Ep. 1016 – Government Vs. The People dissects Biden’s executive orders as absurdly performative, mocking "Climate Day" and racialized energy policies while framing Democrats as self-satisfied elites. The GameStop frenzy is hailed as a populist victory over hedge funds, yet AOC and Cruz’s alignment exposes left-right hypocrisy on economic justice. Renewable energy skepticism targets John Kerry’s 10% emissions claim, linking green subsidies to fossil fuel dependence. Censorship parallels Moore’s YouTube ban with conservative suppression, while January 6th is framed as a Reichstag fire pretext for D.C.’s militarization. Guest Christopher Ruffo brands CRT a Marxist power grab, detailing its K-12 infiltration and legal vulnerabilities, urging grassroots resistance over political retaliation. The episode pivots to worship, rejecting "corrupt" churches in favor of home-based gospel gatherings, then critiques a listener’s artistic procrastination as depression masked by video games. Ultimately, it positions conservative strategy as cultural rebuilding—faith, free speech, and economic freedom—against elite consolidation. [Automatically generated summary]
The Department of Homeland Security has issued an alert warning that violent right-wing extremists may do untold damage to our country before the Democrats have a chance to destroy it completely.
President Biden moved quickly to meet the threat by signing an entire ream of absurd executive orders in the hope he could reduce the nation to rubble before conservatives have a time to attack it.
Although Biden said he did not have the opportunity to read the executive orders he signed, he hoped Americans would help him achieve his goals by just assuming they're now out of work.
The White House says America is facing four simultaneous crises, which it listed in order of complete insignificance as one, some made-up nonsense about the weather, B, a hysterical fantasy about black people, four, a growing shortage of inane slogans designed to make us hate one another, and four again, the fact that the president's plan to tackle the pandemic consists largely of wearing so many masks, no one will understand him when he says that everyone is going to die.
To tackle these and other looming rhetorical boondoggles, the White House declared Wednesday Climate Day, when in order to ensure the continued existence of air, the president would destroy the energy sector.
He would then blow on a pinwheel to generate enough electricity to turn on a flashlight so unemployed oil workers could see their way to sticking their heads in their gas ovens, which of course would now be rendered perfectly safe.
President Biden recommended the former workers either learn to code or stick their heads in the toilet instead and flush repeatedly.
Biden said he was also moving to bring the nation what is either called environmental justice or just a series of fart-like noises that are equally meaningless.
The president said, quote, we must understand that the make-believe climate crisis unfairly impacts our hysterical fantasies about black people, because black people breathe more air than white people to make up for past injustices when white people hogged all the air, unquote.
After Climate Day, Biden said he would declare Education Day, when teachers' unions would close down the schools to ensure minorities don't get enough education to realize what Democrats are doing to them.
After that, there would be Racial Violence Day, when he would sign an executive order ensuring that each and every American minority member would receive a free gas can and a match.
And finally, there would be Telly Tubby Rerun Day because the president just happens to really enjoy that show.
Democrats feel that by the end of next week, they will have outsmarted the violent right-wing extremists who would now show up to attack the country and find only a smoking hole in the ground where the country used to be.
And oh, how the Democrats will have the last laugh then.
Trigger warning.
Long-Term Plans Needed00:05:09
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boom.
Birds are winging, also singing hunky-dunkity.
The world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, we are back laughing our way through the imminent fall of the Republic.
We've got a lot to talk about.
We're going to talk about naked women.
We're going to talk about the gospel according to Crash Bandicoot.
That's the sort of content that should make you want to subscribe to my YouTube channel, where if you just hit that bell, we will personally deliver new content to your home and remove your silverware while we're there.
If you leave a comment and the comment is sufficiently bigoted and just completely unacceptable, we will include it on the show because it'll fit right in.
Today we have a comment from Giacomo Rossi, who says, let's look on the bright side.
Hillary will never become president.
So that's the kind of optimistic thing I want to hear.
You know, pessimism actually seems to be a natural part of the conservative personality, which makes perfect sense.
Conservatives are the sort of people who can see how any change in the status quo could lead to a revocable disaster.
They want to preserve traditions because they're pretty sure they'll be replaced with something worse.
And they want to keep government limited because they know that people can't be trusted with power.
And conversely, leftists tend to be hopeful people.
They believe that the same statist policies that have destroyed society every single time they've been tried are really, really, really going to work this time.
Just you wait.
They believe experts have the answers in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
And they believe change will make things better because things can't be any worse than they are right now.
So they believe in hope and change.
Now, this actually gives Democrats a certain political advantage over conservatives.
Hopeful people look to the future so they can make long-term plans.
Pessimists can't look to the future because they're too busy holding up the sky, which will collapse if they turn their attention away from it.
But right now would be a good time for right-wingers to borrow some of that leftist hope.
Here's why.
We are in almost the exact same position now as the left was in when Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.
The people had just rejected the left's president after a single term, President Carter, and the country seemed to be moving sharply to the right as it's moving to the left now.
Democrats had every reason for political despair.
And yet by virtue of their hope, they did not give up.
They made long-term plans.
They moved into the culture to sell their destructive ideas through the vehicles of the academy, Hollywood, and journalism.
And in a mere 40 years, they managed to convert many American hearts and minds to the religion of leftism.
They played the long game, and they won.
And the fact is, though the Democrats had a majority in the House when Reagan was elected, in many ways, they were worse off then than we are now.
Reagan was a brilliant president.
Biden is a venal houseplant.
Reagan's policies made America more prosperous and free.
There is no chance of Biden's policies doing either of those things.
Reagan was brilliant at making the argument for conservatism.
With Biden, the argument for conservatism will make itself.
Still, we're down and out right now, and if we spend our time in hysterics over each new attack on our country, we will stay that way.
Instead, we should be making long-term plans.
That means doing what the left did in the 80s, create culture, educate the young, report the news from a conservative point of view.
It means less bloviating on Twitter and more building in real life.
It means less whining about Washington and more gathering together at home to create the world we want our children to have.
National political action matters, but more important is what we do with our lives.
Forming families, defending communities, building houses of worship so we can show the miserable victims of leftism what joy looks like.
Right now, the most defiant revolutionary acts you can commit may be simple things.
Going to church, getting married, having children, teaching your children, and sitting down to dinner with them, speaking the truth even when it costs you, keeping your word, living your religion.
Before you go on Twitter and shake your metaphorical fist at your opponents, it might be a good idea to ask yourself, is my life an example of true conservatism?
If it's not, change it.
If it is, you may actually be the hope you have a hard time feeling.
The left is out to destroy the America we love.
You're not imagining that.
But despair is surrender.
Hope for long-term victory is the best weapon we have.
When you go to sleep tonight, or in my case, when I lie awake tonight, you want to be on my pillow.
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I mean, I know it's a great pillow because I haven't been anywhere near it since my wife stole it from me.
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Little Guys Strike Back00:12:48
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So the theme of the show, or at least the news portion of the show, is going to be to recognize that the battle we're in is not entirely a battle between Democrats and Republicans.
It's really a battle between the powerful and the little guy.
And we're seeing this play out in a number of ways.
The most obvious one is in this GameStop stock story, a really interesting story that I've been watching the news about it and they explain it using so many technical terms that I want to simplify it and make sure that it's comprehensible.
So let's begin with having an ordinary person come on and just explain what's going on.
This is cut four.
From what I understand, there are these people who are, they have lots of money and they have hedges around their house and they go to the market, but it's like not a real market.
It's metaphorical, but it's real.
And they go, uh-oh, that company is not doing well.
So I'm going to make it do worse.
So they pull out some papers and they go, who wants to make a deal?
All right, that is comedian Avalon Penrose, who is very funny.
Here's what's happening.
There's a thing called shorting a stock.
Not everybody knows what this is, but it is betting on the stock to fail.
And the way you short a stock is you take a stock that you think is probably from a company that's not doing too well.
You borrow some stock.
So I borrow a stock, a piece of stock from you that is worth, say, $10.
I sell it for the $10.
Now I have $10.
I wait for the stock to go down.
So it goes down to $5.
I buy it back and I return the stock I borrowed to you.
So now I've made $5.
Now, it's a dangerous thing to do because the stock can only fall to zero.
So the most I can make is the $10 that it was worth to begin with.
But it can rise forever.
So if I get it wrong and instead of going down, it goes up and it goes up to a billion dollars.
Now I'm in debt.
I have to buy it back to return it to you and I'm in debt a billion dollars less than the 10 bucks, right?
So it's like a very dangerous thing to do.
So these big hedge funds, they pick stocks that they think are going to fail.
So one of them is GameStop, one of them AMC, obviously theaters that are struggling so much during the pandemic.
GameStop, obviously struggling because it's a video game store.
I used to love to go to GameStop Stop.
Now I can just download my games right onto my devices, right?
So I don't have to go to GameStop.
So it's been struggling, though they do have a lot of cash.
So all these people on these, you know, what they call retail investor sites, things like Robinhood, places where you just go on and you just buy the stocks you want, led by some people on social media sites like Reddit, they said, well, why don't we buy the stock?
Then the stock will go up.
Not only will we screw these hedge funds that are betting against the business, we'll make a lot of money.
