Ep. 828 – Swamp Rats Debate the Swamp skewers Corey Booker’s 2020 campaign as a confused identity grab, framing Democratic welfare promises as theft disguised as generosity while mocking electability debates over gender. It praises Trump’s Iran/Europe policy but slams Democratic impeachment tactics as politically motivated, citing FBI corruption and selective prosecutions like Avenatti’s. The mailbag clarifies free speech limits—distinguishing opinion from defamation—then pivots to storytelling’s core: character-driven conflict, from Hamlet to modern films. Listeners grapple with infidelity, refugee vetting, forgiveness, and faith vs. depression, with advice leaning on therapy, prayer, and confronting trauma roots. The episode ends by defending conservative media as the antidote to perceived mainstream bias, blending satire, policy, and personal struggles into a critique of progressive governance and cultural decline. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, it's time to say a fond farewell to Corey Booker, who has suspended his presidential campaign in order to spend more time with his gladiator movies.
Senator Booker got the word that he was not going to be president after the word passed through the mind of every single citizen of the United States, made a transit through first Western and then Eastern Europe, moved across the Dardanelles to Asia, then down to Australia, from which it spread throughout the Middle East to the continent of Africa, then made its way to South, then Central America, finally coming up through Mexico and on to Iowa, where it was received by Corey Booker, who was completely shocked to hear the news.
Political analysts say that Booker's campaign may have failed because the public was confused about his persona.
For instance, as a dynamic young black man, Booker hoped to remind voters of Barack Obama.
But the voters were never sure whether he was Obama, the charming and eloquent politician, or Obama, the jerk who killed the economy and screwed up the Middle East.
Booker hoped to present himself as heroic by declaring that he was Spartacus, but voters just assumed he enjoyed running around barechested while wearing a short leather skirt.
And Booker thought he could win attention by repeatedly declaring that he was the man for this moral moment, but it turned out that just made him sound like an annoying pain in the ass.
Finally, Booker thought that he could run on his record as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, where he improved education with charter schools.
But that turns out to violate the Democrat platform created by teachers unions, so voters felt they would prefer to vote for an 80-year-old communist who at least makes them laugh.
On the positive side, Booker has always made a point of living with his constituents in inner-city, low-income neighborhoods.
So at least he won't have to do that crap anymore.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boom.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-dee-doo.
Ship-shaped hipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
You know, I was going to open the show by saying that some people may have watched the debate last night thinking Democrats so white, but I thought you would find it impossible to believe that some people may have watched the debate last night.
What do the Democrats have to say to us at this point?
Really?
All of their ideas essentially come down to one idea.
They're going to take other people's money to pay for your stuff.
They call this free, free health care, free college, free preschool, and so on.
It's like me sticking a gun in your back, stealing 20 bucks from you, and thinking, oh boy, free beer.
And all of these proposals are based on the idea that government is better at doing things than a free people in a free system.
Better at setting prices than the market, better at running businesses than businessmen, better at providing health care than individual doctors, better at taking care of children than moms.
They've been telling us this now for at least a century, at least since Woodrow Wilson proposed that an administrative state run by experts should essentially replace the constitutional system of self-rule bequeathed us by the founders.
It's an idea that was supported and expanded by Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama and is now defended by a leftist news media that used to feel it should guard us from government excess.
Now they tell us we should just be grateful to the deep state for protecting us from mere elected officials like Donald Trump.
Bernie On War And Trump00:14:39
What did you need all that self-rule for anyway?
The problem is this deep state and its experts have a record of miserable failure.
Their health care system is the VA.
Their school systems suck.
Their experts were caught flat-footed by the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of radical Islam.
Their interference in the mortgage sector of the economy led to the catastrophic 2008 crash.
And with each disastrous mistake they made, their response was to call for more experts and more power to the government.
We little people have a name for the administrative state and its experts.
We call them the swamp.
And what the Democrats are really offering us is more stuff in exchange for a bigger swamp.
We have all the evidence we need to say, the swamp is big enough, thanks.
At this point, that debate, not to mention the Democrat debate, should be over.
We're going to talk about all this, especially just the crazy swampiness that's going on while they're telling us that our elected leader should be impeached.
It's just amazing.
But first, let us talk about Robinhood.
You know, the stock market is obviously booming, and the best person to run to invest in the stock market is you.
And 2020 is the time to start thinking about down the road, like 20 years down the road, because that will come and you want to have your investments in place.
With Robinhood, you can invest in stocks, options, and ETFs right from your phone.
You can even spend and earn interest on uninvested cash.
Robinhood makes it easy to get started and learn as you grow with an intuitive app experience and no commission fees on trades.
What I really like about it, by the way, is the fact that you can actually learn about stocks and learn where your money should be.
It's fun.
You know, it's a lot of fun.
Stock prices don't have to hold you back.
You can buy a piece of a company you love for as low as one buck and build your portfolio a little at a time.
