Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership—relocating the G7 to Motel 6, clashing with Pelosi over emoluments, and defying "deep state" critics like Michelle Cottle—mirrors McMurphy’s rebellion against Nurse Ratchet’s oppressive system. Mulvaney’s defense of Ukraine aid quid pro quo as standard policy exposes media hypocrisy, while evangelicals embrace Trump as a Cyrus-like figure despite his secularism. Barr and Pompeo’s Christian revivalist rhetoric signals a cultural shift, but GOP unease risks betraying the movement that exposed systemic corruption—leaving Republicans trapped between progressive tyranny and their own cowardice. [Automatically generated summary]
In a rare move, President Trump has reversed course and canceled plans to hold the 2020 G7 summit at the Trump National Doral in Miami.
The leaders of the world's seven most advanced economies will instead be staying at the Motel 6, 15 miles outside of Tallahassee.
The world leaders will now be able to enjoy the motel's free cable TV service, plus a complimentary breakfast in the lobby annex.
Responding to the announcement, Germany's Angela Merkel said she hoped they would have those miniature blueberry muffins, which she enjoyed so much last time she was there.
The decision to hold the summit at the Doral had come under fire from Democrats who said that housing the world leaders at a luxurious, well-run resort with Trump's name on it would give people the impression that the president was a successful businessman who was capable of restoring the nation's economy and bringing sanity to our international relations, which would in turn expose the Democrats and their mainstream media for the dishonest hypocrites and incompetence they are.
In a statement to a gathering of reporters, all of whom, strangely enough, looked exactly alike and were named Chuck Todd, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, quote, holding the G7 at the Doral would be in direct violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
Our founding fathers did not want the president hanging around all day using emoluments until his whole body was as soft and pink as a girl's so that our enemies would believe we were weak and were tempted to invade, unquote.
When one of the Chuck Todds told Miss Pelosi that she didn't give, let's just cancel the show.
I'm going home.
She may have confused emoluments, which are prophets, with emollients, which are lotions.
The speaker demanded an immediate secret and unofficial impeachment investigation into James Madison, and Congressman Adam Schiff announced that he had already seen enough evidence to convict Madison, although he couldn't tell anyone what it was because it was secret, like what he did last night with his stuffed pink bear.
But that's another story.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this may be the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunkity-doo.
Ship-shaped 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.
Yes, folks, this is your source for emolument humor.
Where else are you going to hear an emolument emollient joke?
Come on.
Nobody else does that.
All right.
Let's see if I can get through the rest of the show instead of making a fool of myself.
Oh, a happy fool, at least I'll say that.
A while back, I do not remember how long I made the comparison between Donald Trump and Randall Patrick McMurphy, the hero of Ken Kesey's excellent novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which was later made into the famous film starring Jack Nicholson.
That comparison applies now more than ever.
McMurphy is not a particularly good guy.
He's a rousedabout, a braggart, and a brawler and a drunk, and he wangles his way out of a prison term by pleading insanity, and then he's put into a mental institution, the cuckoo's nest, in the institution, where he finds a group of men subtly controlled and manipulated by an evil nurse who pretends to nurture them with motherly care, but is really a castrating bitch.
She's named Nurse Hillary, or maybe I'm confusing her with every other feminist bully in America.
Anyway, out of sheer orneriness, McMurphy teaches the men in the institution to rebel, to reclaim their manhood, and to break the chains of the insane institutional society that has neutered them.
In other words, he is put in perhaps the one and only situation in which his roused about character, his aggression, his disregard for the rules make him and him alone the necessary man, a hero.
Likewise, Donald Trump.
The guy can be a loose cannon.
I don't always like the way he treats people.
And of course, I don't always agree with him.
I don't always agree with anybody who's not named Jesus.
But it is increasingly clear that he has been put by history or luck or I dare say the living God in the one situation where his outsized character and his roused about nature make him and him alone the necessary man.
The left who promises to nurture us with motherly care is really a castrating bitch who has driven our free systems to the very brink of extinction and is now making its final push to socialize and thus destroy the last best hope of mankind.
Republicans, like the madmen in the cuckoo's nest, have sat by and watched this happen while offering theories and fine speeches, just like in the novel, which you should read, by the way, while the socialist creep went on day by day.
Randall Patrick McTrump has come swaggering into this madhouse with all his outsized features and flaws.
And it's not just the best thing that could have happened to this country.
It's increasingly clear to me that it's the only thing that could have happened that might just save the last remnants of our founding.
Trump may not succeed in bringing down this madhouse.
He may be destroyed.
He may destroy himself.
But if he even manages to break one window and let a little bit of the old American spirit escape and make for the territories, it will have been a work of God.
I am rooting for him every step of the way.
And I've become more convinced of this as things go on, and I'll show you why in just a sec.
Owned and Decided00:06:34
But first, let us talk about Ring.
I am getting a new Ring system put into my house because I travel all the time.
I'm going to be traveling for speeches.
