Ep. 963 – Full Court Press exposes the Supreme Court vacancy battle as a clash between constitutional fidelity and radical judicial activism, with Republicans pushing for a Trump nominee to block Democratic court-packing threats while Democrats demand a "living document" justice to advance abortion, wealth redistribution, and race-based policies—hypocritically reversing past norms like McConnell’s Garland blockade. Jenna Ellis warns a 4-4 split risks eroding religious liberty and election integrity, while Andrew Clavin frames Trump’s pick as a test of Democratic extremism, mocking leftist outrage over Ginsburg’s death. The episode also dissects pandemic-era government overreach—like California’s selective church bans—criticizing Gorsuch’s Bostock ruling as ideological betrayal and praising Pastor MacArthur’s defiance as a First Amendment stand, concluding that liberal tolerance for chaos mirrors pre-revolutionary Russia’s collapse into violence. [Automatically generated summary]
In the wake of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, different parties are preparing a response.
The Republicans say President Trump should nominate a replacement and proceed to seek the advice and consent of the Senate as prescribed by the Constitution.
The Democrats say they will burn every city in the country to the ground, terrorize innocent citizens, bring the economy to a standstill, and in short, continue doing what they've been doing for the last four months.
Never Trumpers say they will support the Democrats because Donald Trump is a danger to the Constitution.
Republicans say they want to appoint a justice who will honor the vision of the American founders and respect the text of the Constitution as written.
Democrats say they want to appoint a justice who will interpret the Constitution as a living document on which all the living words are able to jump up and run away so they can be replaced by other living words that will exchange Americans' God-given rights for make-believe rights, like the right to kill children, the right to use other people's money as their own, and the right to control the thoughts and actions of their fellow citizens according to any crazy race-based theory they think will serve to destroy the freedoms for which our forefathers fought and died.
Never Trumpers say they will support the Democrats because Donald Trump is a danger to the Constitution.
The Republicans say we must proceed in keeping with our traditions and laws.
The Democrats say we must honor the dying wish of Justice Ginsburg because she is an angel now, like Princess Leia at the end of the rise of Skywalker.
And so she's become part of the light side of the force, and anyone who is against her is on the dark side and must be destroyed, including the writers of the Constitution, which is based on slavery or something.
Never Trumpers say we must support the Democrats because Donald Trump, icky-poo, stinkyface, gobbledygook, bingbong.
So 2020 continues as usual.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing.
Hunky-dunky-dee-doo.
Ship-shaped, ipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hooray, hooray, it makes me want to sing.
Oh, hooray, hooray.
Hey, hooray.
All right, we are back once again, laughing our way through the fall of the Republic.
Please go on YouTube.
As we told you, we're moving all of our YouTube stuff is going to be on the Andrew Clavin YouTube channel off the Daily Wire.
That's not because I'm leaving the Daily Wire.
It's just a bookkeeping thing.
And because, of course, the Daily Wire doesn't want to admit that they know me.
But if you subscribe there, we already have over 100,000 subscribers.
We're going for 40 billion.
And so please add your name.
And if you leave a comment and it's sufficiently idiotic, we will read it on the show as a way of raising the conversation level.
Today we have a comment from Matthew John Grabo who says, I wish I was as happy as Andrew.
Well, look at it this way.
You get to listen to me where I don't.
So in that way, you're even happier than I am.
So I was gratified over the weekend to see most of blue-check conservative Twitter offering up respectful prayers and condolences over the loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who's a consequential American with whose judicial philosophy we conservatives deeply disagreed.
I was also touched by remembrances of Ginsburg's friendship with the late Justin Antonin Scalia, with whom she shared a love of opera and cooking.
One story told by Scalia's son was that Scalia once sent Ginsburg some roses.
When questioned why he would do that for a woman who so often voted against him, Scalia replied, some things are more important than votes.
Such a friendship seems like a relic of the America I grew up in, but it's not impossible such an America could rise again.
It will not rise, however, as long as the current left controls the culture.
Even as conservatives offered up their condolences, blue-check leftists were threatening to burn down the country if they didn't get their way, which, as I just joked, is not much different from what they've been doing.
It's hard to be friendly with people who think violence is justified against anyone who disagrees with them because anyone who disagrees with them must be evil.
This is why I think, speaking strictly politically, the current situation is a win for President Trump if he proceeds wisely.
All he has to do is nominate a strong replacement justice and sit back.
The left will then do what they do, tear things down and throw tantrums while screaming about an America that never existed and would not be America if it did.
Democrats will be unwise to react that way.
If they stuck to the issues, they'd have some support.
We're divided on the issues, but they won't be able to help themselves from becoming hysterical and violent and ugly because that's what their leftist ideas have made them.
And when the voters see this, I think it will override other concerns.
Donald Trump is a difficult guy.
We all know this.
