroin.
That's why I use it.
What do I care?
What do I care if you're an idiot?
It's like when people say to me, when people get angry at me, they say, well, I never heard of you.
It's like, why is your ignorance my problem?
It's like, why is the fact that he's not afraid of burning in hell our problem?
However, however, I want to hit on just something that he said.
First of all, he knew his audience, people watching the Democrat debate were going to be sympathetic to that message.
The idea that the founders meant to separate church and state is true, but that they meant to separate the state from religion is untrue.
Those are two different things.
And Antonin Scalia used to make this argument all the time.
He said the founders did not want the government to choose between religions, but it didn't mean they couldn't choose between religion and irreligion.
Those are two different things, atheism and secularism, which I believe secularism is a cult.
And I do not think that the founders meant for us to have no religion, for us to privilege no religion above religion.
I think they meant that everything that they founded this country on was based on ideas that come from the Bible, was based on the idea of a God who cares about us, who identifies with us, who made us in his image, and who judges us and will judge the nations according to their behavior.
Washington talked about this.
Almost all the founders talked about it.
Not just religion as a break against bad behavior, but religion in fact, an idea of the world as governed by a just God who does pay attention to the good and bad that we do and who gives us an idea of good and bad that is in keeping with his idea of good and bad.
However, you have to understand that this is on the march.
Atheism and agnosticism is on the march.
A piece in the Wall Street Journal today.
Religiosity in the U.S. is in sharp decline, according to a study released by the Pew Research Center, with the ranks of people who don't adhere to any faith growing fast, while church attendance has steeply fallen.
This is always the way this happens.
It's like Hemingway said, I think it was Hemingway who said about going bankrupt.
First it happens slowly, then it happens quickly.
Christians make up 65% of the U.S. adult population, according to this study, and it's down from 77% in 2009.
So over 10 years, it is a huge, huge drop-off.
And people saying that they have no religion are growing very quickly.
I want to play a clip by Arnold Schwarzenegger from Arnold Schwarzenegger talking to Howard Stern.
And I want to play it because it says something about the way religion is perceived and maybe about the way religion is preached.
Here's the piece from Stern.
Stern asked Howard how he felt about death.
That's Sternhouse Schwarzenegger.
Are you afraid of death?
Are you afraid of death?
I'm not afraid of death.
I am just pissed off about it.
Yes.
Because, I mean, especially, I think, when you have a life like we have, and then one day it's over, I mean, that really pisses me off.
Governor, where are we going to go when we die?
Be honest with us.
Well, the truth is that you go six feet out there and they're going to rot there.
Yes, absolutely.
That's it.
I thought you were going to be uplifting.
That's how you welcome me to life.
Hopefully, there is a life after this, and we all know it's going to be different if there's a life after this.
I hope it is a different life.
There is a life after this.
It's not going to be like this.
I'm not going to sit after we are dead.
We're not going to sit here like this and do interviews and have a great time and have laughs and have Robin there, you know, giving us this beautiful smile all the time.
Rabbit Mom either.
No, I mean, this will be different.
Maybe there will be angels sitting around.
Maybe there will be God there smacking us every time we say something, a four-letter word or something like that, right?
So that to me was really interesting that he said that.
I mean, he's obviously joking around with Howard Stern.
I'm not saying this is his theology or anything.
But his description of heaven struck me as a kind of common one.
He's saying he's had this great life.
He's a movie star.
He's a millionaire.
He gets the girls.
He does all the stuff.
He's famous.
He's had a great life.
It's not going to be fun like that.
He's sitting around talking with the guys and he's chatting and they're all having laughs and there's a lovely girl smiling at him.
Instead, in heaven, he's going to be smacked for saying four-letter words.
I think that that is a fairly accurate description of the way many places preach the gospel and the way many places preach heaven.
And somebody said to me recently, I don't want to give him away, but he said he remembers preachers saying to him, one day we'll be able to, you know, they'll sing worship songs in some churches.
They'll sing these worship songs and they'll say, one day we'll be able to do that.
Stand and sing those praise songs for thousands of years.
And he was thinking, no, that's not what I want to be doing for thousands of years.
Nobody wants to die for thousands of years.
Nobody wants to sit on a cloud and play a harp for thousands of years.
Life is very tough.
Life can be very ugly and very sad.
But every joy we know is a joy in life.
And what are our joys?
Our joys are, you know, talking to one another and having philosophical conversations.
Our joys are sleeping together and having sex.
Our joys are smoking a cigar and having a drink with our pals.
Our joys are whatever women do.
Who knows what those people do, those crazy people do.
The things that you do that give you joy.
I personally believe that every single one of them, every single one of them, including chasing girls around desks, all of them have an analog in heaven.
It's not going to be, of course, like this.
It's not going to have the problems that mortal flesh has.
When you chase a girl around a room in real life, it might be a sin because you're violating so many things that you promised other people.
You're maybe violating her sense of herself, her power, her respect, her self-respect.
It's not going to be that way in heaven, but that doesn't mean we won't mingle in a kind of conjugation that is so much greater than sex, we can't imagine it.
And it's just a shame to me that we preach a religion of fear instead of a religion of joy.
So much.
Losing God and Joy00:02:17
This is the speech I just made to Acton.
I hope you'll go on actin.org and look it up.
Just search Clavin and you'll find my speech is only about 20 minutes long.
So much of what's happening right now has to do with losing God.
People talking about, if you say you're a woman, poof you're a woman.
People talking about abortion after birth abortion.
It's fine.
Abortion is great.
Shout your abortion.
So much of the stuff we see, even people talking about socialism replacing capitalism, so much of it has to do with losing God.
If we don't get back, make the argument for God.
If we don't make that argument, we can't make all the other arguments.
We're just wagging our fingers at people.
Listen to Another Kingdom.
New episode will be out today.
No, I'm sorry, it'll be out tomorrow for subscribers.
It'll be out on Monday for everybody else.
You want to catch up?
You want to hear this show?
It is a terrific, terrific show.
Otherwise, what are you left with?
You guessed it.
The Clavenless weekend, darkness, gnashing of teeth.
It's not a pretty sight.
However, survivors will gather here on Monday.
I'll be here too.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Oh, hooray, hurry.
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