And I want to make sure that people are safe in my house while I'm away.
Ring's mission is to make neighborhoods safer.
And with the season changing and school in session, it's even more important to keep an eye on your home and those you love.
Ring helps you stay connected to your home anywhere you are.
So if there's a package delivery, surprise visitor, you'll get an alert.
You'll be able to see here and speak to them all right on your phone.
You can even make sure your children make it to the bus on time and get home safe at the end of the day.
I really like this because it just gives me peace of mind and it's great technology for keeping track of how things are going at home while you're traveling.
As a listener, you have a special offer on a Ring starter kit available right now with a Ring video doorbell too and motion-activated floodlight can that automatically turns on a floodlight when people come onto your property at night.
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, but the only important term is clavin because you've got to know how to spell it to get the deal.
And it's K-L-A-V-A-N.
There are no E's in Clavin.
I want to play something before I get started, or as I am getting started, that I neglected to play last week.
I had it all racked up and then I got distracted and I didn't get to it.
But this is from this wonderful site I'm always telling you about Newsbusters, which you should check out, which just is a watchdog on the bias of the mainstream media.
And they constructed, they put together this brilliant video in which they show you the media just echoing talking points that the Democrats send out.
And these talking points are discussed on phone calls, on conference calls.
They are spread around.
And what you will hear, if you're not watching, what you'll hear is first a Democrat saying something and then the echo in the media.
The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president's betrayal of his oath of office.
The president has been exposed, violating his oath of office.
The President of the United States has betrayed his oath of office.
Violations of his oath to the Constitution.
Unprecedented breach of the oath of office.
Betrayals of his oath of office.
The president has admitted enough.
We have got enough information at this point.
already confirmed what he's done in broad daylight.
We've basically got a confession.
He's already confessed to this crime.
The president has already admitted.
The president admits he did it.
The White House and the State Department continue to orchestrate this massive cover-up.
We are watching a cover-up by the President of the United States.
They've been in the business of trying to cover up.
Implicated in a cover-up.
There's a cover-up.
The cover-up, the attempted cover-up.
To interfere with the Congress's ability to call before it relevant witnesses will be considered as evidence of obstruction.
Trump's strategy, it's pretty clear.
Obstruct, deflect, confuse.
So what you're hearing when you hear the news, what you're hearing when you hear the news is the Democrats.
And what you're hearing when you hear the Democrats is the slow move to socialize this country as much as it's possible to do politically at any given moment until we are a socialist country.
And that means that you make the money, you work, you earn it, they spend it.
They decide where it is.
They shut down your free speech by declaring it's hate speech.
They deplatform you.
They make sure, you know, Mark Zuckerberg went to Capitol Hill and said Facebook is in favor of free speech.
And the Democrats attacked him.
They said, no, no, no, you're playing Trump ads.
You can't play Trump ads.
You know, and Kamala Harris wants Trump taken off Twitter.
You know, it's really funny.
Leftists love to snarkily compare guns to penises, basically.
They say it's a phallic symbol.
And if you're not, if you're insecure about your manhood, you have to carry a gun.
Let me tell you something.
They're right.
They are absolutely right.
You don't need a gun.
Men need guns if they want to be free.
Guns are for men who don't want to be taken care of, but want to take care of themselves and are willing to fight to keep that right.
And if that's an extension of your manhood, it's a pretty useful one because you'll need it to stop what they're trying to do.
Let me play you a cut, an amazing cut, really, of Alexandria Casional Cortex.
She had her weekend at Bernie's.
Bernie, as you know, Bernie Sanders, you know, passed away, sadly, unfortunately, passed away of a heart attack a few weeks ago, but they're still carrying him around from place to place.
And there was this massive, massive rally for him in New York, and AOC backed him and gave him her coveted endorsement.
And here is what she told people that we need for the future of America.
The future and our future is in public systems and it's publicly owned systems because we need to take power over our lives again.
I don't know about you, but I don't want Mark Zuckerberg making decisions over my life.
I don't know about you, but the Waltons have already been making decisions over our lives and what we got was nothing.
We need a United States that really, truly, and authentically is operated, owned, and decided by working and all people in the United States of America.
Yeah, I hope you were paying attention to that because what she's saying is if you want to be free, you have to give everything to the government.
Free people like Mark Zuckerberg, who built a business, and the Waltons who build businesses, they can't be free to do that.
It has to be owned by the government in order for you to be free, okay?
Individuals can't be free because then they can do what they want.
But if the government can control everybody, then you're free.
I mean, that's 1984 Orwellian reasoning.
I don't even think she's smart enough, to be honest with you, to be Orwellian.
I think she's a product of a public education system that simply doesn't teach kids civics, or she doesn't even know how this country works or what it's about.
She is just talking, echoing stuff that she has heard.
But she's Nurse Ratchet.
That's a government of Nurse Ratchet.
That's the evil nurse in one flew over the cuckoo's nest who tell you that they're going to take care of you, but in fact are taking away all your freedom and basically leaving you sitting there in a chair absolutely useless and helpless.