Buy one share, buy half a share, three and a quarter shares.
It's up to you, your budget, and your goals.
Your first stock is on the house when you set up your account.
Go to clavin.robinhood.com to learn more and claim your free stock.
Annual percentage yield on uninvested cash is paid by program banks and is variable.
Robinhood Financial is not a bank.
The free stock offer is subject to terms and conditions.
All investments involve risk.
Other fees may apply.
Visit rbnhd.co slash fees.
But if you want to sign on, go to clavin.robinhood.com.
So you'll need to know, how do you spell clavin?
There are no easy fees.
There are, in fact, not everybody knows this, but there are, in fact, no ease in Clavin.
It's KLA, V-A-N.
I just make it look that easy.
We have the mailbag coming up today.
So you will sound, by the end of this show, you will sound just like that.
You'll be so happy because all your problems have been solved.
And I want to pause for just a minute to say happy birthday to Ben Shapiro.
I think he's 15 and he's doing great.
And it's always great to have him around for another year.
So Trump is signing a new trade deal with China, right?
I mean, that is what Trump is doing.
And while he's doing this and while he's setting up this stuff and while he's killing Iranian terrorists, this is what they're debating at the Democrat debate last night.
It's whether Bernie Sanders said two years ago in a private phone call with Elizabeth Warren that a woman could, whether a woman could win the presidency.
She says he said that a woman could not win the presidency.
Here is his response.
Well, as a matter of fact, I didn't say it.
And I don't want to waste a whole lot of time on this because this is what Donald Trump and maybe some of the media want.
Anybody knows me, knows that it's incomprehensible that I would think that a woman could not be president of the United States.
Go to YouTube today.
There's a video of me 30 years ago talking about how a woman could become president of the United States.
That's true.
We do have that clip.
Here is how Abby Phillips, the CNN reporter, responded to his denial.
I love this.
Senator Sanders, I do want to be clear here.
You're saying that you never told Senator Warren that a woman could not win the election.
That is correct.
Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?
Even the audience laughed.
Sanders laughed.
Obviously, CNN has it in for Sanders.
They don't think he can win.
They don't want him to be on the rise, which he is.
Let's hear Warren's response.
I disagreed.
Bernie is my friend, and I am not here to try to fight with Bernie.
But look, this question about whether or not a woman can be president has been raised and it's time for us to attack it head on.
And I think the best way to talk about who can win is by looking at people's winning record.
So can a woman beat Donald Trump?
Look at the men on this stage.
Collectively, they have lost 10 elections.
The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they've been in are the women.
And the only person on this stage who has beaten an incumbent Republican any time in the past 30 years is me.
All right, obviously a prepared response.
But here's the thing that nobody has addressed.
Who cares?
Who cares?
I mean, really, I don't mean that like if Bernie Sanders said, oh, women couldn't win the presidency because they're too fluffy headed and stupid.
That would be one thing.
Then you would care.
That would be a stupid and evil thing to say and mean thing to say.
But what if he just said, you know, after Hillary Clinton, I think people are put off and will turn away from a woman.
I, for instance, nobody talks about whether Pete Buttigieg can win as a gay person.
I don't think he can win the presidency as a gay person.
I have nothing against gay people.
I really don't.
I couldn't care less.
But I don't think the American public wants that.
I just don't think they do.
And so what would be wrong with saying that?
We're not even allowed to bring it up.
We're not even allowed to discuss whether the American public wants the first lady to be a man.
I mean, I think that that's a really good question.
It may not bother me, but it might bother a lot of people.
I suspect it would bother a lot of people, and I don't think they'd vote.
I think, here's one that'll shock you.
I think Barack Obama made it harder for a guy like Corey Booker to win the presidency.
He made it harder for a black guy in the Obama mold to win the presidency, because as high as Obama's likability ratings are, and they're really high, and Democrats love him, people know he did a bad job, and you can tell they know he did a bad job by the fact that they voted every other Democrat out of office during his term.
They wanted to send him a message, stop doing all this leftist things.
Obama, as we know, never listened to anybody but himself.
So, you know, I think that Obama made it harder for a black man in the Obama mold to win the election.
Not because that's the right way to think, not because that's a good thing to think.
I just think it's the way life works.
It's the way people's minds work.
So what difference does it make, really?
I mean, to coin a Hillary Clinton phrase, what difference does it make what Bernie Sanders said if he wasn't saying it in an unkind or bigoted way?
It's ridiculous.
So let's deal with the things that matter.
Foreign policy.
Now, the debate was incredibly boring.
I mean, the debate was incredibly boring.
The problem with people being, that everybody's now white now that Corey Booker is gone except for, well, Andrew Yang, he wasn't even in it, was he, as I recall.
But the fact that everybody is white doesn't matter.
But the fact that everybody is vanilla, that they're old, that they're passing off these 19th century ideas as new ideas, that does matter.
Even Van Jones, here was Van Jones' reaction to the whole thing.