And that's exactly what happened, right?
The stock goes up.
little guys, a lot of these little guys made a lot of dough on these, on these, on something like GameStop, while the hedge funds got badly burned, okay?
So why is this a problem?
Well, it's a problem because they don't like the big hedge funds don't like getting burned.
It's like boo-hoo-boo-hoo.
So Robinhood, which is one of these sites that tells you, you know, come on on, come on, you can buy stocks.
They started to ban the sale of GameStop to stop these guys from doing it.
And the idea is, oh, well, you know, this is getting in the way of the really serious investors who know what they're doing.
And it's inflating this stock where the serious investors know that the stock shouldn't be inflated because GameStop isn't doing well.
Actually, GameStop actually had a lot of cash on hand.
So it's not necessarily true.
Now, here's the first thing you have to understand, right?
The first thing you have to understand is that the experts, the stock people, they know nothing.
They know 0% of what's going to happen.
They are 0% aware of what is going to happen next.
When you hear the guy on the news, they always have that brief thing on the news and he says, you know, Wall Street went down today on news that Joe Biden had a corn on his foot.
They don't know why the stock went down.
That has nothing to do with anything that people actually know.
I know this.
I've told this story before.
I'll tell it very briefly because I once told it like for about 20 minutes and it is a hilarious story.
We used to have, my wife and I used to have experts, stockbrokers who would advise us.
And I started to notice my wife, who was the sweetest, most feminine, you know, elegant lady in the world, would occasionally come in and say, you know, there's this new business called Amazon.
I think we ought to invest in that.
And these stockbrokers would say, oh, little lady, they always had these like little slogans they would come up with, which meant absolutely nothing to dismiss what my wife was saying.
And they would always say, oh, you can't ride a horse when the barn's on fire.
You know, and they would tell her not to do these things.
So after a while, I'm not an idiot, right?
I'm watching thinking, she's always right.
She is always right.
We got rid of all the stockbrokers and now my wife will come in and say, you know, this new business, Netflix, sounds good.
And I'll, you know, light a cigar and say, honey, you just go off and buy that Netflix.
And while you're up, get me a beer.
Because I'm a guy.
I'm still a jackass.
But I understand that they don't know anything.
So the entire meme of like, these are the serious investors.
Remember, the serious investors brought you 2008.
They brought you the crash.
It was them who brought you, helped bring you the crash with the help of your government.
So here's the thing about this.
So now Robinhood bans retail investors, the little guy.
And remember, these little guys, some of these little guys are guys who have lost their restaurant jobs because of the idiot shutdown, because of the mistake the government made.
So they don't have the money.
The guys at the hedge funds are doing great.
They're doing great.
They're doing online.
They're having a great time.
So suddenly the guys at the hedge funds are hurting and the guy who lost his waiter job is doing great.
So when Robinhood bans them from selling this, our old friend Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweets out, this is unacceptable.
We now need to know more about Robinhood App's decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.
As a member of the Financial Services Committee, I'd support a hearing if necessary.
And Ted Cruz retweets AOC and says, fully agree.
Whereupon AOC accuses him of trying to kill her by saying that the election should be vetted.
The election should have been tested to see if it was a free and fair election.
That was trying to kill AOC.
However, the point is it's raining frogs when AOC and Ted Cruz are on the same page.
And they are on the same page because both of them do have a heart for the little guy.
AOC is an ignoramus when it comes to economics.
She doesn't know that the stuff she's recommending has destroyed every economy in which it's ever been tried.
She thinks that's not true because everything she learned, she learned in school.
So she doesn't know that.
But she is thinking about the little guy.
And so is Ted Cruz because he understands that freedom and capitalism, true capitalism, not crony capitalism, lift the little guy.
So suddenly you start to realize, you know, there is actually a connection at the ends of the political spectrum where people are looking to the small person against the big person.
However, that is not what the Democrats are doing.
The Democrats have become the party of the elite.
And we have to understand that.
And, you know, I've said this before about AOC.
The day AOC realizes that all of the richest people in the country, all the corporations in the country are supporting her.
Wall Street supports her.
It might occur to her that why is that happening?
Oh, it's because socialism cements the top level of wealth.
And it just, what it does is it gets rid of the middle level because that middle level is a threat to the top level.
So this is an opportunity.
This is an opportunity for us, the right, to explain through culture, through education, through journalism, that we are the party of the little guy.
In the old days, it was, you know, the left saying, well, we support your union and we support this and we support socialism so you'll have a safety net.
Now it's the right who actually supports the right of the little guy to be free, to own guns, to speak out and not be censored by corporations like Twitter and Google and all those people who are censoring people and to basically make a living through capitalism.
It's the left that has supported these shutdowns.
It is the left that supports the big government.
It's the left that supports all the things that take the little guy's freedom away.
And this is a wonderful moment because this is just another, you know, the people who keep saying everything is about Donald Trump and I keep saying nothing is about Donald Trump, nothing is about Donald Trump.
Everything is about what Donald Trump represented and the people he represented.
So now those people are striking back in a new way.
They're striking back through the stock market by saying, hey, you know, we have a right, we have a right to run up the stock market and make investments too.
And people say, no, no, no, we need these experts.
Well, I'm telling you, the experts know nothing.
The experts do nothing.
The experts help nothing.
This is fair play in a free market.
And this is what capitalism, true capitalism, looks like.
And all of this stuff that Robin Hood's doing should be stopped right where it is.
This is the big guy, the little guy against the big guy.
And America was made by little guys.
It's going to continue to be made by little guys.
And the little guys are going to continue to become big guys as long as we remain free and competition remains free.
And here, now we're going to take a look at another example of this, which is going to shock you.
It's climate change is another example where the left and right have common interest, little guy against big guy.
All right, you're in your house a lot and a lot of stuff is being delivered.
You want to get ring doorbells.
You want to get ring doorbells and cameras, security devices, so you can keep track of what's going on outside your door.
So much happens at our front doors.
It's one thing that definitely hasn't changed.
It's the fact it's gotten more so.
And in my house, I'm getting more deliveries of books.
With my wife out of town, I'm getting a lot of food because otherwise I would starve to death.
It has never been more important to be able to see who's there or what's happening.
It's a perfect time to upgrade your doorstep with a ring video doorbell.
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If someone stops by or something is going on, Ring lets you know.
And right now, you can get a special offer on the Ring Welcome Kit at ring.com/slash Claven.
It comes with Ring's Video Doorbell 3 and QIIME Pro, the perfect way to upgrade your front door and start your Ring experience.
So go to ring.com/slash Claven.
That's ring.com/slash Claven.
Anyone comes to your door wherever you are, all you got to do is look at your phone and speak to them and say, How do you spell Claven?
And if they say K-L-A-V-A-N, they know they must know me.
So, you know, call the police.
Michael Moore's Climate Critique00:14:54
Man, that last segment was good, right?
Now for our top story.
So this past Wednesday was Energy Day at the White House.
I mean, Joe Biden has signed more executive orders in the first like week of his presidency than most presidents sign forever.
So he, for Energy Day, he basically crippled the oil and gas industry in the name of climate change, right?
He declared a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on public lands.
He's already killed the Keystone Pipeline, which is thousands.
I mean, it's something like 11,000 jobs directly, but there's other tens of thousands of other jobs affected.
And the thing when it comes to climate change is our arguments are stupid.
A lot of our political arguments are stupid.
What you have is the left on one side saying we're all going to die in eight days or 12 years or whatever stupid thing they're saying.
And we say like, oh, there's no such thing as pollution.
You know, we are so extreme on the other side, we just react to what they're doing.
So let's just take a bottom line of saying pollution is bad and we'd like to help pollution.
And maybe pollution affects climate and maybe that's a bad thing.
We don't know.
Nobody knows anything about the future.
They just pretend.
It's all pretend.
But let's just say pollution is bad.
That we do know.
If you wanted to deal with pollution and you were a politician, here's something you might say, let's do a carbon tax.
A carbon tax is fair because it affects everybody equally and it creates an incentive to bring down carbon emissions, right?
Or, or, and this is something, this is something I've been saying since this show began, you might invest in storage, energy storage, new forms of batteries, essentially, because the problem you have with things like, you know, wind and solar is that they don't create enough energy and you have to be able to, if you can store it for a longer period of time and more of it for a longer period of time, that could become a more useful way of gathering energy.
Obviously, you'd increase nuclear energy.
You'd stop being scared by movies and stupid stories about nuclear explosions.
And you'd realize that nuclear energy, if you do it right, is extraordinarily safe, extraordinarily clean, extraordinarily plentiful.
Nobody is doing any of those things.
They are doing zero of those things.
So you know that they're not serious about what they're talking about.
They're not serious about climate change.
They're not serious about their terror.
They're not serious about anything.
And once again, and what they are, what they really are serious about is giving subsidies to their friends, giving subsidies to the people who invest in them, people who make electric cars, people who make solar panels, give them campaign donations, and they subsidize their business, even though a lot of this doesn't help at all.
So this, once again, brings serious, I won't call them serious people, I'll call them authentic people on the left together with us, with conservatives.
