Andrew Clavin dissects the 2021 Trump impeachment as a hollow "Shakespearean spectacle," mocking Adam Schiff’s theatricality and Mitch McConnell’s performative concessions while exposing Bernie Sanders’ violent rhetoric in a leaked Project Veritas video. He slams Twitter and Pinterest for censoring Live Action’s pro-life ads, ties Democratic failures to 60 million abortions post-Roe, and defends Trump’s precision strikes over Iraq’s nation-building quagmire. On culture wars, he rejects "woke" Bond recasting but praises Denzel Washington’s Shakespearean roles, then ranks Lincoln as the greatest Republican president—while dismissing FDR and Obama for economic mismanagement—before urging writers to submit pilots when edits risk diminishing their core. [Automatically generated summary]
During this historic impeachment trial, it's important not to just pretend you're paying attention.
You've got to pretend you're paying attention and really sound like you know what you're talking about.
Because if you just pretend to pay attention and sound stupid, people will think you work for CNN.
God knows you don't want that.
To help out, I'd like to answer some of the questions you've written in about impeachment.
The first question comes from Shiv, who is currently doing 5-10 in San Quentin for forcing a minor to watch The Last Airbender.
Shiv asks, who is Adam Schiff and why does he look like that?
Adam Schiff is a California congressman who was appointed chairman of the House Intelligence Committee after an all-night drinking party during which someone suggested putting Adam Schiff and the word intelligence in the same sentence would be really, really funny.
He looks like he looks because he's been hollowed out by corruption and is beginning to collapse inward like the mummy at the end of that Brendan Fraser movie, except without the hot babe tied to the table.
Which was my favorite part for reasons I don't fully understand.
Another question comes from Candy, who can usually be found hanging out at Cheetah's Lounge on Hollywood Boulevard.
Candy asks, will Donald Trump be removed from office?
And if so, will I lose my job and have to start hooking again?
Well, Candy, it's unlikely Trump will be removed from office.
But if he is, yes, you will be unemployed.
And I hope you still have my number.
Finally, a question from Thanos, though not the Marvel comic supervillain, the other Thanos, who asks, why was Chief Justice John Roberts using his eyebrows to send a Morse code message saying, please, Lord, make this stop?
That was just a little joke the Chief Justice likes to play whenever he finds his life dwindling away in an utterly meaningless waste of public time and money.
It always gets a big laugh at the Supreme Court.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boom.
Birds are ringing, 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, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
All right, we are coming to you live from Hollywood and living here in Hollywood, you become very sensitive to the disconnect between appearances and reality.
This is a town where some soulless, handsome Dan actor who's never done a damn thing for anyone can make $250,000 a week by pretending to be a policeman on TV.
While a real policeman not only makes considerably less money, he also gets insulted and criticized by the same idiot journalists who treat the actor like he's some kind of hero.
Now, in religion land, we have a word for this.
It's called idolatry.
Idolatry is when you mistake the representation of something for the thing itself.
You worship the idol instead of the god the idol represents.
Or you respect money more than you respect the work that goes into making money, or you rank sex higher than the love it's meant to express.
The great reformer, John Calvin, said the human mind was a perpetual forge of idols.
It was constantly creating new idols.
He was obviously right about that, and that's obviously why God forbids us to make graven images of him somewhere up near the top of the Ten Commandments.
Breaking idols and keeping track of the true values they're supposed to represent are necessary tools for staying sane and decent in a corrupt world.
And they're talents that come in especially handy when following politics, talking about corrupt.
The American experiment in liberty was created in part in the Puritan tradition, a tradition that rejected idols and idolatry of all kinds.
So if we want to stay free, we have to keep ideals like individual freedom and personal morality and responsibility first in our minds and take all the people.
Instead of making people idols, even our political favorites, we have to remember that they're just broken creatures like ourselves.
As the Bible says, put not your faith in princes.
Now, all of that said, and with all due respect to the Puritans, there's no sense pretending that show and drama and symbols don't affect the human mind.
Because we are natural idolaters, because our minds perceive truth through metaphor and storytelling and what Shakespeare called ceremony, we have to pay close attention to the narratives that are being set before us to make sure they either tell us the truth or we learn to detect the truth in them.
Which brings me to the impeachment trial.
There is simply no question that the impeachment trial going on right now is a show.
A Show and a Drama00:02:57
It's all a show.
It's meant to be a show.
No one thinks it's going to have any real-life effect.
No one thinks it's going to end with Trump leaving office.
No one expects there'll even be any new information that comes out of it.
It's meant to communicate messages to you, political messages designed to affect your mind and your vote in the 2020 election.
The insights we need to bring to bear on this spectacle are not legal insights or really even political insights.
They're critical insights, the insights of an art critic who can see what the performers are trying to communicate and cut through that to something resembling the truth.
And that's what we'll try to do a little bit of today, but let us talk first about Bespoke Post and the box of awesome they want to send you.