To see those two have that level of vitriol was very dispiriting.
And I want to say that tonight for me was dispiriting.
Democrats have to do better than what we saw tonight.
There was nothing I saw tonight that would be able to take Donald Trump out.
And I want to see a Democrat in the White House as soon as possible.
There was nothing tonight that if you're looking at this thing, you say any of these people are prepared for what Donald Trump is going to do to us.
And to see further division tonight is very dispiriting.
Yeah, you know, I was looking at it thinking the same thing.
Obviously, I'm biased.
Pardon me, I'm biased toward the right.
I think Trump is doing a good job.
But, you know, here it is.
I don't care what the polls say.
This thing with Trump in Iran was a major, major foreign policy victory.
Terrorists gone.
Iranians cowed.
You know, Europe is now signing on to Trump's approach to this, to Barack Obama's ridiculous nuclear deal.
Europe is now saying, yeah, this is a bad thing.
So he has just done a good job in foreign policy as he's done a good job on the economy.
And you start to ask yourself, well, what are people complaining about?
So much of the debate because of the Iranian situation focused on foreign policy.
Let's listen to what they're saying while Trump is taking care of business.
So here is Bernie Sanders on what he thinks.
There's a reason Joseph Stalin had gulags, right?
And actually, gulags were a lot better than what the CIA has told us that they were.
People were actually paid a living wage in gulags.
They had conjugal visits in gulags.
Gulags were actually meant for re-education.
Okay.
Maybe that wasn't Bernie.
Maybe that was the guy working for Bernie.
Let's actually listen to what Sanders said.
Cut 15.
But what we have to face as a nation is that the two great foreign policy disasters of our lifetimes were the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq.
Both of those wars were based on lies.
And right now, what I fear very much is we have a president who is lying again and could drag us into a war that is even worse than the war in Iraq.
So nuts, right?
That is absolutely nuts.
Let's hear Warren, Cut 17.
I think we need to get our combat troops out.
You know, we have to stop this mindset that we can do everything with combat troops.
Our military is the finest military on earth, and they will take any sacrifice we ask them to take.
But we should stop asking our military to solve problems that cannot be solved militarily.
Well, people trying to kill us can actually be solved militarily, but just take a listen to those two people.
Bernie Sanders is fighting the Vietnam War and basically saying that Trump is getting us into war, but nobody can believe that Trump wants us into war.
If you listen to CNN, that's what Trump is doing.
He's starting World War III.
But where's the World War III?
It didn't happen.
It hasn't shown up.
So the entire premise of what he's saying is ridiculous.
And she's saying we should pull out of the Middle East.
We've already had that experience with Obama.
Trump obviously wants out.
He obviously wants out, but he's acting responsibly.
And frankly, if Elizabeth Warren got into office, I think she would have to act in the same way.
Here's Biden on this.
The reason he made the strike was because our embassies are about to be bombed.
I would not meet with absent preconditions instead of poking our eye and poking our finger in the eye of all our friends by stealing our intellectual property, their corporate state system to our significant disadvantage.
Moving away from fossil fuels to enter to solar and wind energy.
Today, Junior!
That was just mean.
That was actually spliced together.
Buddy Trump, meanwhile, is in, I think he was in Milwaukee doing one of his rallies, which he does on the debate nights.
And this is what he said about Joe Biden's Cut One.
You ever notice with Biden, he's always going the wrong state?
And in your great state of Iowa, Iowa, it's Iowa, right?
No, it's Wisconsin.
Oh, I met Wisconsin.
Oh, I didn't know I was in Wisconsin.
That's fine.
How many times has he done that?
By the way, lots of times, he said.
It's great to be in the state of Ohio.
No, sir, you're in Florida many times.
The sad part about that, Sleepy Joe is right.
You know the sad part about that?
When you do that, you can't really recover.
You can be Winston Churchill, make the finest remainder of remarks, but you get killed.
And he does it every time.
And the fake news, they give him a total pass, and that's okay.
It's all right.
It's going to happen to all of us someday.
I don't know.
I would hate to see Trump go just because I'd miss the laughs when he goes off like that.
He's playing.
But here's what he said about foreign policy.
Here is what when these guys are blithering about pulling out, let's pull all our troops out of the Middle East or let's not get into Vietnam, which come on is obviously not going to happen under Trump.
This is what Trump is telling his rally is cut number 12.
Bernie, and the radical left cannot protect your family and they cannot protect our country, nor do they want to, I think.
Well, I mean, that's pretty brutal.
But you know, here is the thing.
You know, they told us that, oh, Trump has been pulling out of the nuclear deal, has really wrong-footed Europe, and Europe wanted to be in the deal.
And now Europe is joining in and going after Iran.
The European powers have triggered a formal dispute mechanism over Iran's breaches of key parts of the 2015 nuclear deal, a move that could spell its end.
Iran has gradually lifted all limits on its production of uranium, which can be used to make reactor fuel, but also nuclear weapons.