Let us talk for a moment about Bowl and Branch.
I've told you this a million times.
I never sleep.
And yet, and yet, when my wife is gone, I sleep even less.
Now my wife is gone, and so I'm really, really enjoying these Bowl and Branch sheets.
Bowl and Branch Sheets00:14:50
There's not a minute of the night that goes by when I'm not awake thinking, wow, these are great sheets.
They're comfortable.
They're beautiful.
It must be amazing to sleep in these sheets, but I have no idea.
What makes Bowl and Branch sheets unique is that each sheet is crafted from 100% organic cotton.
And that means Bowling Branch sheets not only feel incredible, and they really do, they also look great.
And since Bowl and Branch sells exclusively online, you don't pay that expensive retail markup.
That's half the price, but you get twice the quality.
You will love these sheets.
Try them for 30 nights and see for yourself.
If you're not impressed, return them for a full refund.
You might have to call me because you'll be sleeping.
You'll be fast asleep.
So you won't know how great the sheets are, but I'll be lying awake so I will know.
Go to Bolinbranch.com today.
You'll get 50 bucks off your first set of sheets plus free shipping in the U.S. when you use the promo code Clavin.
That's 50 bucks off plus free shipping right now at bowlingbranch.com, spelled B-O-L-L and Branch.com, promo code Clavin, bowlandbranch.com, promo code Clavin.
And you're thinking, Bowl, anybody can spell Bowl.
How do you spell Clavin?
V-A-N.
All right, let us take a trip.
I'm going to play two narratives, two press narratives that are coming down the pike.
Okay.
The first one is from the New York Times, a former newspaper, from Knucklehead Row, their op-ed page.
Here we go.
Now, this is by Michelle Cottle, who is a member of the Times editorial board.
But how we know it is a narrative that the Times is selling is because last week we played James Stewart, a Times reporter.
I think he's still a Times reporter, maybe a former Times reporter, who's got a new book out called Deep State.
And he makes exactly the same argument.
This is what she says.
President Trump is right.
The deep state is alive and well, but it's not the sinister anti-democratic cabal of his fever dreams.
It is rather a collection of patriotic public servants, career diplomats, scientists, intelligence officers, and others who from within the bowels of this corrupt and corrupting administration have somehow remembered that their duty is to protect the interests not of a particular leader, but of the American people.
You remember that Twilight Zone episode, It's a Good Thing, where the kid with magic powers kept throwing people out into the cornfield, but everyone was so afraid of him they had to say, oh, it's a good thing, Billy.
It's a good thing you sent him out to the cornfield.
That's what this is.
Yes, we sent your democracy into the cornfield.
It doesn't exist anymore.
Spies, that's what they mean by intelligence officers, spies and bureaucrats are running the country and are going to correct the mistake you made by electing Donald Trump according to the systems built by our Constitution and our founders.
But it's a good thing.
It's a good thing, Billy.
You know, it's a good thing we threw your democracy out into the cornfield.
What this really is and why it's coming up now, this is a confession.
You know how you confess something before, you know, your spouse gets home.
You say, listen, now you're about to find out that I did something stupid, so I'm going to tell you about it.
This is a confession.
They are confessing that Barack Obama and his Intelligence and Criminal Investigations Committee, he used those committees, James Comey and the FBI and John Brennan and the CIA.
He used them to spy on Donald Trump and to help Hillary Clinton and her collusion with the Russians.
He did that and it's about to be exposed by the IG at the DOJ.
It's about to be exposed by the Department of Justice investigators.
They're confessing before that happened.
It's a good thing.
Oh, it's a good thing.
And their insane argument, their insane argument is that when Donald Trump then called the Ukraine and said, hey, you know, you ought to investigate some corruption, the corruption in the last election, like with Joe Biden and all those people, that was the crime.
The crime was that Trump wanted to investigate in the Ukraine as well as here.
That's the problem.
That's their insane argument.
It's a good thing when Obama does it.
It's a good thing when the spies leak the information.
Oh, this Adam Schiff who's closed the doors on his impeachment investigation, but is leaking stuff to us at your trustworthy New York Times and we'll tell you what Adam Schiff wants you to know.
It's a good thing.
You don't want too much freedom because then you'll make all these mistakes like electing people that we don't like.
That's what they're telling you.
That is the narrative.
So they have confessed, yes, we're Nurse Ratchet, but we're not castrating you.
We are actually taking care of you with motherly care.
We're living in one flu over the cuckoo's nest.
We actually are.
And here is David Brooks.
And I put in David Brooks because I want to include conservatives in this.
There are a lot of conservatives who have fallen into this.
They have fallen for this, that this is somehow okay, that it's okay that over the last, it's really over the last hundred years since Woodrow Wilson, that they have been eating away at the balance of powers, that they have created this administrative state that has more power than we do, that has more power than the people we elect, and the people we elect don't even matter anymore because the administrative state is there all the time.