This is, you know, I got one of these and I got what I got is a new Dopkit.
And Dopkits are important to me.
That's where you carry your toiletries in.
They're really important to me because I travel a lot.
I have to pack and I have to be able to fit everything in my suitcase, which is not always that easy.
And they sent me this absolutely beautiful Dopkit that really is nice.
And not only that, it's easy to pack because it's flexible and can fit into my suitcase really well.
So this winter, you should start a new routine to upgrade your everyday life with a monthly box of awesome from Bespoke Post.
Bespoke Post sends guys only the best stuff every month.
So whether you're looking to commemorate an occasion with a champagne saber or toast perfectly aged winter cocktails, Box of Awesome has you covered.
To get started, take the quiz at boxofawesome.com, which is kind of fun, by the way.
Your answers will help them pick the right box of awesome for you.
It's free to sign up.
You can skip a month or cancel anytime.
And each box costs only $45, but has over $70 worth of gear inside.
And you can get 20% off your first monthly box when you sign up at boxofawesome.com and enter the code Clavin at checkout.
That's boxofawesome.com, code Clavin for 20% off your first box.
There is nothing more awesome than knowing how to spell Clavin.
There are no easy things.
If at this point listening to the show, you don't know how to spell Clavin, there's something deeply, deeply wrong with you.
The mailbag is coming up later on.
That's right.
That's what you'll be saying because all your problems will be solved.
If you don't think this impeachment trial is a show, like a movie, take a look at MSNBC's trailer for their coverage.
Donald Trump on trial.
For only the third time in history, an American president impeached.
Charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
This thing is a big hoax.
It's a big hoax.
He will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office.
Today, the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
NSNBC.
Sucks.
In a world, in a world where there's Republicans and Democrats, there's an impeachment trial.
Impeachment as Movie Trailers00:02:28
I mean, it's a movie.
They're putting on a show and they know it.
That's why I want to start by talking about Shakespeare, also because I care more about Shakespeare than the impeachment trial, which is baloney.
But, you know, Shakespeare was working in a time when the Puritan ethos, the Protestant ethos, was on the rise, right?
He was in England during the Reformation.
And the idea of ceremony was basically, and symbol was basically being attacked all the time.
This was idolatry.
The Protestants were saying that the Catholic Church with all their ceremonies with all their priests and their robes and all this, this was all idolatry, and they wanted to dress plainly and just read the Bible and all the truth was in the Bible.
Shakespeare, as a playwright, as a guy who put on shows, understood that non-reality and ceremony and show had an effect on the human mind.
Henry V, if you've ever seen the play or watched the wonderful Kenneth Browning movie, he goes out before the heroic battle of Agincourt with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he says, what have kings got that private people don't have except for ceremony?
And he says, what is ceremony?
He says, what are thou, idol ceremony?
Art thou anything else but place, degree, and form creating awe and fear in other men.
In other words, he was saying the entire idea of royalty was based on ceremony.
Hamlet, when you get a chance, Knowles, Michael Knowles has a new show out from Prager U about books.
It's called The Great Book Show or something like that.
I'm on it somewhere along the line.
I'll be on it talking about Hamlet.
And one of the things Hamlet is about is about reality and show.
Hamlet starts out by saying, I don't just pretend to be grieving by wearing black clothes.
I have that within me.
The grief within me is real.
And then slowly over the play, he starts to collapse.
He starts to lose that connection.
He uses art.
He says the play's the thing.
He uses art to bring out conscience.
He understands that art, show, touches the inner man.
By the end of the play, he himself is brought up, his body is brought up on stage, and they say, tell his story as if it were a play, and he becomes the play that he's in.
Everything we do, everything we do is the show.
And if you wonder why I'm constantly hammering the press, it's because they put on the show that we see.
They put on the show that we see about our government, and they lie.
They're on one side, and they're trying to create a show, a TV show, constantly that will move you to the left, move you to give up your freedom.
And that's why when you watch these things, it's true.
The Show Must Go On00:15:00
You know, you have to pick out the lies from the truth.
You have to pick out what this one is saying, what this guy's philosophy is.
But you have to look beyond that.
You have to look beyond it at what they're trying to communicate, what this show is about, what are its themes, what are its ideas, and what do they want from you.
CNN sucks.
CNN does suck.
And that is why we're going to talk about the impeachment as the show that it is, right?
They went on, I think they went till two in the morning yesterday, arguing about rules.
They were arguing about the rules of the impeachment and how they were going to go forward.
And is that what they were arguing about?
Well, of course not.
Of course not.
They're arguing about who's going to have the high ground.
Of course.
They want to know which way it's going to go.
But they're trying to create an impression every single minute.
You know, one of the things we talked about yesterday was we talked about McConnell.
He came out and he kind of based the rules on the Clinton rules because that's a good look for him, right?
That way he can say, you can't attack me.