Michael Moore, of all people, I know it's like it's raining frogs, but Michael Moore made a film recently called The Planet of the Humans, which explores the fact, and it's got a lot of nonsense in it, a lot of ether-rich nonsense in a short, but it explores the fact that a lot of these supposed attempts to control pollution are fake.
So, for instance, here's a scene where an environmentalist expert who believes very much in reducing carbon emissions goes and interviews a guy who makes hydrogen cars, clean-burning hydrogen cars, is Cut 12.
I'm in a strange position.
I'm against our addiction to fossil fuels and have long been a fan of green energy.
But everywhere I encountered green energy, it wasn't what it seemed.
This is like a perpetual energy battery.
And where do you get the hydrogen from?
Hydrogen, that's the hydrogen is sourced from any hydrocarbon material.
So you can get it from natural gas.
You can get it from any petroleum or oil-based product.
Okay, so in other words, it's coming from oil.
It's the same thing.
He's getting the hydrogen from oil.
So it's just one step away.
Then the same guy goes and explores ethanol as Cut 13.
Ethanol plants also seem to have a secret ingredient.
This is the most productive farmland in the world, and we're not that far west of the biggest coal mines in the world as well.
So bring the two together and look at an ethanol plant.
Great.
So ethanol was reliant on two things.
A giant fossil fuel-based industrial agricultural system to produce corn and even more fossil fuels in the form of coal.
All of this and the attempt to replace fossil fuels, it was enough to make my head explode.
You have something else that will make your head explode.
In 2011, nine years ago, before Michael Moore made his film, another brilliant filmmaker named Andrew Clavin did a film in which he interviewed the Green Jobs Answer Man and came up with some of the same conclusions as Cut 15.
Building a windmill would be a green job.
Yes.
And making the materials you'd need, working at the factory.
Very green.
And transporting the windmill to the wind farm.
Fantastically green.
And putting the gas in the truck that transports the windmill.
Grassy, greeny green.
And drilling the oil that makes the gas for the truck.
Another wonderful green job we can spend your money on.
So Ted Cruz and AOC are on the same page about GameStop.
And me and Michael Moore, I and Michael Moore are on the same page about the waste of green jobs, of green jobs is nonsense.
So what happens to Michael Moore?
He makes this film.
He tries to sell it to Netflix.
Netflix won't buy it.
He puts it up on YouTube.
YouTube takes it off with just a flimsy excuse.
He got it back up.
It is now back up on YouTube.
And he is upset because he suddenly found out that, guess what?
Guess what?
Social media and Twitter and Google and all these places, they shut you up if you offend the status quo that helps the elite.
Here is Michael Moore complaining about social media censorship, Cut 14.
We are going to lose this battle.
We are losing this battle for climate crisis and climate change.
And we are sick about it.
And so we wanted to start this conversation.
They don't want to have the conversation.
They want to shut us down.
They want that screen to be black so that you can't see what we're going to show you.
If they think what we're showing you is not right, or we're wrong, or the things our opinion or analysis is wrong, we should have that debate.
Why not have the debate?
Why shut us down?
Why shut us down?
Does that sound familiar?
He sounds just like a conservative.
He sounds just like us when they shut us down.
So here are things that we can agree on.
Obviously, Moore's, a lot of this stuff in Moore's film is ridiculous, but still, at least he's getting some of the facts finally right.
He's finally getting some of the facts right.
Now, there are disagreements.
For instance, John Kerry points out, and this is just true, that we produce very, very little, about 10% maybe of the carbon emissions, because the more sophisticated your technology is, the less carbon you produce.
So we produce maybe 10% of the carbon emissions in the world.
So anything we do is not going to have a big effect.
And John Kerry, the new energy czar, lurch, actually says this is cut eight.
President Biden is deeply committed, totally seized by this issue, as you can tell by this executive order and by the other, the initiative of getting back into Paris immediately.
That's why he rejoined the Paris Agreement so quickly, because he knows it is urgent.
He also knows that Paris alone is not enough.
Not when almost 90% of all of the planet's emissions, global emissions, come from outside of U.S. borders.
We could go to zero tomorrow, and the problem isn't solved.
Now, John Kerry admits this, that really what we do doesn't matter much.
But John Kerry disagrees because he got caught telling the truth.
So afterwards, he corrected himself.
It's cut nine.
First of all, I didn't say it wouldn't make any difference.
I said it won't make the difference that will save us from the problem because all of the world has to be at the table.
The only point I was making, we need to reduce our emissions.
We have the second largest emitter in the world.
And if you put China and the United States together, that's almost 50% of all the emissions in the world.
So yes, we have to do it.
The point I was making is this is a global endeavor that all countries need to join in.
So I'm sure you could hear what crap that was if you put us and China together, because China is producing something like 40% of the emissions of the coal emissions because they don't care, because they just want to catch up.
When people catch up, that's when they start to say, hey, some of our people are dying from the smoke and they have to wear masks in Beijing.
That's when they start to worry about it.
But before they catch up, they just want to make stuff.
And you need oil, you need coal to do that.
So they're putting people out of business, right?
They're directing subsidies to their friends.
So in order to get the subsidies to their friends, they've got to put the oil people out of business.
And remember, that satisfies the base, guys like George Soros and people like that who are going to send them money because they're dealing with the horrible, horrible emergency of climate change.
What about the people who are put out of work?
They've got to learn to code.
Here is John Kerry telling people what to do when Joe Biden puts them out of work.
This is Cut 22.
The President of the United States has expressed in every comment he has made about climate the need to grow the new jobs that pay better, that are cleaner.
I mean, you know, you look at the consequences of black lung for a miner, for instance, and measure that against the fastest growing job in the United States before COVID was solar power technician.
The same people can do those jobs.
But the choice of doing the solar power one now is a better choice.
So what President Biden wants to do is make sure those folks have better choices, that they have alternatives, that they can be the people who go to work to make the solar panels.
They were making them here at home.
That's going to work.
That's going to work great.
That's going to work great, you know, especially if you live in Pennsylvania, if that's where your community is.
It is unbelievable.
It is unbelievable.
Solar panels cannot produce the energy we need.
Wind cannot produce the energy we need.
And those things, as per Michael Moore and everybody else who's ever studied it, those things require more fossil fuel use than just using fossil fuels.
Why?
Because wind, you have to back it up with fossil fuels and you have to keep those engines running while the wind turbines are turning.
Plus, they slaughter all the birds.
This is an amazing, amazing fact that what we are seeing now is a takeover by the elites, which leads you to believe that what they hated so much about Donald Trump, and Donald Trump could be an obnoxious guy.
We all know this.
Even the people who love Donald Trump know he could be obnoxious.
But what they really hated about him was that he was a threat to the elites.
The populism is a threat to the elites, whether it's in the stock market, whether it is in energy, oil jobs, coal mining, all of these things.
These are the ways people make living who are living who don't live in New York and L.A.
And when you hear John Kerry, who sounds just like that guy on Gilligan's Island, Buffy, you know, Buffy, go get a solar job, you know who's talking to you.
You know who the Democrats especially now represent.
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Here's a quiz.
What do you do?
Do you get in your car, pretend to drive to an imaginary car parts place, ask the imaginary guy to look at his computer because the imaginary guy doesn't know anything more than you do?
Or do you use rockauto.com?
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You got to say it like that because it just impresses the girls.
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When they ask, how did you hear about us, put in Clavin?
And you got to say it like that, Claivin.
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
I'm telling you, you will be the most popular guy sitting around talking about these things.
It's the second story on the rundown, but it's first in our hearts.
It is first in our hearts.
It is also deadly dangerous what is happening in Washington right now.
The attempt to demonize conservative voices, to basically associate them with violence and extremism and terrorism, to use the January 6th assault on the Capitol, which of course was despicable, but to use that as kind of a Reichstag fire and cause hysteria all around and shut down people's rights.
And this is something, again, again, this is something that should concern both the left and the right, because there is only two kinds of speech.
There's free speech and there's speech controlled by the powerful.
And when you hear yourself wanting speech to be controlled, it's because you think you are going to have power.
But just remember, it only takes a minute for them to turn on you next because nobody has enough power to stop the real power, which is usually the government and these massive, massive corporations.
So this week, the Department of Homeland Security issued its first ever national terrorism alert, right?
DHS in an advisory said violent extremists opposed to the government and the presidential transitions, and we know who those guys are, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence through the, though the department said it doesn't have evidence of a specific plot.
So it's basically just saying, be afraid, be very afraid.
And because of this, they have basically kept the National Guard in Washington, D.C. Our Capitol is now occupied by the National Guard, who are there to prevent the evil conservatives from coming down.
And if you don't think, if you think this is just against those guys who went in on January 6th and that they were idiots, they were thugs.
I absolutely oppose everything they did, just as I oppose Black Lives Matter and Antifa and their riots.
I oppose it all.
National Guard in Washington D.C.00:06:55
But the New York Times, a former newspaper, has a story on his front page today.
Republican ties to extremist groups are under scrutiny.
So in other words, it's the politicians as well.
Nearly 150 House Republicans reading from the Times supported President Donald J. Trump's baseless claims.
We always have to have that word in there, baseless claims, lest you think there is anything that should be held suspicious about our elections.
Nearly 150 House Republicans supported President Trump's baseless claims that the election had been stolen from him.
