Ep. 1103 – Escape from Planet Crazy skewers Democrats as a party of "deception and incompetence," mocking Fetterman’s stroke-impairment, Hochul’s crime promises, and Biden’s gender-affirming healthcare push while framing Elon Musk’s Twitter buy as a free-speech victory. FBI whistleblower Steve Friend exposes January 6th investigations sidelining child exploitation cases, alleging D.C.-driven abuses like SWAT raids for minor infractions, while the host pivots to Jordan Peterson’s marriage series and Renaissance origins—dismissing secular humanism as propaganda. The episode ties political chaos to systemic rot, from media bias to FBI overreach, ending with a defiant call to reject left-wing intimidation. [Automatically generated summary]
Now listen, I don't want to make fun of a stroke victim.
I don't want to make jokes about an old man with dementia.
I don't want to laugh at some poor woman whose only job qualifications are a hairstyle and a talent for mendacity.
Unfortunately, that accounts for pretty much the entire Democrat Party.
And while I don't want to make fun of them, someone has to.
So, let's get started.
As the midterm campaign season nears its close, Americans are preparing for Election Day when the free people of a great nation turn out to weep for what used to be a great nation when they were free people.
Democrats, who run all three branches of government and are therefore to blame for this dumpster fire, have been working to bring their campaign messaging to a perfect balance of subtle distortions and outright lies.
Their first strategy was to talk endlessly about the Capitol kerfuffle on January 6th.
That idea failed, however, when voters decided that a lunatic in a Viking hat running through Congress smearing the walls with excrement was actually doing a better job than the people who are usually there.
Since then, Democrats have resorted to telling the electorate, sure, we tanked the economy, turned your cities into crime-ridden hellholes, and threw the rule of law out the window.
But at least we're in favor of sexually mutilating children and slaughtering babies.
Anything more than that would be too much of a good thing.
Now, in the Pennsylvania Senate race, for instance, stroke victim and funny-shaped head guy John Fetterman and TV doctor Mehmet Oz are running neck and bizarre goiter to the finish as Fetterman tries to drive home his campaign slogan, I'm tan, rested, and have no idea where I am.
After their recent TV exchange, the mainstream media was unanimous in saying Fetterman had turned in the finest debate performance by a man in a vegetative state in the history of medical emergencies.
President and venal houseplant Joe Biden also chimed in on the debate in a private conversation with the cover of Britney Spears' first album, saying, quote, everyone says Fetterman is speaking gibberish.
Like that's a bad thing.
But his debate performance reminded me of that time I told Cornpop, listen, a car in the balloon is worth an elephant on the head of a pin.
Then I hit him with a roll of barbed wire I'd gotten from my many, many black friends who liked to stroke the hair on my leg because it was so soft and shiny.
That's why I'll vote for Fetterman if it turns out I live in Pennsylvania, unquote.
In New York, unelected governor Kathy Hochul swore that she would fight crime to the very last hour before Election Day and then return to the policies that caused the crime in the first place and up yours.
The effect of these remarks has been to narrow her race with Lee Zeldin, a man so obscure he had to check Wikipedia to find out who he was.
And in the Michigan governor's debate, Governor and Über Sturmführer Gretchen von Wittmer defended her policy of locking the state's entire population in their bathrooms during the pandemic, saying it was important to cut down on traffic so she could visit her family more easily.
When those remarks were greeted with anger, von Wittmer started screaming, help on being kidnapped, and was carried off the debate stage by two FBI agents wearing MAGA hats and t-shirts reading I Mugged Jussie Smollett.
Now, to be fair, there's also been some trouble on the right, especially after the artist formerly known as Kanye West went on an ugly anti-Semitic rant.
Adidas, a company literally founded by and named after a member of Hitler's Nazi Party, and no, I'm not making that up, dropped Yee as a sponsor, saying, quote, this level of anti-Semitism is unacceptable, unquote.
And come to think of it, I'm not exactly sure what they meant by that.
Anyway, because Kanye knows Candace Owens and Candace Owens works for Ben Shapiro, journalists are now insinuating that Ben Shapiro is one of the worst anti-Semites ever to put on a yarmulke.