These were the rules during the Clinton trial.
They should be the rules now.
The Democrats tried to say, well, it's not the same thing, but we all know it's the same thing.
So he said, you get 24 hours to make your case, but instead of giving the three days that they had during the Clinton trial, they gave two days.
So you had to have two 12-hour days to make your case.
Each side had that to make their case.
Then the moderate Republicans we hear, like Susan Collins, said, no, it's not fair.
And Mitch caved, according to like the New York Times and the left-wing press.
He caved into the moderates.
Did he?
Do you think, I mean, think about it for a minute.
This is cocaine Mitch.
Now they call him Midnight Mitch because he turned in the rules at like six o'clock.
And so the Democrats kept saying, it's the dark of night.
He turned them into the dark.
You know, it's like six o'clock in the evening.
He turned them in.
Did he cave or did he want to show you that he is going to be moderate?
I think it's the latter.
I think he was putting on a show.
I think, look, it's not one side or the other.
They're all doing it.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are doing this whole thing.
We have to have witnesses.
You've got to have witnesses or else it's a cover-up.
That's their sale.
It's a cover-up, right?
Now, do they want witnesses?
Do they want to hear Hunter Biden and Joe Biden come to this impeachment trial?
I don't think so.
I very, very much doubt that they want to do that.
What they want is they want the Republicans who want to end this thing before the State of the Union address February 4th.
They want them to deny them witnesses so they can use the cover-up thing.
It's all about the impression they're trying to create.
Do you walk away from this feeling the Republicans have been fair and the Democrats have been fair?
Or do you walk away from it feeling the Democrats have been honest and the Republicans are trying to cover up?
Or do you walk away from it feeling the Republicans are defending the country and the Democrats are just playing around.
Here is Jay Sekholo on the president's team making the case that this is all nonsense, that when they say Trump was trying to obstruct Congress by calling for executive privilege, they're not remembering the history of Eric Holder's, Obama's Attorney General, and how he used executive privilege too.
On June 28th, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder became the first United States Attorney General to be held in both civil and criminal contempt.
Why?
Because President Obama asserted executive privilege.
With respect to the Holder contempt proceedings, Mr. Manager Schiff wrote, the White House assertion of privilege is backed by decades of precedent that has recognized the need for the president and his senior advisors to receive candid advice and information from their top aides.
Indeed, that's correct.
Not because Manager Schiff said it, but because the Constitution requires it.
Mr. Manager Nadler said that the effort to hold Eric Holder, Attorney General Holder, in contempt for refusing to comply with various subpoenas was, quote, politically motivated.
And Speaker Pelosi called the Holder matter, and I quote, more than a little more than a witch hunt.
What are we dealing with here?
Why are we here?
Classic Republican argument, you did it first, which is almost always true.
The Democrats are always the ones who push the envelope on abusing constitutional powers.
They're the ones who say, you know, we're going to appoint judges with a simple majority, not with two-thirds.
This classic Republican thing is this is hypocrisy.
And they have a good case because they have all this video from the Clinton era, from the Clinton impeachment, with everybody with, you know, guys like Jerry Nadler saying this is a witch hunt and saying all the things that Trump is saying now.
Here is Adam Schiff answering this, and I'll comment on this in a second.
This is Cut 11.
Mr. Sekolo asks, why are we here?
Why are we here?
Well, I'll tell you why we're here.
Because the president used the power of his office to coerce an ally at war with an adversary at war with Russia, used the power of his office to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid that you appropriated and we appropriated to defend an ally and defend ourselves because it's our national security as well.
And why?
To fight corruption?
That's nonsense and you know it.
Shifty Schiff!
Is that guy the worst?
You know, a lot of people on Twitter, a lot of right-wingers on Twitter were saying how what an idiot he looked like.
He looked like he's terrible and all this stuff.
I disagree.
You're not going to like hearing this, but Schiff is good at this.
He knows exactly what he's doing.
He knows he's putting on a show.
He's not, you know, does he lie?
He lies constantly.
He said, we have proof that Russia, that Trump colluded with Russia and all this.
He said that I didn't meet with the whistleblower.
He had all the Carter Page FISA warrant process was perfect.
I shift lies constantly.
He even lied.
Politico says he misrepresented the evidence saying that this guy, Lav Parnas, who was working with Giuliani, was trying to arrange a meeting with President Zelensky because he had a note from him saying, I'm trying to arrange a meeting with Z, but apparently the Z was the guy, Shloszewski, who's the founder of Burisma, for which Biden's son had this sinecure making 50 grand a month.
However, he makes an argument here that is so clever that I have to say I admired him in this dark way because he is a liar, because he can be called out as a liar.
He says it's not fair to call out people for who they are.
This is cut number 10.
When you hear them attack the house managers, what you're really hearing is we don't want to talk about the president's guilt.
We don't want to talk about the McConnell resolution and how patently unfair it is.