But a handful of other Republican members of the House had deeper ties to extremist groups who pushed violent ideas and conspiracy theories and whose members were prominent among those who stormed the halls of Congress in an effort to stop Biden's certification.
So this is the AOC strain of, oh, Ted Cruz is trying to kill me.
So left-wing writer Glenn Greenwald, this is a guy who writes for The Guardian.
He has always been, as far as I'm concerned, he's been on the far left.
He may be changing his mind now.
He is the guy who has been banging the drum and sounding the alarm on this kind of thing because he's, again, if you're a true, authentic left-winger, you're worried about freedom.
You are worried about these things.
He says we have witnessed, this is Glenn Greenwald.
I think he's writing in The Guardian.
I'm not quite sure of that.
He says, we have witnessed an orgy of censorship from Silicon Valley monopolies with calls for far more aggressive speech policing, a visibly militarized Washington, D.C. featuring a non-ironically named green zone, vows from the incoming president and his key allies for a new anti-domestic terrorism bill, and frequent accusations of sedition, treason, and terrorism against members of Congress and citizens.
Now, if there were really a danger, somebody who would know about this and somebody who is not afraid to call for the use of troops against violence would be Senator Tom Cotton, who did call for the use of troops against Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and of course got people fired at the New York Times for running his op-ed.
But he's on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and you would think if there were real threats to be worried about, he would know about them.
He says he does not.
This is Cut 25.
I'm on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
I've consulted with Senate leadership.
I'm not aware of threat reporting that suggests we need 7,000 troops and razor wire around the Capitol.
What happened on January 6th was in part the failure of the senior security leaders on Capitol Hill to anticipate the kind of violence we saw from the mob that broke into the Capitol on the 6th.
There's chatter about that on social media, yet they didn't request enough backup from the FBI or the Park Police and the National Guard.
Muriel Bowser, the left-wing mayor of Washington, D.C., declined to let the National Guard that was present be armed and prepared for ride equipment.
Then we had a major reaction, one might say an overreaction of bringing 26,000 National Guard troops in for January 20th's inauguration.
But the inauguration is behind us.
These troops did a great job.
I respect their service.
They deployed on short notice, but it's time to send home the troops.
So just to show you that this is not purely a Republican issue and that people do care about this, Tulsi Gabbard, who is obviously a former Democrat congresswoman, but somebody who has spoken very much with an independent voice, she makes the point, the essential point, that there is a lot of sedition going around, but it's not all on the right.
This is Cut 24.
The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6th to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country.
But let's be clear.
The John Brennans, Adam Schiffs, and the oligarchs in big tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance are also domestic enemies and much more powerful and therefore dangerous than the mob that stormed the Capitol.
See, that's, I mean, that to me is the voice I want to hear from my politicians on both sides.
I don't have to agree with you as long as you are reporting the facts.
And that is absolutely right.
John Brennan, Adam Schiff, they are also people who are undermining our country.
Twitter, Google, Facebook also gutting, gutting the Bill of Rights by censoring people that they disagree with.
And this is just a really, really important fact because once again, this is the powerful, the powerful control speech.
And when you look at the people in the news, you are looking at the voices of massive corporations.
You know, I'm watching Jake Tapper, I think it was Grabian, put out this mashup of Jake Tapper talking about the battle for the attack on the Capitol.
This is Jake Tapper who defended CNN's reporting when they said that the riots from BLM and Antifa were mostly peaceful.
He defended that reporting, saying, well, they said that there was violence, but they said they were mostly peaceful.
This is the way Jake Tapper has been talking about the assault on the Capitol ever since it happened.
Cut six.
Capitol ransacked by mega terrorists.
The assault perpetrated by the mega terrorists.
The terrorists.
The mega terrorists.
MAGA terrorists.
Deadly attack by mega-terrorists.
The MAGA terrorist mob.
A terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Far-right, domestic terrorism, a huge problem in this country.
Nobody supports terrorist attacks, or I used to think that anyway, but nobody rational supports their terrorist attacks.
Should there be repercussions for your colleagues who played a role in inciting this terrorist attack?
You can't have presidents of the United States inciting terrorist attacks on the Capitol.
Incited a terrorist mob.
Incited the terrorist attack.
And the terrorists that he has emboldened.
But after the terrorist attack on the Capitol.
That deadly terrorist attack.
The deadly riot, the terrorist attack.
The deadly terrorist attack.
And that's not even including the terrorist attack.
So we will leave it to Rand Paul to make the obvious point.
It's Cut 23.
But what of Democrat words?
What of Democrat incitement to violence?
No Democrat will honestly ask whether Bernie Sanders incited the shooter that nearly killed Steve Scales and volunteer coach.
The shooter nearly pulled off a massacre.
I was there because he fervently believed the false and inflammatory rhetoric spewed by Bernie and other Democrats, such as the Republican health care plan for the uninsured is that you die.
As this avowed Bernie supporter shot Steve Scalise, nearly killing him, and shot one of our coaches and two or three of our staff, he screamed, this is for health care.
Ask me or anyone if that's incitement.
See, you know, one of the things that I think is missing from political talk and from political talk radio, and this is on the right and the left, is a little bit of cynicism about your guys, right?
In other words, of course, we're all cynical about the opposition.
But when you start talking about your guys, the guys that you support, you should be a little cynical about them too.
Nudity's Complicated Question00:15:36
And this goes for left and right.
You know the old Latin expression.
You've probably heard the old Latin expression, qui bono.
Who profits?
Who benefits from what is going on?
And it's always, almost always, the powerful.
And so when you see your conservative, if you're a left-winger and you see your conservative opponent being shut down, ask yourself, qui bono, because that is going to be turned on you when you're the guy who speaks up.
And why is the violence, why is the violence from Black Lives Matter and Antifa and from the Bernie bro who shot the congressman?
Why is that okay?
It's not okay because it benefits the Democrats.
It's okay because it benefits more power in the hands of the people who already have power, which is almost always the answer to qui bono.
It is almost always the powerful.
And so you have to defend your opponents.
You have to defend the rights of your opponents because those rights, their rights, are your rights too.
And that is why I'm just emphasizing that both sides, both sides have something to gain and to lose in the fight we're now in.
Now, when I tell you that I am actually a bit of an exercise freak, I know you'll say to yourself, that's why he looks so fantastic.
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I know what you're saying.
You're saying, echelon, I can spell echelon, but how?
Tell me how.
Please, please explain to me how do I spell Clavin?
It is K-L-A-V-A-N.
There are no E's in Clavin.
I just make it look this easy.
All right, enough politics.
Let's talk about naked women.
That's why we're here.
That's why I get up in the morning.
You know, I actually do want to talk about nudity in art.
We got a lot of pushback in a scene in Run Hide Fight that there, I'm not even sure it was full actual nudity, but a woman did take off her clothes in the scene.
I'm not sure how much of it was actually seen.
Although I was glued, of course, to the screen when it was happening.
But I want to talk about this, not in terms of morality.
I want to talk about what the issue is, okay?
Because I just think, you know, there's a website.
I know the guy who runs it.
I think it's called Movie Guide, something like this.
It's a guide for Christians.
And you go on it, and to me, it's a little comical.
It tells you whenever, like a woman, in a movie, it'll say, well, you know, there's three times a woman bears her shoulder or, you know, takes off her blouse or whatever.
They want to tell you every single thing that you are going to see when you get through this.
And it just strikes me, not as wrong.
It strikes me as simplistic, a simplistic way of approaching things.
And I do not think Christianity is supposed to be simplistic.
One day, a long, long time ago, I was walking down, I think it was 57th Street in New York, great big boulevard in New York, and I saw a group of New Yorkers standing outside a storefront and in stitches.
They were just laughing hysterically.
And I went over to find out what they were watching, and they were watching Charlie Chaplin in City Lights.
You could see it in a TV screen.
And since it was silent, it made perfect sense, even though you were standing out there.
So run a little bit of this because it is one of the great scenes, one of the great Charlie Chaplin scenes.
And it's hilarious.
And what you see is you see Charlie Chaplin looking in this window of an antique store, and there is a, I think he's looking through the window of an antique store, and there's a nude statue in there, the statue of a nude woman.
And he's pretending to look at all the other things, but he keeps glancing back at the nude.
And when he looks at the nude, he's pretending that he's appreciating this at this very high artistic level.
But we know that he is being lascivious.
We know that he is being lustful.
And it is a brilliant, brilliant point that the human body has always served as the gold standard of beauty.
And artists have been painting the human body and making sculptures of the human body forever, right?
It is something that has always been what artists want to do.
It is complex, but it's beautiful.
It is, like I said, it's the gold standard of beauty.
But on the other hand, there is this lustful, lascivious. action, you know, way in which we react to the bodies of the opposite sex when they're naked.
And this has been, you know, part of art too.
There's a frame story to William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, where they're trying to trick this drunk guy.
And at one point, they show him all these pictures of mythological events.
And we know they're showing it to him because the women in the pictures, in the paintings, are naked.
And so they're just trying to turn him on.
There's also a famous picture.
I couldn't find it, unfortunately.
I was looking all over for it.
I think it's Picasso.