And I do understand why people don't like him, but it's a two-party system.
And the only other party has completely abandoned the American story for a story that is beautiful in their heads, but always and everywhere becomes ugly and violent in reality.
Trump is going to do the right thing.
Let us talk about rockauto.com.
Why?
Because we like to say rockauto.com.
It just sounds incredibly cool.
Plus, it's a great place to get parts for your car.
You don't want to jump in your car and pretend to drive to the auto parts store because your car's not moving because you need parts for your car.
Instead, you can go on rockauto.com and get a huge selection of car part choices at great prices right there on your computer.
Plus, you get to say rockauto.com.
Women love it.
Your wife will swoon.
If she's a modern woman, she may not know what swoon means.
Just push her over and you'll see.
Just say rockauto.com.
It is cool.
Their catalog is unique, remarkably easy to navigate.
You can quickly see all the parts available for your vehicle and choose the brands, specifications, and prices you prefer.
Amazing selection, reliably, low prices.
Go to rockauto.com right now and see all the parts available for your car or truck.
Write Clavin in their How did you hear about us box so they know we sent you.
You got to say it like that.
You got to say Clavin, just like rockauto.com and spell it.
You got to know how to spell it or else the whole thing just becomes an exercise in futility.
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
So listen, when somebody dies, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a consequential person, a person admired by many people on both sides of the aisle.
You know, you don't want, we know there's going to be a political fight, but you want to pause for a minute and respectfully drink leftist tears to the dregs.
I mean, many of you paid good money for this mug, and I know it's, you know, carved out of obsidian and encrusted with rubies and diamonds.
But the best thing about it is that it automatically fills with leftist tears when leftists shed tears.
It just actually fills up magically.
And so many leftists over the weekends were going nuts.
It was just so much fun to watch.
Here's one woman who just went crazy in her car.
This cut 10.
You guys!
I'm driving your car, but I just got a notification that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died!
But this year, get any f ⁇ ing woo!
You just had to make it to 2021!
Those are good, aren't they?
Let's do another one.
Come on, cut three.
Why can't women have abortions?
I just thought it's pro-life side driving down the fing road having a miserable breakdown.
And I was going to say, all you people are so you're so f ⁇ ing stupid!
I want, I can feel pain before I was born as a baby.
I was born and I can feel pain.
I wish I wasn't finging born.
Stop being these fing kids into horrible fing home just because you're pro birds.
You're fing stupid.
This is great.
I mean, come on.
You've got to enjoy it while it's going on.
I also like the fact that they're driving cars.
I remember when I was a kid and I had to take my driver's test.
I was really nervous about it.
And my older brother said to me, don't be nervous.
Look at who can drive.
So that's living proof.
All these blue checkmark guys.
I mean, really, it was true that blue checkmark, blue check conservative Twitter was very respectful, as it should be, as we should be.
I mean, she was, like I said, a consequential American who believed what she believed and was actually somebody who stuck to the law, although she interpreted it differently than I would have or you would have.
Still, but Reza Eslon says if they even try to replace RBG, we burn the entire effing thing down.
Another, this is, it looks like Laura, basically, these are a little blurred on my computer.
If McConnell jams someone through, which he will, there will be riots.
Burn it down is another one.
If you can't shut it down, burn it down.
Burn Congress.
They're not only violent and ugly, they're unoriginal.
Burn Congress down before letting Trump try to appoint anyone to SCOTUS.
May her memory, is another one.
May her memory be a revolution.
This is great for Trump.
I mean, it really is.
I mean, all he has to do is nominate a good candidate and sit back.
And if this is the way they behave, I think they will get the treatment they would have gotten after Kavanaugh if it hadn't, if three weeks hadn't passed and people forgot in the current news cycle.
So we have to look at this argument that they're having over what used to be the Biden rule and then they became the McConnell rule.
You all remember the last year of Obama's presidency, Obama nominated Merritt Garland, and McConnell refused to bring it up.
He said, look, we're not going to do this.
You know, he's a lame duck president.
We have the majority and we're not going to do it.
And, you know, let me just stop for just a second and say, I'm absolutely serious about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
I really, really disagreed with her.
I think her, as Anton and Scalia said, when you have this living constitution, every day is a new day.
It's like nobody wrote anything down.
It's really not like a living constitution.
It's like a blank constitution.
However, she did care about the law, and she was a very brilliant jurist who reasoned her position through the law.
She didn't just make stuff up like some of the other court justices do.
And when she was talking about the process, you know, she, both she and Scalia were confirmed.
These are obviously a very liberal woman and a very conservative guy, were confirmed by huge majorities, bipartisan majorities.
And then it started to turn and things changed.
And she herself said she wishes it would go back to the way it was.
And this is cut six.
That's the way it should be.
Instead of what becomes a highly partisan show, the Republicans move in lockstep, and so do the Democrats.