We don't want to talk about how, to pardon the expression, ask backwards it is to have a trial and then ask for witnesses.
And so we'll attack the House managers because maybe we can distract you for a moment from what's before you.
Maybe if we attack the house managers, you'll be thinking about them instead of thinking about the guilt of the president.
So you'll hear more of that.
And every time you do, every time you hear them attacking house managers, I want you to ask yourselves, away from what issue are they trying to distract me?
What was the issue that came up just before this?
What are they trying to deflect my attention from?
Why don't they have a better argument to make on the merits?
You have got to give the devil his due.
I mean, this is a guy who has done nothing but attack Donald Trump personally.
And now he's teaching you not to pay attention to personal attacks.
Just pay attention to the evidence, of which, by the way, there's not very much.
Let's talk about Life Lock for a minute.
I have just put this on my computer, and I'm really happy I got this thing.
People's identity can be stolen.
And the thing about this is they can do it really easily, and you think it won't happen to you, and maybe it won't.
But if it does, it is a mess.
They can drain your bank account.
They can make your life a living hell.
And what LifeLock does, it alerts you to potential threats to your identity.
They see more than you can see by just monitoring your own credit.
They can see your info on the dark web.
They've already alerted me to stuff about me on the dark web.
And if you have a problem, LifeLock's U.S.-based restoration specialists know the steps to take to help resolve your case.
Only one in five identity theft victims who had accounts opened in their name discovered the theft through a bank or credit card company.
No one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses, but Life Lock is the New Year's resolution that's not only easy to keep, it'll help you protect what you've worked so hard for.
So get Life Lock for up to 25% off for your first year.
Go to lifelock.com slash Clavin.
That's lifelock.com slash Clavin for up to 25% off.
And then you can go on the dark web and say, how do you spell Clavin?
A-L-A-V-A-N- There are no easy things.
So anyway, as we go forward, just remember, this thing is in fact a performance.
This is a show.
And this thing they're trying to tell you is trying to show who is the honest one and who is doing plain fair and who is playing the game the way it should be played.
Now, you and I know the Republicans are closer to the truth than the Democrats, but that's what you got to see.
Those are the things they're trying to change independent minds.
All right, let us talk about, I want to talk about something else because there was a dust-up that was just hilarious yesterday between Hillary Clinton and our old friend Bernie Sanders.
And it was great.
But it also points out something that part of this election, this 2020 election, is also a show.
You know, I think it was the Spectator magazine.
Well, let's talk about Hillary Clinton first because that's the funny part.
She has a series coming out called Hillary, right?
It's going to be on Hulu, and it's set to premiere at Sundance.
And I know, I know that you are right this minute subscribing to Hulu, even buying your tickets to Sundance to see this, because there's one thing you want.
It's more Hillary Clinton.
Come on!
Come on, man!
We have not had enough Hillary Clinton.
We want to hear, I mean, this is going to be four parts.
We want to hear every excuse for why she lost.
There may be some excuses we haven't heard yet.
You know, maybe a dog ate her campaign speech.
We didn't hear that one yet.
Maybe, you know, it snowed and she couldn't get to the voting booth, so she lost by just that one vote that she would have had if she didn't have to walk in the snow and her car broke down and her mom didn't come to pick her up.
You know, there may be some excuses for her loss that we haven't heard yet.
However, she does go off on Bernie Sanders.
And you remember, she was accused, rightly, of she was accused of that basically the DNC set Sanders up and did everything they could to make sure Hillary Clinton would win.
And she says in this video, she apparently says he was in Congress for years.
He had one senator support him.
Nobody likes him.
Nobody wants to work with him.
He got nothing done.
He was a career politician.
It's all just baloney.
And I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.
Now, in the interview she did to advertise this, she said she wasn't sure yet whether she would support him if he got the nomination.
Later on, she said she would.
But let's listen to Bernie Sanders' response.
Do you have that?
Yeah, it's 18.
Secretary Clinton, as you know, said that as a senator, you got nothing done and that no one likes you.
What's your response to that?
On a good day, my wife likes me, so let's clear the outwelling.
It's a very mild reaction.
I mean, it's funny, and he doesn't really have to take on Hillary Clinton.
But, you know, there's something about Sanders that he's got all this rhetoric.
He's got all this big rhetoric.
And there's a piece in The Spectator that points this out, that when there's confrontation, he suddenly disappears.
And it really is interesting between him and his supporters.
For instance, Sanders Surrogates, and this is from the Spectator piece, Sanders Surrogates released a campaign memo accusing Joe Biden of a big corruption problem.
The memo published by Zephyr Teachout and The Guardian flamed Biden for perfecting, quote, the art of taking big contributions, then representing his corporate donors at the cost of middle and working class Americans.
Now, corruption and Biden are the issue right now.
This is the issue.
A lot of Biden's family have made a lot of money, and some of it's suspicious.