It's a Picasso self-portrait in which he shows himself painting a nude.
A nude model is posing for him.
And he's painting the nude.
And his shadow is reaching for her in this kind of assaultive way.
So this distinction, there's not a dark line between what is artistic and what is just pornographic.
In fact, there was a famous book a long time ago in which I think it was Kenneth Clark wrote about the difference between the naked and the nude, that the naked is somebody who has been stripped of their clothing and is therefore exposed and ashamed, but the nude is someone who is presenting the body to you in this artistic way.
And a famous writer, Robert Graves, wrote a poem called The Naked and the Nude where he made fun of this idea and says the way the poem goes, he says, the nude are bold, the nude are sly to hold each treasonable eye while draping by a showman's trick their dissabi in rhetoric.
Disabi means undress.
So in other words, what he's saying is you can talk about it all you want, but they're still naked.
The nudes are still naked.
And at the end, he pictures the naked and the nude in hell.
And he says, yet when they both together tread the briery pastures of the dead by gorgons with long whips pursued, how naked go the sometimes nude.
And others are the same thing.
And look, this goes back in time.
People, like I said, have been, artists have been making nude statues as long as we can remember.
There are these fertility goddesses that you can find that are just kind of little, you know, rocks carved into the shapes of women.
And people say, well, that's a fertility goddess, but they don't know.
They don't know.
It may have been the caveman's version of Playboy.
It may have been what a teen caveman took into the bathroom with him when he wanted to turn himself on.
This distinction, this distinction between the naked and the nude goes directly back to the Bible.
It goes back to the beginning of time.
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When you read the Genesis story that we're all familiar with of Adam and Eve in the garden, they are naked until they commit a sin, until the fall of humankind.
And they're perfectly happy being naked until they eat the forbidden fruit.
And when they eat the forbidden fruit, they suddenly are ashamed.
They cover themselves up with the famous fig leafs.
And that's how God, well, obviously God knows, but he says to them, who told you you were naked?
Who taught you to be ashamed?
And that means there's a distinction between who we're meant to be, which is at peace with our bodies and, you know, openly not ashamed of our bodies, and who we are in our fallen state because of the, you know, one of the things, I think St. Augustine said, that sin disorders the passions.
And so our passions are now disordered and we cannot look on one another's bodies with appreciation of the beauty without also having this kind of lust.
In one of the great poems of all time, Paradise Lost, one of my favorite poems by John Milton, which is an epic poem about the fall of man, he actually famously has a sex scene before the fall in which he shows you that sex grows out of married sex or the sex between this man, the only man and woman on earth, grows out of their worship of God.
And he gives a little lecture where he says that people who think of this with shame are actually acting in their sin.
After the fall, he then has another sex scene, right?
In the first one, they're basically praying.
It's a prayer.
And the next thing we know, they're kind of sleeping in each other's arms naked with roses falling on them.
But afterwards, he says, Adam says to Eve, never did thy beauty since the day I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorned with all perfections, so inflame my sense with ardor to enjoy thee.
Fairer now than ever, bounty of this virtuous tree.
Having eaten the forbidden fruit, he says he wished he'd eaten the fruit 10 times if this is how pleasurable it now is to have sex.
And she's right on board with this.
He is right on top of it.
So we actually find ourselves in a bind that we were made, we were made to love the human body and to admire the human body, but in sin we can't.
And that's why there's no sense in pretending we're not in this fallen state.
That's what the Romantics wanted to do.
They wanted to have free love.
And in free love, they destroyed relationships, destroyed women.
Percy by Shelley, the poet, was a great believer in free love, left his wife to marry Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, and his wife drowned herself.
And Mary Shelley's stepsister had an affair had an affair with Byron and later said this free love, she had a child by Byron who then died tragically and Byron took the child away from her and kept it from her.
And she later said, Claire later said, the worshipers of free love not only preyed upon one another, but preyed equally upon their own individual selves, turning their existence into a perfect hell, because, of course, it's women who suffer most under free love and it's women who get abandoned.
And the process, the process by which the body becomes an object of lust and the body becomes an idol.
That's what it is.
It's idolatry.
The body becomes an idol.
It's something that continues.
There's a famous poem by Gustave Courbet.
It's called The Origin of the World.
And it's just a pornographic painting of a woman's vagina.
So that's the origin of the world.
That is the ultimate in idolatry.
The origin of the world is not God, but it is basically the flesh.
So the question of nudity is just a complicated question.
The question of like, don't show me anything, don't show, you know, shut down all the museums, cover up all the figures on the Sistine Chapel with drapery, which is what they did.
They actually hired an artist to come on and paint drapery on Michelangelo's nudes, seems small-minded to me.
It seems not quite right, just as the attitude of the left, oh yeah, even pornography is fine.
What's the problem?
It's great.
All of that, you know, the fact that our culture has become pornographic, our culture is trash now, and it does abuse women.
All of that is also, of course, quite obviously wrong.
But this is at the heart of the Christian life, okay?
And that's why we're going to talk in a minute about the gospel according to Crash Bandicoot, because who else but Crash Bandicoot would know to talk about the gospel?
But I just want to end this with a famous sermon that was given by C.S. Lewis.
And it was called A Slip of the Tongue, I think.
And I think it was the, it's in The Weight of Glory.
You can read it in his collection, The Weight of Glory, one of the great collections.
And I think it is the last sermon he ever gave.
And he was talking about the fact that he was praying an Anglican prayer that said, O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy, increase and multiply upon us thy mercy, that through being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal that we finally lose not the things eternal.
So we live life without losing our eternal salvation, right?
And as he was praying, he made a slip of the tongue, which he said he thought was a Freudian slip of the tongue, where he said, he prayed that I might pass through things eternal so that I lose not the things temporal.
And he said this was a Freudian slip.
It actually expressed his desire not to be taken away from the good things in life.
And this is the question that all of us are always asked.
Are we willing to sacrifice a dollar in order to tell the truth?
Are we willing to sacrifice a roll in a hay with a cute 20-year-old in order to keep our families together?
Are we willing to sacrifice things?
Do we really believe in God?
And if we believe in God, we feel that we should be able to move toward a full enjoyment of God's beautiful creation without turning it into an idol.
But we're almost never able to do that.
So the answer to people who say, you know, there should be no nudity in art, there should be no nudity in film and all of this, is the only point I want to make is that it's a complicated question.
And we have to turn to the Bible to understand it better, understand what our reactions should be.
And in order to do that, we have to first turn to Crash Bandicoot.
So one of the many things that makes me feel like an idiot is the fact that I use the internet without thinking about it.
Run, Hide, Fight: 25% Off00:03:01
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Walk By the Spirit00:08:00
So I want to start by reading this passage from St. Paul's letter to the Galatians or the Galatians, depending on whether it was raining.
And it's a little bit long, but it's worth reading because it's always kind of puzzled me a little bit.
I'll tell you why after I read it.
He says, walk by the spirit.
Walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.
For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.
Now, the works of the flesh are evident.
Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.
I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Against such things, there is no law, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.
Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
Now, St. Paul was not that thrilled with sex in general.
He said it's better to marry than to burn, right?
This is better to marry than to burn, but that doesn't make it sound like that much fun, where most of us actually quite enjoy sex.
And actually, people like me think it is, in fact, a, can be, in fact, a spiritual activity when done in love.
And when I look at people who are really grimly opposed to any form of sexuality but their own or who think that they should be in charge of other people's sexuality, which I do not believe is something that Jesus instructed us to do, nowhere did he say go bother other people about what they're doing.
He said to look after yourself.
They seem joyless.
They seem joyless to me.
And obviously sex is one of the great consoling aspects of life.
It is one of the great consolations of life that we can come together in love and pleasure and bliss.
And so I think that the rap on Christianity that is sometimes anti-sex, I think has some validity and should not have validity.
So what does it mean then to resist the flesh and live in the spirit?
This brings us to Crash Bandicoot.
For those of you who have never played Crash Bandicoot, it is a spectacular game where you take this bandicoot and he has to jump over things and climb things and slide over things and fight enemies and all this stuff.
And it's hard.
I know it's hard because it's even hard for my son Spencer, no relation, who is a much better gamer than I am.
But I play it and it is just bone-breaking hard.
And recently I was playing it, the new one, Crash 4, and I realized that I was furious.
I was so frustrated.
I was in an agony of frustration.
I wanted to throw the controller across the room.
I was so ticked off and I stopped and I thought to myself, well, wait a minute.
A, this is supposed to be fun.
B, B, it doesn't matter.
You know, in the new Crash 4, you can't, in the old ones, you could die and lose your lives and then get set back.
In this, you can't.
They don't care.
You just play forever.
There's no penalty to failing.
So why was I so upset?
And it made me think back to something else that I used to play tennis.
I don't anymore because I have an injury in my arm, but I used to play tennis and I love tennis and I love to compete.
And I am very competitive.
And I would play tennis just like I was going to die if I didn't win that game, right?
And there came a day when a ball dropped and I was playing with friends, you know, the ball dropped and it was very close to the line and I was not sure whether it was in or out.
It was another guy's shot and I called it out and I was not sure and I went home and I thought, oh my God, I don't think I cheated, but in that moment, you know, you should obviously the right thing to do is to give anytime you're not sure, you give the shot to the other player.