And don't, this is the swamp they talk about when they talk about draining the swamp.
And don't make any mistake.
The GOP loves the swamp, okay?
Because the GOP loves the swamp.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, there is a character named, I'm trying to remember his name, Charlie Cheswick.
And Charlie Cheswick is always making these dynamic speeches.
He's got these dynamic, we've got to change this hospital.
We've got to change this institution.
And then his voice just kind of trails off and he never does anything.
The GOP is Charlie Cheswick.
As this administrative state has grown, as the welfare state has grown, as we've gone deeper and deeper into debt, less and less power to the people, less and less of a remnant of the constitutional systems that were supposed to be in place and supposed to protect us from exactly this, because this is the normal way governments work.
And our Constitution was supposed to protect us from normal because it was supposed to make us extraordinary.
And as the normal has risen, right, the GOP has been Charlie Cheswick sitting around and pounding their fists and letting their voices trail off and then doing nothing.
So we're going back to Knucklehead Row.
I want to play Knucklehead Row twice.
Damn it.
Let's hear it.
Oh, hey, hey, let's go down to Norco Head Row.
So David Brooks writes, and David Brooks was supposed to be their conservative, right?
He's supposed to be the conservative at the New York Times.
But there are no conservatives at the New York Times because once you're surrounded in that pool of liberals, you don't even know what conservatism is anymore.
So he writes, if it's Trump versus Warren, then what?
Versus Elizabeth Warren.
If it comes to Trump versus Elizabeth Warren in a general election, he says, and he says that she's basically a socialist, the only plausible choice is to support Warren.
This is how much these guys have got their heads turned around on their necks.
They're looking backwards like somebody in Dante's Inferno.
Over the past month, says Brooks, Donald Trump has given us fresh reminders of the unique and exceptional ways he corrupts American life.
Pheh.
You're right.
Like what?
Name them.
You're either part of removing that corruption or you are not.
When your nation's political system is in danger, staying home and not voting is not a responsible option.
I agree with him there.
I agree with him here, too.
Politics is downstream from morality and culture.
Warren represents a policy wrong turn in my view, but policies can be argued about and reversed.
Trump represents a much more important and fundamental threat to the norms, values, standards, and soul of this country.
He has got that exactly backwards.
That is the voice of a character and one flew over the cuckoo's nest named Billy Bibbitt, who's afraid to move.
He's just a little, you know, little girl of a man who can't do anything.
That's that voice.
Listen, the culture and the morality of Elizabeth Warren, who lied for, what was it, I think 18 years about her background in order to get ahead politically, who's lying now about why she was fired, who just is constantly using this victocrat mentality to push her way forward.
What she is proposing, the healthcare, socialized health care that she's proposing, the absolute takeover of every single aspect of American life by the government that she is proposing, as well as Bernie Sanders, as well as AOC, and as well as all of them.
There's nobody who's not proposing this.
That is a moral collapse.
That is a complete collapse because the morality here, the culture that you're trying to preserve, is freedom.
And Trump, with his American boarishness, with his wildness, with his scattershot way of doing things, he is that.
He's the symbol of that.
He's the spirit of that.
Look, again, utter freedom like that can be disturbing.
And sometimes Trump is disturbing.
But what has he done exactly?
What has he done?
Name the thing.
They can't name it.
What he has done is he has broken the system in the cuckoo's nest.
That's what he has done.
What he has done is he has brought disruption to the cuckoo's nest.
And all the crazy people, like David Brooks and the left, all the crazy people were enjoying that cuckoo's nest because it worked for them.
It was comfortable for them.
They got their meals.
They got their prestige.
They got to write.
And everybody said how bright they were.
And he has broken it all.
And he's trying to break it all.
And they are doing everything they can to stop him.
It is just an amazing, amazing thing.
And the big thing is this thing in Syria, right?
And I said, I thought he made a mistake in Syria.
Mostly, I think the mistake he made was doing it so abruptly that nobody knew what the hell was going on.
But now he's reacting.
You know, the system kind of worked.
He sent that hilarious letter to Erdoyan where he said, don't be a fool, don't be a tough guy.
And Erdoyan blinked and he called a ceasefire and Trump is trying to establish a safe zone in Syria.
The system kind of worked.
I mean, it really is.
Even Lindsey Graham, let's play a cut by Lindsey Graham.
Even he now says something good can come of this.
This is the ultimate hawk who has been supportive of Trump but has never hesitated to criticize him when he thought that Trump was going wrong.
Now, even he says Trump is going to pull this out.
I am increasingly optimistic that we can have some historic solutions in Syria that have eluded us for years if we play our cards right.
I blame Erdogan for the invasion, not Trump.
But here's what the president told me over the weekend.
Here are our objectives.
To make sure we have a demilitarized zone between Turkey and the Kurds.
The Kurds were the allies who helped us defeat ISIS.
They lost 10,000 soldiers.
We've lost eight in four years.
God bless the eight.