I wish I could wave a magic wand and he'll have it go back to the way it is.
The way it was.
So a lot of people talking about her dying wish, which supposedly was that replacement not be appointed until the next president is elected.
But that was also her wish that they could go back to doing things in a nonpartisan way.
And of course, her wishes don't matter.
I'm sorry.
They just don't.
You know, she could have retired at 80 and let Obama replace her.
She didn't.
She stayed in office because she thought Hillary Clinton would win.
She made her decision, and now it's time for the people who represent us to make their decision.
Obviously, there's no dying wish clause in the Constitution.
So now the screaming begins, and the screaming begins over the fact that Republicans said we will not confirm Merrick Garland while when the president is a lame duck and the election is coming up, let the people decide.
Here's Lindsey Graham putting his foot in his mouth saying, you can hold this against me when the tables are turned.
Let's cut seven.
If Ted Cruz or Donald Trump get to be president, they've all asked us not to confirm or take up a selection by President Obama.
So if a vacancy occurs in their last year of their first term, guess what?
You will use their words against them.
I want you to use my words against me.
If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say, Lindsey Graham said, let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.
And you could use my words against me and you'd be absolutely right.
So now, of course, he's changed his mind.
Everybody's screaming hypocrisy, as opposed to Joe Biden, who said the same thing.
He said, you should not nominate a guy during a justice in a lame duck presidency.
He said this in 92 when George Bush was president.
Here's Biden back then.
It was called the Biden rules, cut 20.
It is my view that if a Supreme Court justice resigns tomorrow or within the next several weeks or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not and not name a nominee.
But then, guess what?
Then came Merrick Garland, and here's what Biden said then, cut nine.
The American people deserve a fully staffed court of nine.
So that was for Merrick Garland.
Now it's a good thing.
And now, once again, it's a bad thing.
To jam this nomination through the Senate is just an exercise in raw political power.
And I don't believe the people of this nation will stand for it.
President Trump has already made it clear this is about power.
Pure and simple power.
Whether the voters should make it clear on this issue, so many others.
The power in this nation resides with them, the American people, the voters.
First you say you do, but then you don't.
Then you say you will, and then you won't.
You're on the side of now.
Norms Under Fire00:03:19
So what are you going to do?
So when it comes to hypocrisy, let's just play the Democrat, all the Democrats, when they wanted Merrick Garland confirmed.
Here they are.
It was Cut 21.
Hate on filling a naturally occurring vacancy, in my view, is harmful to the independence of the Article III branch.
You cannot keep a seat on the Supreme Court, which represents all of us.
You cannot keep it vacant against the Constitution.
Do pretty much everything they can to avoid acknowledging the legitimacy of our democratically elected president.
The American people expect the president's nominee to be given a fair hearing and a timely vote in the Senate.
Every day that goes by without a ninth justice is another day the American people's business is not getting done.
We have a word for this.
It's called politics.
You say what you have to say, and if you have the majority, you can back it up.
What's not politics is burning things down.
What's not politics is threatening people.
There were people outside Mitch McConnell's house last night.
That's not politics.
That actually is a form of low-level terrorism.
And that's the big difference.
You know, the whole thing is people suddenly talk about, the Democrats are suddenly talking about norms.
Suddenly, the Democrat Party has turned into cheers where they keep going, norm, norm, we have a norm.
But the Democrats have been overturning norms, especially in this regard, forever, forever.
Remember Borking?
I mean, Borking was when Ronald Reagan picked Robert Bork, one of the most qualified justice selections, and Ted Kennedy got up and just excoriated him as a guy who was going to make blacks sit at segregated lunch counters and force women into back alley abortions.
That's a famous speech that Ted Kennedy made.
And the Republicans were so taken aback, it took them a minute to kind of get back into the fight, to realize that they were in this terrible fight.
That was the kind of thing that Democrats engineered.
All norms went out the window.
All norms went out the window when they accused Clarence Thomas of sexual malfeasance, when they accused Kavanaugh, when they allowed a woman who couldn't even prove that she had ever met Kavanaugh to accuse him of doing something back in high school.
Those are the ways that they have thrown out the norms.
They have been filibustering appellate nominees.
You know, George W. Bush's first term, the Senate Democrats pioneered the use of the filibuster to block nominees to the circuit courts.
I'm reading from the Wall Street Journal now.
Miguel Estrada was left hanging for 28 months before he withdrew, and Senator Dick Durbin said they had to oppose him because he is Latino and couldn't be allowed to reach the D.C. Court of Appeals lest he later become a candidate for the Supreme Court.
They didn't want the Republicans getting any credit with Latino, so they blocked a Latino nominee.
They also are the ones who got rid of the filibuster for appellate nominees.
That was Harry Reid in 2013.
They got rid of the filibuster so that you could get point appellate nominees with a 51, with 51 votes.