That is the gentlemanly, correct thing to do.
And I was appalled by myself.
I talked to the guy, the pro who was teaching me, and he said, oh, that happens to all of us.
It is something we have to teach ourselves.
Now, here's the important thing.
I was a sub-par tennis player.
I mean, I was extremely fast, but I was a crummy tennis player.
I wasn't playing for money.
I wasn't playing for status.
I was playing with friends.
I was at a club.
I was a mediocre tennis player.
I was never going to be much more than a mediocre tennis player.
I won a tournament once at like the wheelchair level.
That was how well I played.
The flesh doesn't distinguish.
That is the important thing.
The flesh does not distinguish between something that matters, like pulling a kid out of a burning building, and something that doesn't matter.
The flesh is completely unbridled in its desires.
It wants to win a nonsense, meaningless, mediocre tennis match as much as it wants to win the Wimbledon.
You know, as much as a guy wants to win Wimbledon, that's how much, if you're competitive, like I am, that is how much you want to win a tennis match.
The flesh cannot distinguish, right?
So when you are in a bar, and I've mentioned this before because this is a thing that has happened to me numerous times, and a beautiful and young girl sits down next to you and is either drunk or just stupid enough to be attracted to you, one or the other.
In my case, it's usually just drunk out of their minds.
The flesh can't distinguish between that and making love to somebody you love and have committed your life to.
The flesh doesn't know the difference.
You have to tell the difference between crash bandicoot and fighting a battle to the death, between playing tennis for fun and playing tennis for a million dollars or doing something actually important, something that actually has meaning between the girl at the bar and the commitments of your life.
You have to tell the difference.
And that means there is a difference between you and your flesh.
Your flesh can't distinguish.
You, whatever that means, you can.
So Jesus said, you remember Jesus, you have heard that it was said of old time, thou shalt not commit adultery, but I say unto you that whoever looketh on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.
And if your right eye offends thee, pluck it out and cast it from you, for it is profitable for you that one of your members should perish and not that your whole body should be cast into hell.
And if your right hand offends you, cut it off and cast it from you, for it is profitable for you that one of your members, like your hand, should perish and not that your whole body should be cast into hell.
In other words, don't play crash bandicoot if you can't play crash bandicoot without kicking the TV set in, right?
Don't look at nudity.
I mean, I know people who say, you know, I couldn't watch Game of Thrones because I would be addicted to porn.
I am addicted to porn, and if I stay away from it, if I stay away from it, I can resist it.
But if I watch the nudity in Game of Thrones, which some of which was pornographic, but if I watch the nudity in Game of Thrones, I will become addicted to porn.
If your right eye is going to offend you, cut it out.
In other words, if this is going to destroy you, stay away from you.
Stay away from it.
But that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean that you cannot distinguish.
It doesn't mean, for instance, as I trained myself to do when you're playing tennis and when you want to win badly, if there is a doubtful shot, you give the doubtful shot to the guy across the net.
You give it to your opponent, right?
Because that is the right thing to do.
Critical Race Theory Debate00:15:16
So if you can do the right thing, you can enjoy some of the complexity of life.
I can walk into a museum and see the nudes in a museum.
I can watch TV shows and see the nudes and TV shows without coming undone, without my life coming undone.
And that, I think, is a somewhat more complex way of dealing with the world and its beauty and its beauty and your sinfulness.
And I think that we have to have a little bit of complexity or else we deprive ourselves of joy.
You should not deprive yourself of joy unless, unless you cannot make the distinctions that the spirit makes, that the flesh can't make.
So as you know, in the show, we like to bring on occasionally somebody who is intelligent and articulate just for a change of pace.
Today we want to talk to Christopher Ruffo because he is dealing with some of the most important things that are coming out of Washington.
He has been dealing a lot with the white privilege critical race theory training that is being foisted upon people, not just by the government, but also at the corporate level.
He's a filmmaker, writer, policy researcher, a contributing editor, as am I, to City Journal, and a research fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality.
Chris, you there?
I'm here.
Good to be with you.
It's good to see you.
How you doing?
Very well, very well.
All right.
I want to begin by just playing this clip of Biden signing one of his endless executive orders, this one on equity.
Look, in the weeks ahead, I'll be reaffirming the federal government's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and accessibility, building on the work we started in the Obama-Biden administration.
That's why I'm rescinded the previous administration's harmful ban on diversity and sensitivity training and abolished the offensive counterfactual 1776 Commission.
Unity and healing must begin with understanding and truth, not ignorance and lies.
So you hear that, Chris.
What do you think?
What are you imagining he's actually saying?
Yeah, it's really great.
I think he embodies perfectly Machiavelli's idea that you need to kind of perform the virtues while you can execute under the surface the vices.
And you look at the language, right, where it's diversity, inclusion, and equity.
The acronym that I like is not DEI, but actually DIE.
You know, that's what happens to your institutions once you implement it.
But it's a subtle shift, right?
And I think this is deliberate.
You know, the American value of equality that this country was founded on imperfectly, that Abraham Lincoln sacrificed for, and then the civil rights movement actualized to a degree that we hadn't seen before, is equality.
And that's the rhetoric for the last, you know, 250 years of the United States towards which we go.
He's replaced it with equity.
And the idea behind equity and critical race theory is that those old values, individual rights, freedom of speech, private property, the Constitution, give the kind of camouflage or the pretext of equality, but they really hide a kind of subterranean racial domination.
And it should be replaced with equity, which is not the protection of individual rights, but the apportionment of privileges, power, and wealth based on group identity.
So his language is soothing, kind of healing, equity, unity.
But under the surface, the ideology that he is proposing is radical.
It's anti-constitutional, deliberately, and it's quite dangerous.
I mean, this idea that you can give things to a race is just a racist idea, it seems to me.
But we're being told now that if we believe that there should be, we should try to act without racism, we're being told that that is in fact racism itself.
Is that a fair assessment?
Yeah, I mean, it actually becomes very difficult.
I've seen articles in kind of academic journals and the popular press where now logic is white supremacist, math is white supremacist, objectivity is white supremacist, colorblindness is white supremacist.
I mean, it really is the kind of blanket accusation at anything that people don't like that want to implement, which I think is kind of intellectually at heart a kind of Marxist theory where you look at the critical race theorists and you always ask, well, okay, racism is ever present and just as damaging now as it was 100 years ago, just in a different, more subtle form.
What do you want?
What is a solution?
And at the end of the day, and in the literature dating back to the 1990s, it's large-scale seizure of property and assets, redistribution of land along the African decolonial model, and a kind of restructuring of society so that all of the statistics provide kind of mathematically equal outcomes.
And we've tried that.
That's a political kind of proposal that has been, that was proposed in the 1840s, attempted in the 20th century and led to nothing but heartbreak.
And I find it just astonishing that someone like Joe Biden, who to me is not a radical, he's a kind of New Deal retail politics Democrat, would be just allowing this to be his kind of centerpiece of the first few weeks of his administration.
It is amazing to me when I hear people say that logic is white supremacist or math is white supremacist.
It's amazing to me that people don't point out how incredibly racist that is, how incredibly denigrating that is to people who are not white to say that they can't do math, that they can't do use logic.
It's just an incredible, incredibly racist statement.
You have been in the forefront of battling critical race theory.
If you could sum up critical race theory in a couple of sentences, so we know what we're talking about.
What does it even mean?
What is critical race theory?
Yeah, critical race theory is the idea that society can be divided neatly into oppressor and oppressed.
So it's taking that old Hegelian Marxist dynamic.
But in the 1960s, they realized that oppressor and oppressed wasn't really bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
So they took the economic categories.
They replaced them with racial categories in kind of simple terms, white and black.
And critical race theory's basic idea is that scholars and legal scholars and activists should look explicitly at racial dynamics, that racism is ever-present.
Racism is everywhere at all times.
And that the United States is and the institutions of the United States that preach liberal democratic values really use those as a pretext for oppressing people of color.
And that the kind of way forward is not through those liberal democratic values.
It's not through the Constitution and the law, but actually through dismantling all of those oppressive power systems.
It's pretty amazing.
I mean, just in San Francisco, where the schools are shut down, they're taking George Washington and Abraham Lincoln's name off schools.
That's what the school boards are meeting to do while the schools are shut down so minority kids can't go and get an education.
It's pretty amazing to me that they put forward these theories that as far as I can tell from what I've read, they have no factual basis.
I mean, I don't see any proof, A, that this is the case, that endemic systemic racism is what is keeping people down, or B, that these things actually make anybody's life better.
That's what I don't see.
I mean, I suppose that if you are saying, if the government is saying to you, oh, we're going to take these guys' money and give that money to you, I can see where that would kind of make your mouth water if that's what you thought was a good idea.
But I can't see any proof that A, these theories are based in fact, or B, that they will make people's lives better.
Am I missing something?
No, actually, you know, they, A, well, they reject your kind of white, heteronormative, patriarchal conception of objectivity and facts and evidence.
No, really, they say facts, evidence, and logic are actually kind of white supremacist, a white supremacist epistemology.
And we actually value a narrative and the feelings and impressions of minority individuals above them.