It has said it is entitled to do so in response to sanctions reinstated by the U.S. when it abandoned the deal in 2018.
France, Germany, and the U.K. said they did not accept Iran's argument.
And listen to what Boris Johnson had to say.
President Trump is a great deal maker by his own account and many others.
Let's work together to replace the JCPOA and get the Trump deal instead.
Wow.
That is the UK saying, let's get the Trump deal.
Let's review this.
The experts said that killing Solmani would be World War III.
No World War III.
They said Europe is against us.
Europe is with us.
They said Iran is united in grief for their revered military leader.
They're in the streets shouting, America's not the villain you are to the leaders of Iran.
Really, the experts, the deep state, they have just proven themselves wrong.
And all the Democrats want to do is have more of them.
Why They Call Witnesses00:15:17
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And please write Clavin in their How Did You Hear About Us box so they know we sent you.
It also says, how do you hear about us?
How did you hear about us?
And how do you spell Clavin?
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Let me.
So that is the foreign policy debate.
And so what are the Democrats doing meanwhile?
I mean, I want to take a look.
I want to step back for a minute and take a look at the swamp, at the thing that the Democrats are selling us.
Let's just listen to Elizabeth Warren's concluding statement, because she really says everything the Democrats have to say right here.
Much is broken in this country.
I sat here in the break and just made notes about many of the things we didn't get to talk about tonight.
How the disability community is struggling for true equality.
How gun violence and active shooter drills worry every mother in this country.
How children are living in poverty and seeing their life chances shrink.
How trans women, potentially trans women of color, are at risk.
Black infant mortality, climate change that particularly hits black and brown communities, people who are being crushed by student loan debt, farmers who are barely holding on, people struggling with mental illness.
And yet I come here tonight with a heart filled with hope.
Well, I'm glad our heart is filled with hope.
But you know, the thing about the Democrats is, just like anybody who complains, you can always complain about something and have a good complaint.
There are things, there are problems in the country.
There are always problems in the country, and there will be problems in the country, and the problems should be addressed.
But just because you name the problems doesn't mean your ideas are any good.
And the whole idea, they wake up in the morning and they just want more government.
And no matter what, they don't even know, who was it who used to say this?
They know that the answer is more government before they even know what the question is.
And in this impeachment, this impeachment is all about, oh, they're going to protect us from our elected leader, from our elected president.
They're going to get rid of him because he something about the Ukraine.
I mean, they're voting today, I believe, to finally, finally send this emergency impeachment, which was so important for preserving that Western civilization.
And Nancy Pelosi said that Western civilization is in peril.
Our constitutional life is in peril.
Everything's in peril because Trump mouthed off to the president of Ukraine.
And then they held on to it for a month, held on for it to a month, trying to manipulate the trial.
And now today they're going to vote and apparently send it over.
She's caved in.
She has to cave in.
She has no leverage.
So now, amazingly, amazingly, as this vote is coming out, just by coincidence, suddenly new information is coming out.
What is the new information?
It's some notes, some scrawled notes of one of Rudy Giuliani's associates saying that they were, yeah, they're trying to pressure Ukraine into going after Burisma and Hunter Biden.
You know, we kind of know that this is what Rudy was doing.
And then they, oh, then they put out this report that Russia was tapping the phones at Burisma to suggest, they have no proof of this, but they're suggesting that Russia is once again plotting to get Donald Trump elected president.
I sincerely doubt that Russia is now plotting to get Donald Trump elected president, though I have no doubt they're plotting to cause the Democrats to say that to cause more division because Russia does not care who is president.
They probably would prefer a Democrat, but all they want is they want us at each other's throats, and they achieve that through the Democrats misuse of information about Russia playing around on Facebook is what they're doing.
So they're sending it over to, they're sending the impeachment articles over to the Senate, and they're voting about that.
And here's, and they say, you know, we have to have witnesses.
We didn't call the witnesses, but you have to call the witnesses.
We didn't get the proof, but you have to get the proof.
We didn't even get any evidence of a crime, but you have to get the evidence of the crime.
Here is Jim Jordan reacting to that.
You can't go to the Senate and say, oh, we're only going to let the Democrats get the witnesses they want if they move.
I hope they don't do that.
Again, all the facts are on the president's side.
I hope they dismiss this and we get an acquittal right away.
But if they go to witnesses, you're going to have to have both sides.
And we would love to hear from the whistleblower.
Remember, 435 members of the House.
Only one member, Adam Schiff, only one member knows who the whistleblower is.
Only one member of staff got to talk to the whistleblower.
And yet that's the individual who's put our country through four months of this.
So if you're going to have witnesses, you're going to open it up for both sides and have a real fair process at that point.
But, you know, Trump is kind of saying, oh, you should just dismiss the whole thing.
But I think he's wrong.
I think Ted Cruz is right.