It was McConnell who turned that back on them and basically said, all right, well, we're going to do that for Supreme Court nominees as well.
So all of this is just politics.
The whole thing about norms and hypocrisy.
It's just, you know, which is fine.
This is, look, it's a democracy.
You're going to have politics.
Politics And Hypocrisy00:02:27
You're going to have lying.
You're going to have dishonesty.
You're going to have people, you know, hypocrisy, people throwing things back and forth.
But it is, it is the violence.
It is the extreme, the extremism, the idea that somehow the ideas of the left are so pristine, so virtuous, so good, that anyone who disagrees with them is an evildoer.
And that's where things go wrong.
And it really is.
It really is.
It's like politics is politics.
It's hilarious.
We defend our guys, but we know our guys are shifty just like their guys are shifty.
That's not the problem.
The problem is when you can't talk at all.
And this is why I really feel that as sorrowful as we may be to lose a consequential American like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she was an old lady.
It was her time to go.
And this is a moment where for Donald Trump, I think all he has to do is follow the Constitution.
All he has to do is follow the rules, do what the Constitution says he should do, and appoint a judge.
And all the people, all the Mitt Romneys and the Lisa Murkowskis who say, oh, we have to stand on principle and not do this, they're fools and they're just acting politically too, because they think that will help them get elected.
Let us talk about ZipRecruiter.
Now, many people watch the show and they think this is a dumpster fire.
And of course, that's true.
And I supply the dumpster, but somebody has to set it on fire.
And that's why we have the staff we have.
However, if we didn't want that, we would have used ZipRecruiter and gotten people who knew what they were doing.
ZipRecruiter sends your job to over 100 of the web's leading job sites.
But they don't stop there with their powerful matching technology.
ZipRecruiter scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job.
ZipRecruiter makes hiring efficient and effective with features like screening questions to filter candidates and an all-in-one dashboard where you can review and rate your candidates.
ZipRecruiter is so effective that four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.
And then all the unqualified candidates come here and work for us.
Right now, to try ZipRecruiter for free, my listeners can go to ziprecruiter.com slash clavin.
You know that, but do you know how to spell Clavin?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
There are no E's in Clavin.
I just make it look this fantastically easy.
So when we talk about the law, we need somebody smart to tell us about it because we are not lawyers.
But Jenna Ellis is, and she is an excellent lawyer and a very, very brilliant thinker about the law.
Fidelity vs. Fluid Constitution00:12:42
She's a constitutional law attorney, senior legal advisor to the Trump campaign, personal counsel to President Trump, as well as a fellow with the Falkirk Center at Liberty University.
She's also serving as special counsel for John MacArthur and Grace Community Church as MacArthur fights to be able to worship God in the state of California, which I think is now illegal.
I think you get the death penalty for that.
Anyway, Jenna invited me kindly to Grace Community yesterday.
And if I have time, I will talk about what was an amazing experience.
Jenna, it's good to see you.
How you doing?
Great to see you too, Jrew.
Thanks for having me.
It's always great to talk to you about these issues.
Let's start by talking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
You know, her legacy is really interesting because conservatives immediately sort of back up, but she was somebody who actually had respect for the law.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah, and I think that that's a really interesting distinction because as much as the left holds her up as this activist, which of course she was in terms of social issues, she was completely liberal and tried to read into the Constitution this notion of fluidity and to say that the Constitution has to be brought up to date with the value premise that we hold in culture, rather than saying from an originalist view, we look at the text and we look at the fact that our rights are given by God, our creator, not our government.
And so the Constitution protects and preserves the objective truth of morality.
Of course, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg didn't stand for that.
But what I think is really interesting in terms of a distinction between her type of view and her jurisprudence on the Constitution comparatively with the new Democrat socialist radical left is that she actually approached these issues in good faith.
We don't see that anymore from the radical left.
They just want to destroy the system, not work within it.
You know, it's really interesting.
I think one of the reasons she was able to have a friendship with Anton and Scalia and Scalia with her is that they respected the fact that they were working from different theories of the law and hers was this kind of fluid idea.
What are some of the things that she left behind that you would say were just decisions that you wish she hadn't made, things that she did that are now part of the law that you wish weren't?
Yeah, well, you know, I think that obviously all of the social issues that if we look back over the past 60 years, not just from 1993 when she was appointed onward, I think that her contributions to this idea of a fluid constitution from a philosophical standpoint, it's not just one or two cases.
It's this entire view and philosophy of the Constitution and its interpretation.
And that's what the left lauds her for.
But what's, again, I think really interesting is that she at least approached this with a consistent argument, with a formulated ideology.
And her view of the Constitution was that we need to have it fluid and it ebbs and flows with the culture.
And so that, of course, is a wrong view.
And that, of course, is against originalism.
But at least she had a coherent view of the Constitution and she wasn't trying to completely destroy it.