Every morning, apparently, Ben looks in the mirror and says it's you rotten Jews who make a fortune by controlling the media.
Which, okay, in Shapiro's case happens to be true.
But that other crazy thing about Jews aiming a space laser at Earth, well, okay, Shapiro's doing that too.
So maybe we should just vote for the guy in the Viking hat.
Trigger warning.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-dicky.
Ship-shaped, dipsy-topsy, the world is it bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray.
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
I call them reality deniers because they are completely on planet crazy and we want off.
Planet crazy.
That was Arizona MAGA gubernatorial candidate Carrie Lake.
And she is so right.
The Democrats have gone completely insane.
And the comparison between them and the rest of the country is amazing.
We'll take a look at that and also at how corrupt the Department of Justice and the FBI has become.
And, of course, what Elon Musk has to do with it.
This is a good time to subscribe to my personal YouTube channel, the Andrew Clavin YouTube channel, where you will get exclusive content shipped directly to you in an unmarked box so your neighbors will not know what is coming to your house.
If you just tap that little bell, and that will also take care of your neighbors as well.
And if you leave a comment and the comment is peculiarly racist and particularly hateful in some way, we'll probably read it on the show because that's the kind of content we're looking for.
Today's comment is from American Guys who says, how do I worship Andrew Clavin without making myself look weird?
Or should I gladly endure the humiliation knowing that one day I may be able to kiss the feet of the great Andrew Clavin himself?
Yeah, and that's it.
It's B.
The answer is B, endure the humiliation.
Endure the Humiliation00:10:42
Don't worry about looking weird.
You already look weird.
So this will just, you'll look weird and now be kissing my feet, which that's kind of disgusting, actually.
Forget the whole thing.
You know, if it weren't for politicians campaigning, this would be one of the most beautiful times of the year.
It's a crazy time too, a wonderful time when school starts up again.
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I haven't been home for two weeks.
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The sequel to When Christmas Comes, A Strange, Strange Habit of Mind is now available.
This is Cameron Winter, the hero of When Christmas Comes, is in a life and death battle of wits with a social media billionaire whose opponents get canceled permanently.
The first Amazon reviews, which no matter what Shapiro says, I did not write.
They say I'm just reading little excerpts from the first reviews that are just coming in.
The first book in this series was so good, I wasn't sure Clavin could surpass it.
He did.
Cameron Winter is one of the great crime protagonists on a par with Philip Marlowe, James Bond, and any contemporary protagonist.
High action and deep philosophy woven together masterfully.
I meant to savor this book for a couple of weeks.
Instead, I ended up reading it in one sitting.
You do not have to pre-order it anymore.
You can just order it and it will come right to your door.
Go on Amazon.
It helps to move the thing up the rank.
If you can't stand Amazon, there are other places, obviously, Barnes ⁇ Noble, that you can get it.
You know, I had a friend, a conversation with my friend Christian Toto, you know, the guy who does Hollywood and Toto.
And he asked me why, after a long career, I finally found a character that I wanted to write a series around because I've never written a series.
I've written trilogies, but I've never written a series.
And I was talking to him about the fact that the great crime stories of the last 20 years, most of them have been on TV, The Shield, Sopranos, Breaking Bad, they're all about anti-heroes.
And I've been talking on the show about the fact that I feel that the culture is looking for heroes.
It's looking to figure out how do you portray a good man.
And it's very difficult to do, especially in a world where people don't want to see women portrayed as good women because the feminists get offended.
And the thing about Cameron Winter, and I didn't invent him for this reason, I invented him for the When Christmas Comes story, but I realized that he is, in fact, an anti-hero because of his past, which you get to hear a lot about in A Strange Habit of Mind.
He's an anti-hero trying to become a hero.
And that, to me, is an incredibly compelling story.
Very, says a lot about the time that we're in and the culture that he's in, which is essentially this culture, culture of an America going into decline.
But there's something else too.
And there was a headline in The Federalist the other day, and it said, it's time to save literature from the woke publishing industry.
And it quotes a writer named Alex Perez who's talking about the fact that the industry is run by women and especially a certain kind of woke women.