They should have the trial, have the trial according to the rules they set for Bill Clinton, where they listen to the evidence first to see if they need any more evidence.
Then if they need witnesses, they call witnesses, including Hunter Biden, including the people that Trump was complaining about, because if he was making complaints that there was corruption there that should be investigated, that kind of justifies some of what he was saying.
Here's Biden at the debate last night talking about this.
This is cut seven.
It's irrelevant.
There's no choice but for the Nancy Pelosi in the House to move.
He has, in fact, committed impeachable offenses.
Whether the Senate makes that judgment or not, it's for them to decide.
And by the way, I'm told that I say we have to unite the country.
It's going to be harder after this trial.
It may be.
But look, I understand how these guys are, this Republican Party.
They've gone after savaged my surviving son, gone after me, told lies that your networks and others won't even carry on television because they're flat-out lies.
And he says that's irrelevant, but it's not irrelevant.
I mean, it's not irrelevant what Hunter Biden was doing.
It's not irrelevant whether it's a lie or not.
I mean, let's find out whether it is a lie or not.
That Hunter Biden is a very suspicious, very poorly behaved character.
It is suspicious that he was working for Burisma, and it is relevant that Trump, if Trump wanted corruption investigated, that this was one of the things he wanted investigated.
I know, I know it's unfortunate that Trump specifically mentioned Hunter Biden in that phone call.
Trump has a big mouth.
He doesn't think all the time before he speaks.
But it's not necessarily illegal that he did it, especially if there's corruption there.
So I said, you know, on the show, we don't stop and think about this enough.
On the show, you get tomorrow's news today.
This is true.
Like, I have been right about more things than almost anybody else.
It's because I really don't have an interest in not being, you know, in guessing.
I know nobody knows the future.
I can get things wrong.
But the one thing I said the minute this story hit the news, the one thing I said right away was this is going to be worse for Joe Biden.
It was the end of Joe Biden's campaign.
It's going to be worse for Joe Biden than it is for Donald Trump.
And I will tell you today, this is going to be worse for Joe Biden than it is for Donald Trump.
When they go into the Senate with this, if they call witnesses, you better believe that Hunter Biden is going to be on that witness list, and you better believe it's not going to be a good day for Joe.
But let's stop for a minute.
Forget about Donald Trump.
I know it's impossible to forget about Donald Trump, but let's just think for a minute about the government that is doing this stuff, about the government that the Democrats want to increase.
I just want to hit a couple of smaller stories that you may have missed, right?
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, right?
This is the Pfizer court, has stunned court watchers by selecting David Chris, a former Obama administration lawyer who has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and written extensively in support of the FBI's surveillance practices on the left-wing blog Lawfair.
He has been appointed by the Pfizer Court to oversee the FBI's implementation of reforms in the wake of the damning Department of Justice Inspector General report last year.
So in other words, they've appointed, as they say, the wolf, the fox, to guard the hen house, right?
This is the Pfizer court saying, yeah, we were fooled, but we're so corrupt that when we investigate this, we're going to send in a guy who believes that we should be fooled, who's completely a partisan of the FBI.
That's the swamp.
That is really dirty stuff.
So when they come to us and they say, one, we need more government.
We need more government to pay for your whatever, your college loans to pay for your health care.
That's the government they want more of.
That's the government they want more of.
It is dirty.
It is corrupt.
It really is.
And it's like, this is democratic societies have always had a problem with corruption.
And we have a problem with corruption right now.
We don't need more swamp.
We need less.
Here's another case, right?
David Daladine, the judge dismissed six of the 15 felony criminal charges against him.
What was he charged with?
He was charged with secretly taping Planned Parenthood and finding that they were conspiring to illegally harvest and sell aborted baby body parts.
No one at Planned Parenthood has been arrested, but he is still charged with, I think it's six, nine, nine remaining felony charges.
This guy could go to jail for exposing Planned Parenthood for selling the body parts of babies, of babies that were killed by Planned Parenthood.
And he's the one who's threatened with jail.
That's the swamp.
That's your government in operation.
And so when Elizabeth Warren says, oh, you need free this and you need free that, what she's saying is you need more of these guys with more power to put the people away when they expose them, to put people away when they expose them, instead of putting the people away who were exposed.
Michael Avenati, arrested yesterday, he was let out of the state bar court where he was being yelled at for violating his oath as a lawyer, and he was arrested for, what was he arrested for, by federal authorities for violating the term of his release.
This was the guy the press told us was going to be a great candidate for president against Donald Trump.
This is our government.
This is our government at work.
And I'm sorry, you know, like, I want to love our government.
I want to be loyal to our government, but our government has gotten out of control.
After eight years of Barack Obama and probably before that, it has just gotten too big, too powerful, too reliant on its agencies.
You have guys coming out and saying Trump should be impeached because he violated the consensus of the agencies.
It's Trump's job to make foreign policy.
They didn't like it.
And that's why they're coming after him.