But it was the Kurds who did most of the fighting.
Protect our NATO ally Turkey from elements of the Kurds that they considered to be terrorist.
A demilitarized zone occupied by international forces.
No Americans, but we provide air power.
The president appreciates what the Kurds have done.
He wants to make sure ISIS does not come back.
I expect we will continue to partner with the Kurds in the eastern Syria to make sure ISIS does not re-emerge.
That is in our national security interest, and we owe it to the Kurds.
The big thing for me is the oil fields.
President Trump is thinking outside the box.
I was so impressed with his thinking about the oil.
Not only are we going to deny the oilfields falling into Iranian hands, I believe we're on the verge of a joint venture between us and the Syrian Democratic Forces who helped destroy ISIS and keep them destroyed to modernize the oilfields and make sure they get the revenue, not the Iranians, not Assad, and it can help pay for our small commitment in the future.
That's typical Trumpian thinking, right?
That was stuff he was saying during the election that he thought we should take over.
If we're going to go into these countries and fight for their freedom, we should take over the oil fills and make sure that the money doesn't go to the very people we're trying to stop.
So all of this, they keep using bigger and bigger adjectives and more and more accusations.
It's treason, it's this, it's that.
But what has he done?
What has he done?
All he has done is he has disturbed the manners of the madhouse and brought the chaos out into the open.
Because if you think it wasn't chaos before, remember we had Barack Obama sending like platforms full of cash to the Iranians who hate us or terrorists and they're building a nuke.
And that was Obama.
That was, oh, no drama, Obama.
Everything is under control.
Everything's fine.
And the Middle East was on fire under Obama, but there was no chaos there.
But now it's chaos and immorality and how horrible he is.
And it's all, all, all nonsense.
All he's doing is breaking the glass.
He is breaking the glass in the China shop.
And sometimes, look, he does it indiscriminately.
It's just his character.
It's his nature.
Sometimes he does it wrong.
Sometimes he does it right.
But it needs to be broken because it has a system that is increasingly smothering the founding ideals and the founding systems that were put in place to keep you free.
Again, freedom is not normal, okay?
Freedom is not normal.
Top-down government, AOC government, where we own the government owns everything and tells you what to do.
That's the norm.
America is extraordinary.
The Roman Republic was extraordinary.
Britain under Victoria was extraordinary.
Greek in Athens, the democracy of Athens, that was extraordinary.
They come and they go and they die.
Republics are living things and they die just like all living things.
And all we can do as conservatives is keep it alive one more day.
And Trump has done that.
And again, it may just be the will of God that put him in this perfect place where his personality, his specific personality, is destroying the kind of claustrophobic, encroaching end of freedom that was coming upon us while the GOP dithered like the madman in one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
Let me tell you the other narrative the press is selling.
This is on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and all I can say is the writing is good enough, where the narrative is very succinct.
But listen, listen to, it's a scam.
Listen to this.
President Trump faces increasing public and private scrutiny from his own party over a series of recent White House moves as the House impeachment inquiry reduces his margin of error with fellow Republicans and makes him more vulnerable to attack.
In the past several days, Mr. Trump has been forced to drop plans to host next year's Group of Seven summit at his Doral golf resort.
And a top aide has tried to walk back comments.
This is Mick Mulvaney, the chief of staff, linking Ukraine military aid to an investigation of the president's political opponents.
The fallout of Mr. Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria has continued to draw widespread criticism, including from Republicans.
Now listen to this line.
Mr. Trump's support within his party will face fresh tests this week.
This is not the line.
Hold on.
As key witnesses from the State Department and Pentagon are expected to testify in closed hearings before a trio of House committees on the president's dealings with Ukraine.
Here's the line I want you to listen to.
Few in the GOP have gone so far as to suggest the impeachment effort against Mr. Trump is warranted, and Republicans have often remained supportive of the president on that issue, despite any disagreements on specific policies.
But Republicans are making clear to the White House that it is becoming harder to justify blanket support for the president in the wake of recent events.
So in other words, nothing is happening.
They don't like the Syria move.
The Republicans, a lot of the Republicans, they said so they don't like the Syria move.
Trump's Christian Supporters Speak Out00:16:01
They complained about it.
Their complaints actually helped, I think, Trump get the ceasefire that he wanted in Turkey.
But the wall of support for Trump in this impeachment thing is solid.
I know because I got this call last week, people saying, you know, the Republicans, they're going to desert Trump because, you know, he's kind of going crazy and we're not so happy.
Baloney, baloney.
We had Kim Stros launch.
He said that that's not true.
If it is true, if the Republicans reject Trump, if they betray Trump, if they desert Trump, the Republicans will be gone.
There will not be a Republican Party.
I'm telling you, it will be gone.
Trump has reshaped the Republican Party, and it's a good thing.
They need this because they were too comfortable in the madhouse.
They were too comfortable with Nurse Ratchet taking care of them and where they could make the Charlie Sheswick speeches, oh, we're going to do this.