I mean, what Hunter Biden did for burisma in Ukraine was suspicious.
He had no expertise.
He was pulling down 50 grand a month for this energy company when he knew nothing about it.
Why?
I mean, if that didn't have something to do with the fact that his father was vice president, I don't know what did.
So they put out this essay basically accusing him of corruption, which is the big attack on him, the thing that he is going to be hurt by most if they actually do bring witnesses in this impeachment trial.
Sanders then apologized.
Listen.
Joe and I have strong disagreements on a number of issues, and we'll argue those disagreements out.
But it is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way.
And I'm sorry that that op-ed appeared to be.
I appeal to my supporters.
Please, engage in civil discourse.
And by the way, we're not the only campaign that does it.
Other people do, you know, act that way as well.
But I would appeal to everybody.
Have a debate on the issues.
We can disagree with each other without being disagreeable without being hateful.
Doesn't appear that I'm going to be the nominee.
So he's saying we can disagree without being disagreeable.
This is a guy who's been calling for a revolution.
He's been calling for a revolution.
And let's take a look at his supporters, because Project Veritas, I showed you this last week, I guess it was.
They got one of his field organizers talking about how the gulags weren't that bad.
Okay, this is James O'Keefe's great organization, Project Veritas, which really gets some terrific video.
Now they've got a new one, one of their field organizers.
This is Martin Weisberger talking about how violent he's ready to get.
This is cut number five.
He attained the rich.
I always said, you know, I'm a communist.
I'm ready to start tearing bricks up when I start fighting.
I'm not free.
I'm no cop, bro.
I'll start up getting arms.
I want to learn how to shoot and go train.
I'm ready for revolution, right?
He attained the rich.
So could we just see this dissolve the Senate, House of Representatives, the Judith Branch, and have somebody like Bernie Sanders unhappy to the people making all the decisions for the climate?
I mean, I'm serious.
What will help is when we send all the Republicans to the free education?
Can you imagine Mitch McConnell?
Oh, why he wouldn't survive Lindsey Graham?
Gulags are founded as re-education grade.
So he's talking about, by the way, if you weren't watching, when he says Lindsey Graham, he makes a limperist gesture, suggesting, A, that Graham is gay, and B, that a gay guy is not going to do well in these gulags that he's proposing.
Just compare that for a minute to Sanders himself, who's saying we can disagree without being disagreeable.
Dissolving Power Structures00:16:08
Now think for a minute, just think for a second.
If this guy were a Trump supporter talking about white supremacy, if this guy were a Trump organizer going out there and getting, and they got him on a hidden camera saying, no, wait, I just can't wait till we get rid of all those black and brown people.
Would they not, would they, the press not, I don't even have to ask the question, would the press not go nuts basically tagging Trump for this guy?
And people would be, you know, all my liberal friends would be calling me up and saying, what about this guy?
None of my liberal friends are calling me up and saying, maybe I won't vote for Bernie because of this guy.
But think of the disparity between the Sanders who's out there talking about revolution and the Sanders who every time he's confronted basically backs down.
I have to wonder.
I wonder if the spectator is right about this.
Because there is a scenario, a very obvious scenario, in which Joe Biden wins this thing walking away.
He has yet to fall beneath number one.
Every now and again, somebody will rise up the way they do during these primaries when people are testing out different ideas during a poll.
Somebody will move up, Elizabeth Warren will move up, and then she drops down.
But Joe Biden has just remained steady.
Everybody thought his best day was going to be his first day, but it's not true.
I mean, maybe his best day was as good as his first day was as good as the rest of his days, but he hasn't dropped down.
He has the support of black people, which is so important in the Democrat Party.
Henry Olson, there have been a lot of polls saying black people are going to defect to Trump.
Henry Olson, a great poll watcher, says it's not true that the Democrats are still going to have the black vote.
And so if that's true, Biden is the guy they love because he was an ally with Obama.
You know, I'm not sure that Bernie thinks he has any chance of this or cares if he has any chance.
He's 110 years old.
He's just had a heart attack.
He doesn't want to be president of the United States.
He just wants to make noise and maybe, maybe by putting on a show, again, by putting on the drama of the left, move the party to the left where he wants it to be.
I want to play one more cut, the other cut from Project Veritas of this guy, Martin Weisgerber, a Sanders field organizer, talking about how he learned about the gulags, which is really wonderful.
There's a tool.
It's like a boogeyman.
You know what?
We have more people in prison in this country right now than Russia did at the height of the Gulag.
We do.
That's a nutshell.
I only learned this sh ⁇ in college when I started studying the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union was not horrible.
No, it wasn't.
I mean, for women's rights, the Soviet Union is, I think, the most progressive place to date in the world.
Leave it to the Soviets to make the most badass f ⁇ ing most effective gun in the world.
Engineering, great.
The destruction, the destroyer of imperialism and colonization.
I mean, everywhere.