And that's where they're serving as witnesses to his impeachment.
We need less swamp, not more.
All right, I got to take a break from Facebook and YouTube, but, but, this is a good time for you to go to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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And if you can see it, you know you want this leftist tears tumbler.
So come on over to dailywire.com.
It's the mailbag.
Woo!
That's a lot of screaming.
That's a lot of, yes.
Oh, my God.
All right.
And you, too, will sound like that once I answer your questions.
From Braden.
In one of your recent podcasts, you described how you were pro-free speech and how you felt that even hate speech should be allowed.
However, you also spoke regarding Nicholas Sandman, who just settled the lawsuit against CNN, stating that, and I said that it was good that he was standing up for himself against the press and encouraged more parties to sue the mainstream media as well for wrongdoing.
I agree with you on almost everything, but I just need some clarification on this one.
We're not these news networks not just exercising their free speech when they spoke out against Nick Sandman.
You know, I've gotten this letter a couple of times, by the way.
They send it to me personally through my website.
And no, no, this is not.
Libel and slander are not covered by free speech any more than threatening is covered by free speech.
I cannot say to you, I can't come into your restaurant and say, buy whiskey from me or I'm going to shoot this place up, right?
That is a crime.
That's what's called a speech act.
It's not just a promise as a speech act.
It's something that is only done through speech, but you're actually taking an action.
If I say, I promise to do something and I don't do it, you can sue me for breach, right?
You can sue me for breaching that promise.
You have free speech to talk about what your opinions are, to talk about who you hate, to talk about the fact that you're a low-down, bigot, nasty guy, and you don't like people of other races.
You can say all those things because you're not committing a speech act.
It is a speech act to lie about somebody and tarnish their reputation.
You know, I always remember, I love to quote Elton John.
You know, in England, it's easier for famous people to sue for libel if they get lied about it.
And here, if you're famous, you can say almost anything you want about somebody who's famous.
But Elton John was attacked, and the word for a gay person, the harsh word for a gay person in England, is a poof.
And Elton John came out and said, You can call me a fat, untalented poof, but you can't lie about me.
I thought that was a wonderful thing to say.
So, no, you know, obviously, when I say free speech, I mean that you should be able to express any opinion you want, including opinions that the left or the right considers hateful.
I do not think we are in danger of opinions.
I think the answer to speech, to free speech, to bad speech is good speech.
The answer to people who say the kinds of things that the alt-right says are people like me and Ben and Knowles who say, no, you know, that's ridiculous.
We will win that argument because we're in the right.
That's why.
And that has always worked for America.
And it's the countries like Germany that prohibit free speech that have the problem with all this fascism because we don't have this.
We expose it, we make fun of it, we laugh at it, we attack it, we debate it, and you win.
And so that's what I'm not afraid of.
But of course, you can't ruin a guy's reputation by saying, you can't go out on TV and say a guy cheated on his wife or on his taxes or committed a crime if he didn't do it.
That is a bad act.
And you can be sued for that.
And you should be able to be sued for that.
Finding the Right Character00:02:25
So it's very distinct.
Listen, there's no such thing as absolute anything.
I'm as close to an absolute First Amendment supporter as it is possible to be.
But again, you can't cry fire in a crowded theater.
That's a speech act as well.
All right.
From Nate, Mr. Clavin, asking this question, as a writer, in your opinion, when it comes to the art of storytelling, do you think there is one single element that makes or breaks a story?
In other words, if this piece is missing, you don't have a good story.
Or do you believe good storytelling is more complicated than that?
Well, yes, good storytelling is more complicated than that.
There are stories that don't fulfill certain requirements that I would have of storytelling that turn out to be great stories.
But having said that, there is something that I think really makes a story terrific.
And it is the moment when I know that I have got a novel that I want to write or a movie that I want to write.
The moment when I know that is when I find the right character or characters for the situation, the character who is going to be affected by the situation in such a way that it is going to be moving and revelatory and insightful and deep and tell you something deep about human existence.
I have great ideas, I think, all the time, right?
A great idea for a story.
I mean, a story, it's a great idea for a story.
I remember having an idea, well, what if you woke up one day and you walked into the nursery and your child was gone?
That turned into the novel and then the movie Don't Say a Word.
And, you know, the thing that I then think is, well, who does that happen to?
Who does that happen to?
I used to talk about Hamlet and Othello.
And Hamlet is a guy who can't make up his mind.
And so when the ghost comes to him and says, revenge your father's death, he can't make up his mind.
And he's stuck.
And that's what the play, that's how the play develops.
It's incredibly deep themes about looking for the truth and how do we know what the truth is.
I did a whole show with this on Knowles' new Prager show, The Book Club, I believe it's called, and that'll be released later.
We talked about Hamlet.
In Othello, which was written only a couple of years later, Othello, you have this passionate more who's like a really fierce, ferocious warrior hero.
He's a great guy.
The minute he walks on stage, you love him.