And so what I think we need to learn as conservatives from Ruth Bader-Ginsburg legacy is how important not only it is to originalists to make sure that we have those types of people on the bench and that judicial philosophy that doesn't have a notion of a fluid constitution, but we need to make sure that we have jurists on the bench that actually appreciate and respect and understand and have read the Constitution.
Because if you look at who Joe Biden might put on the court, these are going to be people who not only don't even have a coherent judicial philosophy, but their entire goal is to completely work around it and to not even try to apply it appropriately and fairly.
I mean, if you look at Nancy Pelosi today saying we might and we're considering impeaching Trump for just nominating.
I mean, that's expressly stated in the Constitution.
That is his power.
That is why we elect a president.
That's one of the things that he can do is to nominate where there are judicial vacancies, including the Supreme Court.
But the radical Democrats don't even want to respect the Constitution.
At least Ruth Bader Ginsburg did that.
She would not have stood for that.
So Trump says he's going to appoint somebody by the end of the week, Friday or Saturday, I think was what he was saying.
Obviously, I don't want you to give away any state secrets, but give me your idea of what you think happens now.
Yeah, so of course, President Trump is looking over his list of nominees.
He has said that it will be a woman.
And I think there are, you know, looking at his list, everyone is eminently qualified on that list.
And so anyone that he would select from that list has the same mold of a judicial philosophy that President Trump has, of course, purposefully intended to signal to the American people and to show us that he understands the role of a proper Supreme Court justice.
And so if you look at the frontrunners, Amy Coney Barrett, of course, Judge Rushing, if you look at Barbara Lagoa, you look at these jurists, I think that any one of them will have faith and fidelity to the Constitution.
The reason that conservatives, I think, are so interested in Amy Coney Barrett is because she does have a judicial track record of fidelity within those social issues, like religious liberty, like pro-life, like a lot of other things that conservatives have always thought we're just one vote away from making sure that these rights that are God-given are preserved and protected.
And that's why I think a lot of conservatives are hailing her because of her judicial track record, where some of the others, particularly Lagoa, doesn't actually have the paper trail for that, even though she is still the same mold.
So what I would say to the American people is, you know, President Trump knows what he's doing.
He's looking at all of these nominees and the person that he selects is going to have that same fidelity to the Constitution.
And any of these choices will be excellent.
And I hope that Mitch McConnell will call the vote.
I hope that we will get a justice seated before the election because in a 4-4 split, we need to make sure that there are the potential of a 4-4 split.
We need to make sure that election integrity issues, if they arise, are properly decided by a nine-judge panel in the full court.
And that's really important to election integrity for everyone, not just the presidential election, but all the way down ticket.
You know, I have no doubt that Mitch McConnell will bring this to a vote.
The Washington Post today called him an apex predator.
How Mitch McConnell got to be the coolest guy in Washington, I don't know, but now he's cocaine Mitch.
He's apex predator.
He just sounds great.
But what do you think about the possibility of actually winning that vote, of getting enough votes together?
I think Lisa Murkowski has said she wouldn't do it.
Obviously, Mitt Romney is not a vote you can trust.
What do you think?
Just as a guess, obviously, you don't know the future any more than anyone else, but what do you think about their chances of actually getting a confirmation?
I think that there's a really strong possibility of a confirmation, and that's what Mitch McConnell is intending to do is to make sure that the Republicans all look at this fairly and accurately.
We know that unfortunately, these types of nominations are inherently so political rather than if we all had and shared the same judicial philosophy that our founders did when they unanimously signed the Declaration of Independence.
Of course, they debated over the Constitution heavily, but they signed it and they ratified it.
And they all understood that the judicial branch is for judicial review.
It is not for the purpose of making law.
It's not for the purpose of activism.
And so that's why it's so ideologically based now is because the Democrats don't want that.
They don't want fidelity to the Constitution.
They want activism.
And so this is going to be a party line vote, of course.
And so hopefully those Republicans will not be Republicans just in name only.
They will understand why it's so important to get an originalist on the bench.
And at the end of the day, even if Susan Collins, even if Mitt Romney, even if Lisa Murkowski, even if Corey Gardner doesn't want to vote, when that vote happens, they know that they will have to participate, hopefully, one way or the other.
If they abstain, it's not really a good use of their Senate seat.
So hopefully they will participate in that vote.
And, you know, Corey Gardner is my senator from Colorado.
I'm still a Colorado resident.
I intend to vote in Colorado.
And for someone like Corey, who has a very difficult Senate race coming up, you know, my philosophy on that would be this is the time that you stand up for principle.
And if you go down, at least you go down fighting.
But I know the people of the state of Colorado and all of the conservatives that are a lot of my friends there, we want Corey Gardner to stand up and we want him to stand up for President Trump's nominee.