This is a terrible thing.
While the government got bigger and bigger and bigger.
I mean, think of George W. Bush.
Look, I like the guy.
He was a good guy.
But think of the vast wars he got us into with the idea that he could impose democracy on the Middle East.
And they were incompetently fought wars, not by the military, not by the military, but by the administration.
They were given tasks they couldn't achieve with the rules of engagement they were given, and it went on and on, and they didn't have enough troops to do it.
And it just went on and on until people lost support, which is going to happen because we're a democracy.
We don't like to be at war.
Think about that.
Plus, he increased spending, he increased entitlements, George W. Bush, and we had to support him because all we had on the other side were socialists.
I mean, that's what essentially happened.
And everybody says, oh, George W. Bush, now they say, before they were calling him Hitler, but now he was a gentleman as composed compared to Trump.
We don't need gentlemen.
We need Randall Patrick McMurphy.
We need somebody to break the window and let the American spirit free.
So this is nonsense.
This is the stuff this Mitt Romney people are floating.
And let's talk about this Mick Mulvaney thing.
Mick Mulvaney went out and he gave a large press conference in which he was saying, here's what he said.
You know what?
I'm going to take a break here because we've got a break to say goodbye to YouTube and Facebook.
Come over to dailywire.com, subscribe.
Today is the new episode of Another Kingdom is available to everybody.
I hope you're listening to it because it is absolutely terrific and Knowles is doing a great job and all the sound people are doing a terrific job.
But if you subscribe, you will get it a few days early, which is great.
You'll also can be in the mailbag and ask questions and have all your problems solved, which is pretty good.
It's only 10 bucks a month, 100 bucks for the year.
And with the 100 bucks subscription, whoa, you get this exquisite leftist tears tumbler made by material from Olympus.
We bring it down, we mine it on Mount Olympus, and we bring it down to make the tumbler here.
All right, come on over to DailyWire.com.
So what Mulvaney said was basically this.
He said, there's always a quid pro quo in aid.
We give aid to countries and we say, listen, you got to tidy up your civil rights, your human rights record.
You've got to tidy up your corruption.
We're going to give you this aid, but you've got to do this for it.
There's always that.
That's what he was saying.
And what he went on to say was, yeah, you know, there was Donald Trump said we should investigate the corruption in the 2016 election that partly came out of Ukraine.
It may have come out of Ukraine.
And they said, look at Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
That was part of what he said, but he said it in passing to him.
And John Carl, let's play the earlier quote, John Carl then challenged him on that.
Did he also mention to me in past that the corruption related to the DNC server?
Absolutely.
No question about that.
But that's it.
And that's why we held up the money.
What you just described is a quid pro quo.
It is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democrat server happened as well.
We do that all the time with foreign policy.
When he said that's why he held up the money, he was referring to something, the long speech he had made before that, saying, you know, we do this with foreign policy where we hold up aid until the corruption is ferreted out.
The Ukraine is famous.
Ukraine is famously corrupt.
And Trump wanted to get some of that corruption out and made that a condition of the aid.
That is typical American policy.
And just because they can use quid pro quo, which now seems to be the only Latin anybody in the press corps knows, they think that that's an impeachable offense.
Maybe that the fact that Trump probably shouldn't have mentioned Biden because he was a political opponent.
But again, we're dealing with reports that are going to come out that tell us that Barack Obama's administration literally tapped phones on which his political opponent was having conversations, literally sent spies into a campaign, into the Trump campaign, on this bogus Russian collusion thing that was generated out of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's actual collusion with Russia.
And we're supposed to sit there and say, oh, yeah, you got to impeach this guy for mentioning Joe Biden to Ukrainians.
It's garbage.
It is garbage.
And the whole thing is that this entire structure, the Wall Street Journal too, love the Wall Street Journal, but they're part of it too.
This entire establishment structure has been absolutely comfortable and fine with your freedoms dissolving into this administrative state.
They're telling you, yeah, we did it, but it was a good thing.
It's a good thing we sent your democracy out into the cornfield.
They're telling you that.
They're saying it out loud.
They're saying the quiet part out loud now because that's how arrogant they are and it's also how desperate they are to stop Donald Trump.
You know, this Russian thing, I just got to stop for a minute and talk about this Russian thing.
This is like a guilt, what's it called?
A projection.
It's a guilt projection.
Hillary Clinton had Russian disinformation against Donald Trump about him having prostitutes and all this stuff.
And now she sees Russians everywhere.
She's on a podcast.
She's interviewed.
She now says the Russians are manipulating several of the candidates on the left, including, well, let's hear what she says.
Not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who's currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate.
She's the favorite of the Russians.
They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.
And that's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she's also a Russian asset.
Yeah, she's a Russian asset.
I mean, totally.
And so they know they can't win without a third-party candidate.
And so I don't know who it's going to be, but I will guarantee you they'll have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most need it.
She was asked if she was referring to Tulsi Gabbard, and she said, if the, what'd she say, if the nesting doll fits, if the Russian doll fits, wear it.