That means that Iago is able to manipulate him by showing him a little proof, false proof, that his wife is cheating on him, and he goes nuts because he believes the proof immediately.
Now, what would happen if you took Othello and put him in Hamlet, and you took Hamlet and put him in Othello, right?
If you put Hamlet and Othello and showed him a handkerchief and said, Your wife is cheating on him, Hamlet would be, well, really?
Confronting Emotional Sclerosis00:09:38
How do I know?
Am I sure?
I don't know.
Do I have a wife?
Does my wife exist?
Does life exist?
You know, the play would never end.
Whereas if you had Othello and you said, Avenge your father's death, the play would end right that second.
It would be a whole act play, right?
So you have to find the character who fits the story.
And that's the kind of thing that really makes me love a story.
I mean, even going from the sublime of Shakespeare to just going to ordinary movies, it's that moment when I say, oh, Mel Brooks is so, Mel Brooks, Mel Gibson is so crazy that he's a lethal weapon.
I get that story.
I understand why that's a cool story, and I'm in.
I buy in right away.
So that's the thing that makes a great story to me.
But again, stories are complicated.
There are all kinds of different stories.
There are fairy tales, and there are stories that are kind of, you know, just what am I thinking, parables that have a message that they send, and all those can work in very different ways.
But that's what makes a great story to me.
From Kelsey, Andrew, for almost a year, my husband and I have been separated after an affair he had with a co-worker.
Since then, he deeply regrets it, and he has dealt with major depression for which he now takes medication and sees a therapist regularly.
It's recently come up that he's okay with pornography.
He doesn't see the immorality of it, even though he admits that the Bible is against it.
He just says he doesn't care.
He says he wishes he did, but he doesn't see anything wrong with watching it so long as it doesn't impact your welfare.
He compares it to drinking or smoking in moderation.
I'm deeply convicted about how destructive pornography is, and I'm afraid this will completely split us up.
We recently started living together, but since this has come up, I'm just not sure how to proceed.
And I'm desperate for help.
I don't know if I'm being unreasonable to still be upset with how he feels about it so long as he abstains or if that would be lowering my standards.
He's offered to abstain, even though he says it would make him unhappy.
You know, I have a lot of questions about this.
First, the big question is: do you have kids?
I mean, I think that that is a really important question, because if you have kids who are still at home, you want to do everything you can to keep this marriage together.
The other thing is, he says that he is using it in moderation, but is he?
A lot of people who are addicted to things think they're using it in moderation.
I mean, it's the old joke, right?
I can handle it.
I can handle my heroin use.
I can handle my whiskey drinking, but you really can't.
So it really is a question of how much he's doing this.
Listen, I seriously think that in this case, you need couples therapy.
I think you need to be with a therapist together, not his therapist, right?
Don't go to his therapist.
You want a new therapist who's going to deal with you as a couple because just the fact that he is so reluctant that he says, you know, I mean, pornography is degrading, and I say that as somebody who looks at naked pictures sometimes, you know, I don't go into real deep pornography, but I have.
I've looked at it.
You know, I know that I don't use it a lot and I don't feel good about it, but I'm just being honest with you about this.
But still, if he is looking at it to the point where it is a problem, and I'm suspicious that he is, I think this is something you need to deal with.
I think you need to deal with your relationship, and I think you need to deal with it with a pastor or a counselor who is interested in you both and will listen to you both.
I don't, I'm just very suspicious of what he's saying, and I don't know if it's the truth or not, but I think you really do need to deal with this, and you need to deal with your feelings about his affair.
That's something that you can also have a therapist deal with.
It's very hard to let that go, and you need to make sure that you've let it go.
From Gabriel, dear bald future ruler of the universe.
What do you mean, future ruler of the universe?
What's that about?
I love your show and your everyday commentary on today's issues.
I'm a high school senior, and I had a question about my policy debate coming up.
The resolution is that the U.S. should reform its current refugee vetting process.
And I was having a hard time finding information.
After Trump made changes to it, it seems to have gotten better.
What is your take on this issue?
You know, Trump's, it's funny, everybody concentrates on the wall, but in fact, Trump's policies, and he's building more walls, Trump's policies have vastly reduced illegal immigration.
And when Trump came out and said we need to vet refugees more closely, the left immediately said, oh, no, no, we can never do that.
Judges have stopped him from doing it, saying, oh, no, no, we can't.
But in fact, we do.
I mean, there's a lot of violence.
A lot of the violence and terrorism that goes on happens because of foreign-born citizens, and we should be vetting our refugees very closely and making sure that they want to be here and that they love this country.
Trump is absolutely right about this, and there's no use being compassionate and letting our citizens get killed.
All right.
From Holly.
Dear Clavin, my question is about my relationship with my father.
My parents had a difficult divorce due to my father's infidelity when I was five.
This is from Holly.
After he left, I saw him once or twice a year, and we had sporadic phone calls.