And we want him to do the right thing regardless of how that may affect his own personal election.
And I think it's always the right thing to do to stand up for what's right, stand up for the truth, and then make sure that you cast your vote in favor of protecting and preserving the Constitution.
You know, everybody always talks about abortion.
That's always the first thing that comes up, Roe v. Wade.
But what are some of the rights that you feel are actually under threat in a real way?
I mean, what are some of the things that Americans could lose that we were given by our founders and given by God and our founders protected?
What are you afraid of if we don't get a conservative court?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And, you know, last week was Constitution Day, and I wrote a piece in Newsweek that was called Save the American System.
And I would encourage everyone to read that because I lay out the difference in the ideology of this, because I've seen a lot of people who are claiming that conservatives are just, you know, these naysayers and we just have this overblown fear and it's a dog whistle to say something like that.
And that's to say that our rights are genuinely under threat in America.
And I even saw a few people say, you know, it takes, you know, a number of states to ratify an amendment to the Constitution.
How are your Second Amendment rights actually in jeopardy?
Well, the application of our rights and going through a court process and going through judicial review when right now in 2020, if we've learned anything, Drew, it's how quickly and easily petty tyrants can come in through health orders and through the coronavirus.
And like you mentioned, Pastor John MacArthur, they can say, sorry, we want to decide for you what your risk benefit analysis is.
And we want to tell you you can't exercise your sincerely held religious beliefs.
You can't go to church.
Our founders would never have stood for that, but yet the petty tyrants in California are saying that.
And if we don't have a Supreme Court that's going to stand firm to actually apply the First Amendment, that's where it gets obfuscated.
That's where we get it taken away.
We don't have to have a constitutional amendment for that.
We just have to have a poorly written Supreme Court opinion.
That's why this is so important.
Jenna, I got to stop and read an ad.
Can you hold on for just a second so we can keep talking?
All right, thanks.
I want to talk about Eero because I've got them all over my house.
So I love them.
I had them before they were ever a sponsor, years before they were ever a sponsor.
And they work great.
What they do is they boost your Wi-Fi.
So you're not out like I have a little shed where I go out and write.
I'm not out there trying to get things, do research, and I can't do it because I've got my Eero.
You can set them up in a couple of seconds.
They work off.
You can arrange them on your phone with an app.
They just work.
That's the thing.
They really do work.
Eero is an Amazon company.
It covers your whole home with fast, reliable Wi-Fi inside and out.
If you have rooms with bad to no Wi-Fi, if you have dropouts on your patio, where I also work, Eero makes every square foot of your house usable by eliminating poor coverage and dead spots.
Eero is fast, easy to set up.
Just plug it into your modem and boom, you're good to go.
Even I could do it, so you can do it too.
We're asking a lot of our Wi-Fi.
Eero can help yours do more.
Go to Eero.com slash Andrew and enter code Andrew at checkout to get free next day shipping with your order.
That's E-E-R-O.com slash Andrew, code Andrew, at checkout to get your Eero delivered with free nextday shipping Eero.com slash Andrew, code Andrew.
Also, while we're talking about it, go on to dailywire.com and subscribe if you haven't already.
You're going to want to be in the mailbag Wednesday when all your problems will be solved unless you haven't subscribed, and then they won't.
It's that simple.
All right.
Conservatives Get It Wrong00:04:42
We are talking with Constitutional Law Attorney, Senior Legal Advisor to the Trump campaign, personal counsel to President Trump, Jenna Ellis, and friend of our show, good friend of our show.
We're always happy to see you.
Why do conservatives get this wrong?
What's that?
Sorry?
I said very good friend of the show, I hope.
Why do conservatives get Supreme Court justices wrong?
I mean, this is so frustrating to people on the right that when Democrats appoint a Supreme Court justice, they get every single decision is left-wing.
Whereas we get Gorsuch, and we were celebrating Neil Gorsuch, and then he came up with that, I thought, just absolutely loony decision about sexual discrimination, including transgender people, because after all, transgender people are being penalized for their sex because sort of, I don't know, it was a very weird decision.
How come conservatives get this wrong and liberals get it right?
Yeah, well, you know, this is all very ideologically driven.
And I think that it comes down to making sure to use the Senate confirmation hearings in a way that actually gets to the ideology and the jurisprudence and the understanding of the Constitution of that particular scholar.
And, you know, with Justice Gorsuch, I have to say that was really the only opinion that I felt was really out in left field genuinely.
I mean, he's been a solid originalist.
I think he was a great appointment of President Trump.
Kavanaugh, I know that a lot of the conservatives initially were thinking that he wasn't quite the best pick.
He has been very solid on the bench.
But we have to look at now this third justice for President Trump.
And this is an opportunity to put someone on the court who is going to make sure to protect and preserve all of our individual rights and to make sure that they don't read into the Constitution.