So she was, and Gabbard's stroke struck back.
Here is her response.
Let's take cut one.
Look, here, let me tell you what this is about.
This is about Hillary Clinton sending a very strong message saying that because I am and have long been calling for an end to our country's foreign policy of waging one regime change war after the next, the likes of which we've seen in Iraq, in Libya, and ongoing in Syria, and because I'm calling for an end to this new Cold War and nuclear arms race, that I am a Russian asset and that I am a traitor to the nation that I love.
And not only are they saying that about me, they are basically sending this message out to every veteran in this country, every service member, every American, anyone watching at home who is fighting for peace and who is calling for an end to these regime change wars, this new Cold War and arms race, they are saying that you are also a Russian asset, that you are also a traitor to this country.
That's really what's happening here.
And all this is backfiring because everybody notices that Hillary has no.
Some people on the left actually think Hillary is right, that she, that Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset.
But whether that's true or not, it's backfiring because she made the accusation without evidence, same as they're doing to Donald Trump.
And what's just hilarious to me, and she, Tulsi Gabbard, is also a leftist.
She's a total leftist.
I mean, she had a while where she said some kind of seemed a little bit reluctant to endorse abortion, but that's gone away.
She was kind of against gay rights, and then she sort of turned that around.
I mean, I don't know why gays and abortion should always be lumped together.
It just seems ridiculous to me.
But anyway, she's kind of playing to the left.
So she's not any kind of a voice for freedom at all.
She just is a little bit more appealing than the crazies, the other crazy people in the party like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
Anyway, it's this kind of craziness, this idea that somehow we have to be afraid of the Russians when I'm afraid of the Democrats.
I mean, Vladimir Putin is a bad guy.
He's the new czar.
That's what he is.
He's a czar.
And somebody made the joke, there was no Ivan the Wonderful.
The Tsars of Russia have always been bad people.
Ivan the Terrible.
Putin is terrible.
He's a bad guy.
But I'm not afraid of him.
I'm not afraid of him.
I'm afraid of the Democrats.
I'm afraid of the press.
I'm afraid of people telling me that it's a good thing when an administrative state is going to undermine an elected president because we don't like him.
That to me is terrifying.
The fact that they are openly calling for socialism and people are lining up around the block to get to Bernie Sanders, even though he's passed away and he's obviously just a stuffed character now.
I mean, it's just, it is incredibly sad to me that our education system is now producing people.
They're producing people like AOC who doesn't know anything.
And so they think socialism sounds great.
I'll be free.
If the government owns everything, it'll be like I own it.
And then I'll be a free person.
You know, it's like that's the level at which they're thinking.
That frightens me.
If Trump comes in and if he busters around and knocks over some statues and breaks some windows and lets a little bit of free American spirit out, I will toast him until the day I die.
On my deathbed, I'll be saying, go Trump.
You know, the guys who got this right, and I'll end with this because this is the most important part to me.
The guys who got this right are the evangelicals.
They treated, they basically decided, you know, everybody made fun of them for being hypocrites.
Oh, you're supporting this guy who slept with hookers and who cheated on his wife and who was a billionaire playboy and all this stuff.
And they said, yeah, but he's not a Christian guy, but he's our guy.
He's going to do the right thing.
And they compared him to King Cyrus because King Cyrus in the Bible, it's in, I think in Isaiah, that's prophesied that King Cyrus will free the Jews from the Babylonian exile.
And he did.
He sent them back to build their temple and have a life again.
So King Cyrus was not a Jew, but he helped the Jews.
And so what they said about Donald Trump is, yeah, you know, I said this when Donald Trump was running.
I said he's the first post-Christian president.
And by that, I didn't mean that he was a bad guy or worse than anybody else.
What I meant was he's not even pretending to have Christian values.
He's not even pretending.
He would say, you know, you're a loser.
You don't even have any money.
You know, Jonah Goldberg would attack him.
He said, Jonah Goldberg can't afford to buy a pair of pants.
All those things are anti-Christian.
Christians basically say the losers will be winners.
That if you don't have any money, maybe it's because you're a good guy who hasn't given in to the world.
So Trump was like the first post-Christian, the first guy willing to run on principles that were openly not Christian principles.
And yet the Christians said, you know, he will support the freedom we need to do what we need to do.
And that prophecy is coming true, partially because of the way the evangelicals have flattered him and treated him, but partially also because Trump is now surrounded by some true Christian public servants and they are speaking out.
Bill Barr, the attorney general, who's the one guy in this whole thing, I mean, he's the guy I like best right now.
I mean, he's the guy they're trying to basically delegitimize because he's been so honest and so forthright about going after Obama for what the Obama administration did and investigating them openly.
But he made a speech at Notre Dame and the left is going insane.
They're saying, oh, it's bizarre.
What a bizarre dread.
It's disturbing.
And he went and he said, look, secularism is aggressive.