My mother was amazing and devoted her life to trying to keep me from feeling my father's absence.
I'm now 21.
Family and friends have revealed some of the more devious aspects of my father's character.
He was, it was reluctantly confirmed by my mother that he was at times physically and emotionally abusive.
A part of me has always harbored resentment towards him, but after his abuse was made known to me, I've begun to feel true hatred.
Although I'm currently truly disgusted by him, I've not worked up enough courage to confront him because I know that when I do, the last threat of connection I have with him will be torn away.
Do you think that I should confront him or simply accept him for who and what he is and continue with our cordial yet disconnected relationship?
Here's what I think about this.
I think you have to deal with your feelings.
There's no point in confronting him.
This is 16 years ago.
You were five.
You're now an adult.
It was between him and your mother.
He didn't abuse you.
You have to deal with your feelings about this, whether you deal with this through prayer, therapy, just thought, thinking it through.
The important thing, you are the important thing here.
The important thing is that you can live a life free of resentment, free of hatred.
You don't need that in your life.
A disconnected, cordial relationship with him is a good thing.
That's not a bad thing.
You're never going to have a better relationship with him because this doesn't sound like he's a very good person, right?
And that's sad for you.
And you need to deal with the sadness.
You need to deal with the fact that this is never going to change.
See, that's the thing about confronting him.
I don't really care whether you confront him.
I don't think you're going to get anything out of it.
You're not going to change him.
He is not going to change.
And confronting him is not going to make you feel better.
And not talking to him is not going to make you feel better.
And you are the important thing here.
He is the past.
You are now and the future.
And you are you.
And that's the thing that needs to be taken care of.
So you've got to deal with your feelings about this in any way that you can.
Get rid of the hatred.
Let it go.
Forgive him.
Forgiving him doesn't mean you think it's all right.
It just means you're not going to hold your anger against him anymore.
Just let it go.
And yeah, have a cordial, distant relationship with him.
And you know, as someone who had to do this himself, I can tell you, you have to deal with the tragedy of that.
It's never going to be better.
You're never going to have the father you should have had.
You're never going to have the father you should have had, me either.
You just got to learn to live with that, let it go, understand that life is tragic and have the joy of being alive, the great gift of being alive, and embrace that.
Okay, here's a question kind of in the same vein from Christopher to the all-wise, all-knowing Maha Clavin.
To make a long story short, many years ago, I was ravaged by depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
It nearly destroyed me and my marriage.
My faith in Christ was tested as I even began to believe I had lost my salvation through the ordeal, despite it all, and only by the grace of God through Christ, myself, my marriage, and my faith survived.
The scars, of course, remain, scars that encourage doubt over faith, embrace fear more than trust, are prone to anger over kindness.
My question, as a person with scars of your own, yet still able to celebrate and find joy in the journey, how can one move past the scars and embrace joy?
Well, first of all, you know, depression does leave a scar in the sense of leaving uncertainty.
Once you've been depressed, you know that that's a possibility and that can worry you.
In terms of faith in God, because I came to faith so late, I had a lot of time to think about it.
I was baptized at 49.
I didn't really start to pray until I was 45.
So I had a lot of time to think about it.
I know that my Redeemer lives.
I know this.
I have worked it out through long, long years.
So my faith is based in reason and is based in experience.
And so if I have a moment when I feel doubt, I don't worry about it.
I deal with the doubt.
The doubt is there to make my faith firmer.
The doubt is there to say, hey, you believe, but maybe you've got one thing wrong here, or maybe you're just letting, you're leading into superstition instead of true faith.
The doubt is there to help you work through.
You should have some doubt in your faith.
It helps you not to become sclerotic in your faith.
But I'm wondering, like, what is it that remains?
You have fear more than trust, or you're afraid it's going to come back.
You have anger over kindness.
This is the stuff you need to let go.
And what I would suggest is that you work out and find out what the source of your depression and your OCD was, okay?
Because it may be that you've gotten rid of the symptoms, but it may be that the source, the origin of those symptoms is still there and you're suppressing it.
And that's what's making you worry.
You've got like a lion in a cage and you're afraid he's going to break out.
So maybe, you know, again, maybe some therapy, maybe just talking to a pastor, maybe just working it out on your own, taking a walk and figuring out why did you go into this depression?
What was the source of that depression and dealing with the source?
And once you expel the source, then you're free.
Then depression is just something that happened to you and it won't come back.
I mean, I really, I went to therapy for five years, saved my life, turned my life around because I understood the sources of what had made me depressed.
And once those things had been expelled, I was free.
And I think you can be free too.
There's no reason to carry that stuff around with you.
Let It Go00:01:27
It's gone.
It's the past.
Whatever it is, it's over.
You don't have to suffer from it anymore.
Let it go.
Find out what it is and then let it go.
Speaking of letting go, I got to let go of this and end the show.
So I will be back again tomorrow.
You'll be back there tomorrow and we will be here together.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
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