They don't read into legislation like that Title VII decision and say, well, we're going to say now in 2020 what the Congress in 1964 should have said.
And we're going to read into it and now change the law.
We have to make sure that they understand they cannot make law.
And so where I think conservatives get it wrong is to say, well, we want to put someone on there who's maybe moderate because we don't want the liberals to be so panicked and we don't want to really showcase the fact that we stand for religious freedom.
We stand for all of our rights that come from God, our creator.
This is our judicial philosophy in the Constitution.
And I think that that's something that President Trump has stood very strongly for more than I think any of the other original 17 Republicans who were running against him.
He has stood more openly and strongly for our principles, for our Constitution, for our American values and heritage, more than any other president.
And I'm confident that as he goes into this third nominee, he is going to choose someone who has that same judicial philosophy.
And he's not going to be in the mold of President Bush, for example, we're not going to get another Roberts.
That's where we go wrong is when we try to appoint someone who's just a moderate, hoping then that they'll do the right thing on some of these cultural issues.
Let me ask you just one last question.
The left is threatening to pack the court if they don't get their way, to expand the number of people on the Supreme Court.
I'm not even sure why that's a threat since they could pack the court and then the right could pack it back.
I don't understand exactly.
But does this worry you?
Is this something you think is a possibility?
Well, I think it just shows the Democrats' desperation.
But, you know, right now, if they wanted to change it, well, you know, President Trump is getting re-elected.
And so, you know, hey, if you want to give him another three justices, by all means, go ahead.
You know, I think it's a ridiculous argument because then, you know, no matter how much you expand or contract the number of justices on the bench, you're always going to have more vacancies.
The point here is, again, not to try to circumvent the system.
The point is to use the system as it was intended to protect and preserve our individual freedoms and liberties.
But that's what the Democrats don't want to do.
They try to use every power possible and manipulate it in a way that the system wasn't designed for.
And the system, according to them, I mean, it's crashing and burning.
If the Democrats are at the helm of driving the Constitution, they will crash and burn.
And that's exactly what they want to do.
And so court packing is just a ridiculous notion.
Impeaching the president for following his constitutional obligations is ridiculous.
It's just the Democrats whining, and they're literally burning down the country now because they can't have their way.
That is a toddler.
That is not somebody who has a mindset of someone who is a rational, thoughtful person in office.
Why They Permit This Violence00:03:19
Jen Ellis, I know you're going to be talking to the president over the next couple of days.
I hope you give him good advice.
We always love talking to you.
Thanks for coming on.
Thanks so much, Drew.
Hey, I want to read you a piece that was put up on First Things, which is a very powerful journal.
It's called Suicide of the Liberals by Gary Saul Morrison who's a professor at Northwestern University.
And he talks about the level of violence that went up in Russia just before the Russian Revolution, just before the Soviet Revolution.
He says, between 1900 and 1917, waves of unprecedented terror struck Russia.
Several parties professing incompatible ideologies competed and cooperated in causing havoc.
Between 1905 and 1907, nearly 4,500 government officials and about as many private individuals were killed or injured.
Between 1908 and 1910, authorities recorded 19,957 terrorist acts and revolutionary robberies, doubtless omitting many from remote areas.
Now, he talks about the fact that these revolutionary acts of violence were going on, and the Liberal Party, the guys who would have been, say, the Democrats, were called the cadets, the old-fashioned Democrats.
And he says the official cadet paper, Herald of the Party of People's Freedom, never published an article condemning political assassination.
The party leader, Paul Milukov, declared that all means are now legitimate and all means should be tried.
When asked to condemn terrorism, another liberal leader in the Duma, that's the parliament, famously replied, condemn terror, that would be the moral death of the party.
Lawyers, doctors, engineers, even industrialists and bank directors raised money for the terrorists, which I bring this up because, of course, we're talking about Amazon supporting Black Lives Matter, all these companies, the NFL supporting Black Lives Matter, who are Marxist terrorists, just like these people were back then.
So when the Bolsheviks gained control, when the Soviets took over, their organ of terror, the Cheka, liquidated members of all opposing parties, beginning with the cadets.
The liberals were the first to go.
The very people who supported them didn't see it coming.
Why didn't the liberals and businessmen see it coming?
The liberals refused to use their position in the Duma to make constitutionalism work.
They would not participate in determining the government budget, but confined their activities to denouncing the government and defending terrorists.
He talks about a scene in Alexander Solsenitsky's novel, November 1916.
The hero, Colonel Vora Tintsiev, finds himself at a social gathering, principally of cadet adherents, these liberals.
And everyone repeats the same progressive pieties.
And he soon grasps that, quote, each of them knew in advance what the others would say, but that it was imperative for them to meet and hear all over again what they collectively knew.
They were all overwhelmingly certain that they were right, yet they needed these exchanges to reinforce their certainty.