That's why I want to get a tattooed on me.
You are so dumb.
You are really dumb.
For real.
It's amazing stupidity.
I just have to add this one thing, that he learned this in college.
The idea that women had more rights than the Soviet Union, which the New York Times has been selling as well.
Absolute nonsense.
If one of your rights is having your husband carted off and shot and then getting a bill for the bullet, which is what Stalin used to do, and he used to shoot the women too.
I mean, they were tortured and raped in the cells.
It's an amazing idea that women were just doing absolutely great in the Soviet Union.
It's an amazing idea that the AK-47 is the greatest gun in the world.
It's a piece of garbage.
It's something that you use if you're a native fighting an empire, so it's worth something, I guess.
But it's just amazing to me the falsehood that has elevated Bernie Sanders to the place that he's in and the idea that maybe he himself is a falsehood, that maybe the excitement that he's generated is all a show just meant to get his message out there and move the party to the left in a race he doesn't want to win.
That would make perfect sense to me.
The Soviet Union has always been a fake, and so is Sanders.
Let us talk about abortion.
I know it is a serious topic, but we have to pause for just a minute to talk about it because since the passing of Roe v. Wade, over 60 million pre-born children have been killed in the womb.
60 million children who never had a chance to give the world their love, and countless young women who have been harmed physically and emotionally.
I would say the entire culture has been harmed emotionally by basically teaching itself to discount these lives.
When Ben Shapiro streamed his podcast live from the March for Life in DC last year, our advertisers were targeted by left-wing media watchdogs and several of them pulled their ads from our programs.
This wasn't the first time and it won't be the last time that we were attacked in an attempt to censor us and shut us down.
So we are not the only targets either.
Live action is one of the biggest voices in the pro-life movement and they continue to do some of the most important work in the space from raising awareness and education on the abortion issue to undercover videos that expose Planned Parenthood and other clinics for the horrific human rights abuses.
They've been banned from advertising on Twitter.
This is amazing to me.
They've banned live action from the advertising on Twitter because of their calls to defund Planned Parenthood.
They've been banned from Pinterest for, quote, spreading medical misinformation, which is garbage.
They've also seen their advertising efforts and their online distribution restricted depending on the platform.
It's an attempt to silence us, right?
And this is why you guys, our DailyWire.com members are so important, our subscribers, because your membership helps us say no when advertisers cave in.
When the advertisers threaten us, we can say, you know what, we've got our backers and they've got our back.
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Go to dailywire.com and make your pro-life voice heard.
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Mailbag.
Where's my scream?
When I need it, where is my scream on the mail?
It's Wednesday, my dudes.
That's nothing.
I want my...
There it is.
There's my scream.
You guys scream all through my show, and you can't give me my mailbag scream.
All right, from Mr. Q. Hi, Andrew.
I would appreciate your help.
My 23-year-old daughter is a serious Christian who's been dating your boyfriend since they were 16.
They were both Christians at first, but over the years, he began to question his faith.
He now essentially rejects belief in God, but he respects and supports my daughter's faith.
They're very much in love, and they plan to get engaged.
He has exceptional character, and apart from this issue, they're compatible.
They're happy together.
He's committed to attending church with her, and she's made him understand that she'll do her best to pass on her faith to their children.
I'm concerned that they both underestimate how much this issue might degrade their happiness in marriage.
I occasionally ask her for her thoughts, and she shares my concerns, but essentially hopes it'll all work out.
Do you have any advice or wisdom that I could pass on to my daughter?
My advice is, frankly, stay out of this.
And I'll tell you why.
First of all, people do lose their faith in their 20s.
It's something that happens.
It's not a bad thing, actually.
I think it helps them to expand their minds, to explore other issues, to come back to their faith, which they usually do with a refreshed view of it, with a more realistic view of it.
So I don't think it's a bad thing, like a terrible, terrible thing that's going on.
You're right to be concerned that a person of faith and a person without faith do have a problem in their marriage.
But it doesn't have to be a terrible problem, especially if the guy has the character that this guy has, where he is willing to go to church and he's willing to raise the children in the faith.
He obviously respects her.
They obviously love one another.
You don't have a lot of power here.
You can only cause dissent and worry and anxiety.
It doesn't have to be there.
Keep your powder dry, wait it out, and you'll see.
It would not surprise me if this guy comes back to faith with a renewed sense of it, with a sense that he's been let free.
And in the meantime, in the meantime, do not preach to him.
Simply preach with your life.
You know, you preach with your life by showing the joy and love that you get through Jesus Christ and the love and joy.
And his girlfriend, your daughter, will be showing him the love and joy that she gets through it.
He'll still be going to church.
I wouldn't worry so much.
I mean, it's a legit concern.
It's a legit concern.
But part of being a dad is keeping things to yourself, writing the worry out, and just letting things go forward.
So I think that, you know, for me to tell you not to worry would be for me to tell you not to be a father.