So they make it unfalsifiable in that way.
But you're right.
I mean, the evidence is really clear.
And I think that at heart to me, critical race theory and the kind of aligned ideologies are deeply pessimistic.
I mean, they don't acknowledge any form of progress.
They don't acknowledge that in a society of truly equal opportunities, they don't believe that that is good enough or would actually lead to greater equality.
And I think that the kind of people who are really pushing it, and this is the thing that really incenses me about it, is that it serves to maintain the elite social status of academics and journalists and bureaucrats and policymakers, but it doesn't offer for anything for people who are at the bottom of the social ladder of any racial group.
And, you know, I spent, and we talked about it, I spent five years documenting life in three of America's poorest cities, a white city, a white neighborhood, a black neighborhood, a Latino neighborhood, and three different regions.
And the things that they said, hey, Chris, these are the problems.
These are the obstacles.
These are the things that we need in order to advance to kind of full dignity and equality of person, have nothing to do with what people like Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo and other kind of narcissistic peddlers of the new ideology are proposing.
And I think that it really is this kind of cynical academic game that cements their own status, gives them authority in HR programs, the kind of petty tyranny of corporate HR.
but actually offers nothing to people at the bottom.
And I'm not convinced that they even care as long as it's serving their own interests.
You know, this is kind of a theme of today's show is that we're really, we're not really dealing with left versus right.
We're really dealing with elites versus the rest of us.
And just as I always say that AOC should ask herself why so many corporations and rich people donate to her cause when she's supposed to be for the little guy, guys like Tanahisi Coates ought to ask themselves, why is it that they get all these prizes from elite white people?
It's because they know that the things he's recommending are not going to make his kids rivals to their kids.
I think that that's part of exactly what they're doing.
They're actually cementing elites.
They'll let some black guys into the elites, but it's not going to help the average Joe, black or white, who wants to get ahead.
If I said to you, well, you know, this is some obscure stuff and obscure theories and there's articles and who cares, where is this going to pop up in my life, in an ordinary person's life?
Yeah, that's the thing.
I mean, I think that in 30 years ago, it's not a lot of time, this was really a kind of obscure sub-discipline of a sub-discipline in academia.
But you're going to find critical race theory everywhere in every institution that you participate in.
And especially if you're in a blue-leaning state like I am in Washington state or you are in California, it's now part of the curriculum for K-12 education.
It's at every university for higher education.
Churches are now starting to adopt critical race theory in many cases.
Your HR department at your technological mega corp has definitely already implemented DEI training.
And you'll get it in your local library.
For example, our local library in King County is now hosting racially segregated programs under the kind of banner of social justice.
And I think it's, I'm not exaggerating when I say it is now the default operating ideology of most of the major institutions in the United States.
And it has a couple different names.
It's diversity, equity, inclusion, cultural competency, empowerment, sensitivity training, ethnic studies, kind of social justice studies.
But all of those euphemisms and all of those kind of branches of influence within the institutions all trace back to critical race theory, which of course traces back to the kind of radical politics of the 1960s.
So what are you doing?
I mean, you've been really, you were right on top of this.
Part of your work is why Donald Trump got rid of this stuff in reaction to your work.
What are you doing to fight this?
Yeah, well, I think, you know, really three things.
And my strategy, I'll lay it out because I know that no progressives are probably watching.
So it's safe to share with your audience.
But, you know, it's really three strategies.
One is investigative reporting.
I'm reporting on whistleblowers in dozens, now hundreds of institutions, whether in academia, corporations, universities, showing the actual concrete content of these programs, which has drawn a huge audience because it's so outrageous.
Second, there's now in a movement, I hosted a Zoom call recently of 60 different parent groups around the country that are saying critical race theory has now entered our school, entered our curriculum.
It's dividing students.
I reported on a school in Cupertino where they were forcing eight-year-olds to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and then rank themselves according to their power and privilege.
Luckily, these parent groups are taking action, so there's a grassroots effort.
But the thing I'm most excited about is the third plank in the platform is this kind we're launched essentially a decentralized and relentless campaign of legal warfare.
I've recruited now, had more than 100 attorneys across the country volunteer to help on this effort.
And we're finding plaintiffs.
We're filing lawsuits.
We've already done three.
We're doing one next month.
And then hopefully more as the year goes, as the year moves on.
And we're basically making the argument, you know, making the gambit that critical race theory is not only morally and intellectually bankrupt, but actually if you implement it in institutions, it traffics in racial stereotyping.
It traffics in collective race-based guilt and harassment.
And then also compels speech from government employees when they're employed in the public sector.
And this is not only wrong, but it's actually illegal under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
And it's also unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution.
So we're hoping that over time, you know, in the short term, we're going to win some cases, get some settlements, make waves in the press.
But over the long term, the kind of brass ring is for us to win in the United States Supreme Court and immediately change the risk calculus for every institution in the country that's considering these programs.
That's very cool.
My last question for you then is, what does an ordinary person do when he confronts this stuff?
I have a feature on the show where I answer questions in the mailbag.
And one of the mailbag questions today is from somebody who is attending graduate school in New York City for an MFA in painting.
And the annual show this year is a BIPOC exhibition, meaning a show displaying the talent of Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
Gathering Ourselves Together00:14:45
And he says the issue with the show for him is that it means that he's basically being locked out of an opportunity.
He feels that this is a violation of civil rights law and of title, I guess it would be Title VI, Title VII.
But he feels, and he wants to know, he says, this is his question.
He says, is this worth fighting over?
A friend tells me I am up against the dominating ideology of the time and nothing can come from fighting except my own cancellation.
Do you think this is an issue worth fighting over?
The show will give a lot of exposure to emerging artists, just not ones of a particular skin color.
What would your answer to this guy be?
Yeah, it depends.
It depends on your kind of your life and your circumstances and your risk.
But I think one thing is, if you're an artist, drop out of those institutions.
I mean, they have nothing to offer you.
I was a documentary filmmaker primarily for PBS for 10 years, and I realized that this was the direction it's going.
And I could never fulfill my own kind of creativity and my own insight and my own character in that system.
So I dropped out and did something different.
But if you are kind of on your home turf, right?
If this is your school, your church, your workplace, fight back.
And I think it takes courage, which is the thing that we need more than anything.
It also takes a kind of intelligent way of fighting.
Marshall the right language, make an alliance among people within the institution that think in a like-minded way, and then push back gently and then a little more firmly and a little more firmly and make a stand because this stuff is wrong and you shouldn't be afraid or ashamed to push back against it.
And frankly, unless people have the courage to stand up, this will be the society that we live in.
And if you care about your community, you care about this country, now is the time to take a stand.
Chris, it's really good to see you.
And I appreciate your coming on.
If people want to get on the Christopher Ruffo train, where do they go?
Yeah, you can find me on Twitter at RealChrisRufo or visit my website, christopherufo.com.
That's christopherrufo.com.
You can sign up for my email list and we'd love to have you.
All right, it's great talking to you, pal.
Thanks for coming on.
I hope you come back again.
I will.
Thank you.
And with that, it is time for the mailbag.
I love perpetuators.
Yeah!
What the hell is that?
I don't even, don't tell me.
I don't want to know what that was.
All right, from Andrew.
Dear fellow Andrew, what are your thoughts on impeaching Biden in the future?
I'm getting this question a lot.
And just generally treating the Biden administration as unfairly as they treated Trump.
Should Republicans start their own Russia investigation?
Part of me thinks we're supposed to be better than that, but another part says, screw it.
Let's see how they like it.
My true feeling about this, and I'm not against playing hardball politics, but my true feeling about this is it's a short-term strategy.
If we keep sinking to their level, what will happen is we'll just continue to get more divided and the people who are with them will be with them.
The people who are with us will be with us because there won't be much to choose between us, if you see what I mean.
We'll be basically the same groups of people just acting badly and doing our thing, each one of us doing our thing.
And so I think it's a short-term strategy.
I think we should be talking more seriously about what we are building, what we mean to build, because they have all the platforms.
They have all the cultural power.
They have all the means of speech.
They have all the means of censorship and they are willing to use it.
They have flooded our capital with troops.
They are investigating our politicians.
They are silencing our people.
They are condemning all of us in basically calling all of us traitors and violent extremists.
We have got to build the structure to put forward something different, something joyful, something free, something faithful, and something that will lead to a better life for most Americans.
It is always to me a problem.
You know, this is, you know, I hope this isn't a tangent.
I don't think it is.
You know, in the Bible where it says judge not lest you be judged, a lot of people say, well, what that means is this and it means that.
Don't judge hypocritically.
And I always say, no, it means judge not lest you be judged.
If you are talking about the bad things that other people are doing, you are not talking about the good things that you should be doing.
This is true in your personal life.
If you were worried about what kind of sex the guy next to you is having, you're not worried about making your sex life full and rich and free.
And so this is what I think we should be doing in politics.
We should be focusing, focusing on building a philosophy that will reach more of the people and a way of explaining it and building the platforms, the cultural, educational, and journalistic platforms by which we can spread that word.
And also, as I said at the beginning of the show, that means how you live your personal life.