And to his surprise, this fellow, as he sees it as if under a spell, finds himself joining in.
And I just want to bring this up because I think that this is what is happening now, because I hear it happening now.
I do know liberal people.
Church Gatherings and Permits00:04:23
They say things, words come out of their mouth that they can't possibly believe.
And we talk about, we talk about, oh, how can they be this crazy?
How can they permit these riots?
How can they permit this violence?
How can they permit doxing people and calling people out?
And they're like, good, we're glad this is happening because you guys are the bad guys and what we believe in is so powerfully right.
And when you ask them, well, what do you believe in?
They say, well, Donald Trump is a threat to the Constitution.
And you say, well, what part of the Constitution do you support?
You don't like the First Amendment.
You don't like the Second Amendment.
You don't like the Electoral College.
You don't like anything in the Constitution.
You just have this idea that the Constitution is under threat from our guys because Donald Trump is a big mouth and says things that make you afraid.
It's an amazing, amazing thing.
And this is why I talk about the culture all the time.
When people are gathering together, smart people, decent people, people who are made by God to be decent people, and they cannot express a different opinion, something has gone terribly wrong with the culture.
The power of culture is like a river that sweeps people away.
And if we let it become wholly a left-wing river, everybody's going to be swept to the left.
It's already happening.
Let me just talk as we're coming to an end about this visit to Grace Community Church.
Jenna is defending John MacArthur, who is keeping his church going in spite of the fact that the state of California is saying he's violating health rules.
And of course, the thing is, the state of California is not saying that protesters are violating health rules.
It's only church people who are violating it.
They can have meetings.
They can have a gathering to mourn the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but you can't bury your parents.
You know, you can't have your own funeral.
And MacArthur has stood up against them.
And MacArthur, I believe, is in his 80s.
He's still a very dynamic, terrific preacher.
And I went to this church taking a little bit of a risk.
I'm an older guy.
I've been careful.
You know, I'm not like crazed careful.
I don't walk around in a mask outdoors or anything like that.
But, you know, I don't go into stores a lot.
I haven't been hiding out, but I'm still working from here and all this.
I went to this place, it was packed, and there was absolutely no safety.
So if you lose me, that's why.
But hopefully, if we can't save the Clavin physically, hopefully we saved his soul, because I have to say, it was beautiful.
The place was packed, not just the actual church itself, but the whole area around.
There were people outside under tents listening online.
It was just an amazing, an amazing experience.
Plus the preaching, which he doesn't really preach.
He kind of gives an exegesis, an explanation of the reading for the day.
It was just brilliant.
And one of the things that he said that I just agree with so much, and I don't always agree with what John MacArthur said, but I certainly agreed with this, was that the church is not here to promote a better world.
It's here to make better people in Christ.
It's here to align people with their Savior, Jesus Christ, and the mind of Christ.
He said it's not here to preach traditional values.
It's not here to serve the society.
It is not here.
The church is not here to rearrange the furniture, as he put it, to rearrange the furniture in a sinful world.
The world is going to remain sinful.
It's going to remain broken until Christ comes again.
And this wisdom, this simple wisdom, is what makes him stand up when all these other preachers have fallen down on the job.
I know it's dangerous.
I know it's more dangerous to have gatherings in small enclosed spaces.
However, more dangerous even than that is to let your First Amendment disappear.
And your First Amendment disappears when elected officials can choose which exercise of First Amendment rights is dangerous to your health and which isn't.
And every single time, they choose religion as dangerous to your health and protest, left-wing protest, is not dangerous to your health.
It's absurd.
It's an abuse of power.
It's a betrayal of the Constitution.
It's a betrayal of American tradition.
And it's a betrayal of the religious underpinnings of this country.
Good for John MacArthur for standing up against it.
I'm glad I went to support him.
And I would go again.
It was just an amazing, amazing day, really, really moving.
And good for him.
Everybody should be doing it.
Left, right preachers.
They should all be doing it.
You want to do it outdoors.
That makes you feel better.
Do it outdoors.
But do it.
You should be meeting to worship God and telling the state of California and every other state that they have not got the right to stop you.
But I got to stop there.
Why We Stand Up00:01:13
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
We'll see you tomorrow.
And if you want to help spread the word, give us a five-star review and also tell your friends to subscribe too.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro Show, the Matt Wall Show, and the Michael Knoll Show.
Thanks for listening.
The Andrew Clavin Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Our technical director is Austin Stevens.
Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
Assistant Director, Pavel Wadowski.
Edited by Adam Saivitz and Danny D'Amico.
Audio mixed by Robin Fenderson.
Hair and makeup, or head and makeup, is by Nika Geneva.
Animations are by Cynthia Angulo.
Production assistants, McKenna Waters and Ryan Love.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh at the insanity filling our national news cycle, well, tune in to the Ben Shapiro Show.