You know, I had a friend once when his wife got pregnant, he asked me, when do you stop worrying?
And I said, stop worrying.
That's the job from now on.
Okay, so worry, but keep it to yourself.
I think they're going to be okay.
From Michael, dear wise, bald knower of everything.
Why does it feel that the conservative movement and Republican Party are always the underdog?
Is this just because the left controls the culture and mainstream news?
No, it's because it's because the left is offering something natural to human hearts.
Okay, the left is offering free stuff and people will take care of you and you don't have too much power and you don't have to be afraid of the fact that you're responsible for yourself.
That is the natural state of human beings.
The natural state of human beings is not to want to be free.
I talk about this all the time, that if you read the Bible, if you read about the Hebrews getting out of Egypt, they beg and beg to be free and they complain about their slavery.
But the minute they get out of Egypt, no matter how many miracles God performs, the minute stuff goes wrong, they say, why aren't we back in Egypt where we had enough to eat?
They gave us food.
Why do we have to be free?
You know, that is the natural state of humankind.
What Republicans or conservatives are selling is not the natural state.
It is the best state of humankind.
To be free, to be responsible for yourself, to actually go out there and take the risks that are required.
And then when you fail to live up to your responsibility and pay your own way out, not to say, why didn't you leave us in Egypt where at least we had something to eat?
We are selling something more difficult.
One of the questions you'll get asked if you ever make a political speech and a left-winger gets up, one of the first things he'll say is he'll say, what have conservatives ever done for us?
And your answer is, nothing.
We're here to do nothing for you except set you free.
As long as we do stuff for you, you're indebted to the government.
You are under the government's power.
Everything the government gives you, they take pay in power.
So when people ask you, what are you doing for us?
And you say nothing, that is not the answer they want to hear.
So we are the underdogs because we are fighting for something that is not natural to the slavish human heart.
All right, from Kyle, dear all-wise Clavin.
Not sure how I will survive this Claveless weekend, but I'll try by sipping on leftist tears.
I'm a big James Bond fan.
I've watched these movies since I was a kid.
The classic image of Bond has nostalgic meaning to me.
There's been talk lately about there won't be a female Bond, but maybe they would change his race.
I personally think the race of a character should not change.
If it's Storm from X-Men or Mr. Miyagi from character, karate kid, the character they are portraying is still the same character or person and seems like woke, and it just seems like woke nonsense to change the race.
Curious what your thoughts are on this.
Thanks, keep up the good work.
Well, there is in this what they call colorblind casting, there is a contradiction in terms.
If it's important to change the character's race, it suggests that it is a change of the character, right?
If it's not important to change the character's race, why do it?
And there always is this kind of paradox involved in colorblind casting.
The good side of colorblind casting is that you get to see great actors.
There are a lot of great actors there of different races, and sometimes it just doesn't matter.
My rule on this is simple.
If it's going to get the show is the, when I say the play is the thing, when Hamlet said the play is the thing, for me, the play is the thing.
The show's the thing, the character is the thing.
Put that before everything.
If the change of race or change of gender or whatever it is is going to be distracting from the story that you're telling, don't do it, right?
I went to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon.
I went twice.
The first time I went, it was great.
I loved it, so I went back.
The second time, they had gone so insane with their woke casting that it was a distraction.
It was a distraction to have midgets playing people who were supposed to be heroic, tall people.
It was distracting to have men played by women.
It was distracting, and it was just all it was.
Instead of getting the story, I was getting a different story about how fabulously woke the people in Ashland, Oregon who ran this theater was.
I'll never go back.
I will never go back because I don't go to see them tell me how woke they are.
I go to see plays by Shakespeare.
I go to see stories by Jane Austen.
I go to see the things that are the story that's being told.
So my rule is: if you're going to distract me from the story to tell me how great you are, I don't want to hear it.
Now, you know, I can think of an exception.
For instance, in the wonderful, wonderful movie Much Ado About Nothing by Kenneth Browning.
He made the two greatest Shakespeare movies ever made, Henry V and Much Ado.
Denzel Washington plays a guy's brother, and he plays a white guy's brother.
And for the first couple of minutes of the play, I had to remind myself who he was.
However, Denzel is a great actor, and he turns in a great performance, and it was really terrific to see him in that part.
So Shakespeare, I don't know, there's always a little bit more leeway in Shakespeare.
So that's my rule.
My rule is if it's distracting, don't do it.
I personally, Idris Elba is one of my favorites.
He's a great action star.
If they made Idris Elba James Bond, it might be interesting for a picture or two.
You might even like him enough to keep it going.
But I thought they were right to say there wouldn't be a female James Bond because that wouldn't be James Bond.
Let them come up with their own story.
So that's the way it is.
If it distracts me, I don't want to do it.
If it's all about how woke you are, stop doing it.
All right.
From Michael, hi, Andrew.