It also means what you present, what you represent in your life, because a lot of people talk a lot, but they spend most of their time on Twitter yelling at people and screaming at people and expressing hatred.
And they don't say, ah, you say, here's what a conservative life looks like, and it is much more joyful than your life.
And that's what I think we should be focused on.
And again, in any given moment of politics, you might have to play a little bit low.
And, you know, it's not politics, isn't beanbag.
But I think if that's what we're focused on, we're going to go astray and give people nothing to choose from.
From Anonymous, you recently discussed Woody Allen's conversation with Dostoevsky within his Match Point and Crimes and Misdemeanor Films.
And you seem to have disdain, I don't know if that's the right word, but disdain for Woody's glamorization of moral relativism, that a person could commit murder and not have a nagging conscience.
I was just pointing out the flaws and what I thought that philosophy was, but you also seem to indicate that you did not want to write stories that glorified immoral behavior.
That being said, I watched her film A Shock to the System, which seems to mirror Woody's same amoral sentiment.
Did you contradict yourself?
He says, yes, you were vast and contain a multitude.
Or did I miss something?
Well, first of all, thank you for quoting Walt Whitman.
But the film Shock to the System.
First of all, this film Shock to the System starring Michael Caine, which I wrote the script for based on Simon Brett's excellent crime novel, is a really good movie, and you should see it.
It's one of those movies that if there's a book called 100 Great Films You've Never Seen, it's in there because it didn't do that well at the box office, but it is a really good movie.
And it's about a guy who murders his way to the top of an organization.
Did you miss something?
Yes, you did.
Am I going to tell you what it was?
No, I'm not.
I do not interpret my own work.
My work is there for you.
It's for you to live through.
It doesn't need an interpretation.
It is just an experience.
But yes, it is not.
I will tell you, go so far as to tell you, it is not doing, as a work, it is not doing what Woody Allen did in those films.
And I don't disdain what Woody Allen did in those films.
He's an artist.
He has a right to put forward his vision.
I was just pointing out why I thought his vision was incorrect.
From Jacob, the problem I'm hoping you can help me with involves church.
Over the last few years, I began discovering my faith through reading the New Testament, C.S. Lewis, and by listening to you, among others.
That's nice.
This is one of a couple of letters that tells me this this week, and I was really happy, really happy to hear it.
I finally found the fullest conviction of my faith, proudly consider myself a Christian.
That said, it seems so many churches of today don't provide the type of insightful connection to God that I find when I study my Bible in solitude or discuss scripture with a good friend over a cigar.
The Bible explains the importance of church, but I can't seem to find a place to call home.
I've been holding off my baptism until I do, which leads to another problem.
My question is, how did you find your church?
Is it even necessary to go to a physical service every Sunday?
What can I do to find a solid place of worship?
Yes, it's important to go to church.
It is definitely important to go to church.
And yes, our churches have become corrupt, meaningless.
They are lost in a search for relevance, and they have forgotten to preach the gospel.
And it is a genuine problem.
And I have a problem with it too.
I have found a church where I like the people very much and where they are not saying anything yet that I feel is anti-gospel and frequently do say things that are good, you know, that I really like.
And as I say, I like the people.
They're faithful people.
They're true people.
Just last Sunday, I went there and had an experience of connection with God that I do not think I would have had on my own.
I do have experiences of connection on my own, but this was different.
It had to do with being there.
I think it is important to be there.
One thing I think all of us should be doing, and I rebuke myself for not doing it yet, but now I'm in a situation where I'm hoping to be somewhere else, so I don't want to start doing it now.
But one thing I think we should be doing is gathering ourselves.
It says two or more of you, wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, right?
So it doesn't have to be an established church.
It does not have to be an established church.
You can establish a home church.
There's no reason for you not to do that.
And one of the things I think more of us Should be doing, especially people like yourself, Jacob, who are having this problem and like me, who is having this problem.
I think we should be gathering together in our homes with nine or ten people either we know, or I know somebody who just put out an advertisement in a local paper if you would like to gather with me to discuss scripture, and people did.
And you can organize that any way you want.
If you are not a Catholic, obviously Catholics have to go to a Catholic church, but if you're not a Catholic, you are perfectly allowed to gather together and have communion and drink the wine and eat the bread.
You're perfectly welcome to do that.
You're perfectly welcome to read scripture, discuss scripture, and even go through the rituals if you want to.
You do not need a license to worship God together.
So, what I would say is, if you truly cannot find a church, and I understand this, I really do, if you truly cannot find a church that you don't think is corrupt or is anti-gospel, make one, build one.
And it doesn't have to be a big deal.
It doesn't have to be in a special building.
It just has to be a couple of friends who get together and talk about what is in the gospel.
Read something from the Bible and talk about it and discuss it, or have one person take each meeting and let him give a sermon or her give a sermon and then discuss that.
Any way you want to do it, I just think we should be building, just like I think we should be building our old culture, I think we might have to start building our own churches to bring it back to the gospel.
I remember at one point when we were looking for a church, I remember sitting and having coffee in bed with my wife and turning to her and saying, What does it take to get these clowns to preach the gospel?
I don't want to hear about Black Lives Matter.
I don't want to hear about gay pride.
I don't want to not saying you have to disagree with that, not saying anything.
It's not in the Bible.
Preach the Bible, tell us what it means, and let us make our own political decisions based on that.
All right.
From Edward, dear, all-knowing and somewhat powerful Mr. Clavin, I'm emailing you because I'm in a confusing place in my life.
I'm a 25-year-old single male who moved to Florida a year ago, leaving behind my family in Rhode Island in search of making something for myself.
I always had a passion for the arts.
I dreamed of writing a movie script or touring with my band, but I'm starting to realize I'm losing my youth on what seems impossible.
Being unable to get a job during COVID, I started to think that I could work on some project, but as soon as I would go to work on something, I would fear that it would be a waste of time and I'd give up.
I would then spend a huge chunk of 20-20 playing video games to escape.
I'm scared of being a failure.
Do I try to make it in the arts knowing that the odds are against me, or do I suck it up, get a nine-to-five job, and hope that I don't hate where I end up?
If the former, what advice do you have on what to do and where to go?
I would get a job if I were you.
First of all, I don't know this for a fact, but there's reason to believe you're not an artist.
I don't know that for a fact.
I could be totally wrong.
But an artist given a chance to create, moment in which to create, creates.
When all my speeches were canceled because of COVID, I immediately thought, ah, well, now I can write more.
And I did.
So the fact that you are playing video games indicates to me either that you're just not an artist and you were trying to do something that you haven't got the capacity to do, or that you're depressed.
And that is something that you should look into.
Because first, throw away your video game.
That's the first thing you should do.
Throw away your video game.
Get checked for depression.
Go to a good psychotherapist and see if you are depressed.
Second, get a job, get your life together, support yourself, bring down a paycheck so that you are somebody in the world and have a place and something that you do in the world that is you.
And then, then, if you want to create something, wake up an hour earlier every day and for an hour, create that thing.
Who was it?
Elmore Leonard used to tell aspiring writers, if you want to write, wake up an hour earlier and in that hour, write.
And even if you write only a single page, after 300 days, you will have a novel.
And what Leonard said was he always knew whether he was talking to a writer or not, whether they took that advice or not.
And I completely understand what he's saying, right?
That's why I'm saying I'm suspicious.
I suspect that what you may be is a depressed person, not an artist.
There is a Venn diagram of depressed people and artists.
But, you know, if you are, you should first, the first thing you should do is get your life together.
You should support yourself.
You should do a job that you can respect.
It doesn't have to be the job that you love.
It's just a job that you can respect.
Any honest work is respectable.
Any honest work will elevate you if you do it.
If you put your hands on, when you put your hands on something, you should have respect for the thing you put your hands on.
So that can elevate you.
You should get checked out for depression.
You should throw away your video game box and then find out whether you're an artist or not, okay?
Because this, what you're doing now is a simple waste of time and it's a waste of life.
And you're absolutely right.
It will lead to failure.
I think I'm going to stop there.
It is now a Clavenless week stretches before you unless you're an all-access member.
If you are an all-access subscriber, I will be on on Wednesday answering your questions live.
It is one of my favorite hours of the week.
I love doing it.
I love seeing you.
I love hearing from you.
So please be there.
I love talking to you right here.
It has been very re-energizing to do this show in a new way.
I've been really excited by it.
I hope you like it too.
I hope if you do like it, you will write and let me know.
However, for now, I must cast you into the exterior darkness.
You will find there wailing.
New Show, New Energy00:01:23
You will also find gnashing of teeth.
If you survive, if you crawl, claw, stumble your way to next Friday.
I will be back there with the Andrew Clavin Show and I will still be Andrew Clavin.
I'll see you then.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, basically wherever you listen to podcasts.
Also, remember to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro Show, the Matt Walsh Show, and the Michael Knoll Show.
Thanks for listening.
The Andrew Clavin Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Our technical director is Austin Stevens.
Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
Production Manager, Pavel Lydowski.
Edited by Danny D'Amico.
Lead audio mixer, Mike Cormina.
Animations are by Cynthia Angulo.
Production coordinator, McKenna Waters.
And our production assistant is Jacob Falage.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production, Copyright Daily Wire, 2021.
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