And it's, I call, I called secularism a cult the other day, and he basically made the same points I made in my speech to the Acton Institute about how secularism replaces religious solutions with oppressive materialist solutions.
So instead of going to a priest and confess your sins, instead of having sins, you're politically incorrect, and so you're thrown off Twitter and you lose your job, right?
They're doing all these things that they think are going to replace the religious systems that we have for dealing with spiritual problems.
They're going to solve all those problems by materialist means.
That is leftism.
Leftism is the spirituality of Hegel turned into the materialism of Marx.
That's what leftism is.
And so he went and he said, no, no, we have to fight back.
The public square is not supposed to be secular by default.
This is the lie they're telling us.
Oh, yeah, well, you can have your religion, but don't bring it into the public square.
That's not American.
That's not what the founders meant.
Antonin Scalia talks about this.
He says they meant for the government to be able to choose between religions, but they did not mean, they did not mean for the government not to choose religion, godliness, over irreligion and godlessness.
They meant, said Scalia, for the government to be able to favor the idea that we are a godly nation.
And the reason is all their ideas came from Christianity.
All their ideas were inspired and based on the idea that there is a God who will reward us for doing good and will punish us for doing evil.
And Barr said he is going to defend religion with the power of the Department of Justice.
I think we should do all we can to promote and support authentic Catholic education at all levels.
Finally, as lawyers, we should be particularly active in the struggle that is being waged against religion on the legal plane.
We must be vigilant to resist efforts by forces of secularization to drive religious viewpoints from the public square and to impinge upon our exercise of our faith.
I can assure you that as long as I am Attorney General, the Department of Justice will be at the forefront of this effort, ready to fight for the most cherished of all our American liberties, the freedom to live according to our faith.
Very important speech.
It droves the left absolutely insane.
And at the same time, Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, he made a speech called Being a Christian Leader.
Now, his speech was not as philosophical and as well thought out, but it was very charming.
Here's just a little bit of that.
These violations of the most fundamental freedoms, human dignity, that I spoke about today, religious persecution, human trafficking, political repression, they leave deep scars.
And I am sure that some of you, and especially our friends who have traveled here from overseas today, I'm sure you counsel folks who are healing from those kinds of traumas.
My team and I at the State Department are out there every day using our diplomacy to fix the very conditions that allowed those evils to fester.
You know, others will confront these evils closer to home where the emotional aftermath is no less terrible.
Vicious abuse or the opioid epidemic, just to name a couple.
But no matter what comes before you, I pray you'll help hurting people stay immersed in God's word by remaining humble, by showing forgiveness, by listening intently and carefully and thoughtfully, by not rushing to judgment in complicated matters, by being a faithful steward, by using your time intentionally.
And I pray you'll do these things not out of your own strength, but by relying on, as Paul says, him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we are able to ask or to imagine.
Daily Wire Revival00:03:08
You know, a while back, somebody, some brilliant guy, said that he thought that there was going to be a revival, religious revival.
It was going to come from the intellectual top down.
It was not going to be a street revival.
It was going to be an intellectual.
Oh, that was me.
I knew it was somebody I liked, but I couldn't remember who it was.
It was me.
And I think amazingly, you are seeing this through the people surrounding Donald Trump.
When you see Bill Barr get up and give a speech like that, a really well thought out, intelligent speech attacking secularism, when you see Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, openly talking about how he approaches his job from a Christian way, this is an important thing that's happening.
This is an important good thing that's happening.
And it means it is something that is culture transforming.
It is the kind of thing that makes it possible for other people to say, oh, I can say that too.
I can talk about this too.
I don't have to go to work and say, like, yeah, I'm not going to talk about church.
I'm not going to talk about the things that get me through the day and make my life make sense.
This is culture changing and it's coming through Donald Trump.
And again, it may not be something he's planning.
It may not be something he thought about, but it is something that is coming about through his administration.
And that is why I say the Trump administration is not only the best thing that's happened to this country in a long time, it may be the only thing that could have happened to this country that would have saved what is really the dying wisps of our founding ideals and our founding structures.
I do not believe the intellectuals on the right, some of whom I love dearly and some of whom I respect like crazy, I do not believe they saw how bad it was.
And now we see because Donald Trump has brought them out from under their rock.
And we can see openly that they're telling us the deep state rules, socialism rules, we are going to take over everything.
And we can only hope that Trump, in his crazy, chaotic way, will stop them.
I got to stop there.
I'm traveling, but I will see you tomorrow from Memphis.
I'll be walking in Memphis.
I'll be walking with my feet 10 feet off of Beale.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Oh, hooray!
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 Walsh Show, and the Michael Knoll Show.
Thanks for listening.
The Andrew Clavin Show is produced by Austin Stevens and directed by Mike Joyner.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring, senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
And our supervising producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
Assistant Director Pavel Wydowski.
Edited by Adam Sayovitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Kormina.
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 Walsh Show, we're not just discussing politics.
We're talking culture, faith, family, all of the things that are really important to you.