During the last backstage, there was a discussion about the Powell doctrine and how it was wrong.
Powell doctrine is if you break it, you fix it.
So if you go in and invade someplace, you have to build the place back up and make sure they have a democracy and all this.
I think it's ridiculous.
My question is, is when if we engage in a war like in Iraq or Afghanistan, what should we do after we have defeated the enemy?
When we depose Sodom, should we have just left?
My thought is if we leave, then it leaves a power vacuum for terrorist organizations or countries like Iran.
Thank you and love your show.
Yes, my point about this is that before you go in, you have to decide what is a realistic goal so you can bring the guys home at some point.
If the realistic goal is to transform the Middle East into a glowing democracy and an island of freedom, don't go because it's not going to happen, right?
It's just too big a trial.
I mean, I know people who are in that Bush White House who said they didn't know what they were walking into.
They didn't know how bad it was going to be.
But really, if you think about it, you can always tell it's going to be that bad.
It's a different culture.
If you think about Japan, a country we transformed, it was total war.
It was world war.
Four years of destroying everything.
When we were done, Japan was basically in ruins.
And so when we built it up, when we rebuilt it, we were rebuilding it from the ground up.
If you're not willing to do that, which we weren't going to do in Iraq, don't go in there and kill a guy and just think that the powers of democracy will be welcomed as a hero and the powers of democracy will rise up and everything will be better.
Just not going to happen.
So the idea is, the thing is, the Powell Doctrine takes away from the empire, the power.
Because what the British learned when they fought George Washington is all George Washington had to do is survive.
Same thing is true right now in Afghanistan.
All the Taliban has to do is survive.
And every spring they come back in and kill people so the people know don't cooperate with the Americans.
It's the idea you have to get in your head is you have to have a doable goal.
It's not just about convincing the people.
It's about knowing the truth.
Powell's Doctrine Survives00:03:05
And Donald Trump has been great about this.
I mean, people say, oh, he doesn't do enough or he just drops a couple of bombs.
He has been doing the thing that affects the people that he's trying to affect without dragging us into war.
He's actually been quite good at it altogether.
All right.
Another question from Andrew.
Hello, master writer of fiction, yet sayer of truth.
My name is Andrew, and my question is about writing.
I live in LA.
I've written a comedy pilot.
I'm stuck in a cycle of finishing it and loving it, then rereading it after a week and thinking it's utter crap.
So naturally, I rewrite it and love it and reread it and think it's utter crap.
I've already had other writers read it and give notes.
At what point do you just hand it to your literary agent or manager?
And also, how often does a script get produced when at first read it merely is funny and has potential?
Well, here's the thing.
You know, there comes a point in every process when the process is over.
And the way you know that is when you're not making it better, you're just making it different.
And I think that that's obviously there's some degree that that just has to go by feel.
If you give something to your agent or manager and he says it's funny and has potential, yes, you can move up to the next level.
But if somebody doesn't pay for something, they're not going, if a buyer doesn't pay you, he's not going to really develop it.
So you want to get money for something from buyers.
If they just say, yeah, keep developing it and come back to me, you shouldn't usually, nine times out of ten, you should not get into that cycle with people who should be paying you money.
Money is the way you know that they're invested in it.
Your agent or your manager should be able to help you develop it.
At some point, you got to let it go, Pal, because it's just going to be as good as it is and the process is over.
And you just have to recognize that.
From Jacob, greetings, Andrew.
I'd like to hear your take on who was the greatest Democratic president in history or who was the least bad, so you draw a blank, on the greatest Republican president in history.
Your show is a genius blend of insight and satire.
Keep up the sublime work.
Well, Republican, I think it's Lincoln.
I mean, I know he's the first, but I think he is a truly, truly great president.
I know some conservatives have problems with him, but I think the fact is that the country had to be reinvented after the Civil War.
It had to be reinvented whether there was a Civil War or not.
And I think that he did a great job of that.
He was incredibly courageous during the war in the way he fought the war, and he was great in reconstituting what it meant for America to be America.
There just hasn't been anybody like him.
Obviously, Reagan, also a great Republican president.
I think Trump is threatening to be a great president.
Democrats, Truman, maybe, stood up to the unions, dropped the bomb on Japan, you know, had some really good civil rights guy.
You know, like Roosevelt has a skin in the game because he did fight the war well and he did organize that we got into the war, which had to be fought.
But he really made the Depression last so much longer than it had to, just like Obama did when he took office.
I know everybody adores him, but he expanded government.
He dissed the Constitution.
He dissed the Supreme Court and made the Depression go on forever.
So I would say Truman was a better president.
Daily Wire Insights00:01:26
He's the one who comes to mind.
Maybe I'm missing something.
You can write in and let me know.
I got to stop there.
I hope I've solved enough of your problems for you to get to next week, but you got to subscribe to be in the mailbag.
So do it now.
I will see you again tomorrow.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
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