And he says, these women, perhaps the least diverse collection of people on the planet, decide who is worthy or unworthy of literary representation.
And this, I have to tell you, is entirely true.
My publisher, Mysterious Press, has been attacked repeatedly for publishing stories about white men.
And so this is kind of like the remnant, the remnant of things that are being snuck through into a publication because you're going to see less and less of it unless the woke monopoly is broken.
Now, because I am who I am and because I say the things I say, I am never going to win another literary award.
I've won a handful of high literary awards in my field, and I've been nominated for every literary award in my field.
I'm never going to win another literary award because of who I am.
And I'm obviously never going to get one of those career-making reviews in the New York Times that are so important to people.
But I know how good these books are.
And if I can get them into the hands of a lot of people who love them, if 20% of this audience buys A Strange Habit of Mind, it will be on the bestseller list, and that will be all the prize I want.
And that's not why I'm asking you to buy the book.
I'm asking you to buy the book because I know you are going to love this book.
I don't regret my life.
I chose this life.
I'm happy to pay the price for it.
It's been worth it every step of the way.
However, I want you to buy the book, A Strange Habit of Mine, because you're going to love it.
And while you're doing that, you will also be helping to reform an industry desperately in need of reform.
Now, this has been a tragic, tragic week.
Elon Musk has become, as he says, the chief twit.
He has taken over Twitter.
He's fired its top executives.
He's taking the company private.
He sent out a tweet saying, free the bird, which I hope means, we all hope means he will allow true villainous reprobates, people who should be in prison like Jordan Peterson and the Babylon Bee, who dare to make that Babylon Bee is the second funniest site on the internet.
They're the second funniest people on the internet.
And, you know, obviously making jokes about the left-wing agenda is as criminal as it can be.
And it's a tragic thing that they might be no longer censored.
And even the former president of the United States may be able to speak his mind on Twitter, Donald Trump.
And that is something, you know, instead of enforcing the ideas of the elite by silencing everybody else, this is just a terrible, terrible thing.
And the left is taking it very hard.
There is an article.
This is an unbelievable article in a subreddit called Society and Culture.
And the writer echoes a recent op-ed on Knucklehead Row, the opinion page of the New York Times, a former newspaper.
That op-ed was titled, Free Speech is Killing Us.
I'm not making this up.
The subreddit, Society and Culture, says this.
And this is not a signed article.
I couldn't find the author, so we'll just attribute it to the site.
Elon bros are killing us with free speech.
I want to be cruel, but the mods won't let me is their best argument for free speech.
The days since the announcement of Elon Musk taking over Twitter have been surreal for me.
I've alternately balled my eyes out and wallowed in an almost comatose state, unable to comprehend to accept what must come next.
Jeff Jarvis speaks for all of us when he says, it feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar, Germany, white cis males and their sycophantic servants will be let loose to do as they will all over the platform because abuse and driving folks to suicide is what it all boils down to.
They're going to misgender people.
That's what he's talking about.
They're going to misgender people, which will drive them the wrong pronoun.
There's nothing, nothing more dangerous than a wrong pronoun that will drive you to suicide, you know, kind of like a car going off a cliff.
You get in that pronoun, and off and crash.
It's terrible.
Here is Dr. Lauren Hall Liu, who identifies as she, her, because she's a woman.
She says, FYI, academic freedom and freedom of expression are dog whistles for silencing decolonial, anti-racist, trans-inclusive, and other progressive voices.
Now you notice, no one is silencing she, her.
She, her is silencing people who oppose her, but not letting she, her silence people is silencing her and her mind.
Anyway, the society and culture article and subreddit concludes, free speech isn't the right to speak out against power.
Free speech is an AR-15 and it's loaded and they're pointing it at our heads.
So the left is not too hysterical about their losing the right to censor people on Twitter.
And the tragedy is, see, that the left thought its lies had this magic power that would transform reality into what they said it was.
But the magic only worked.
It only worked so long as no one was allowed to speak the truth.
And that just made the magic.
It was like a kind of delicate, beautiful pink bubble that embraced the universe, changing it into what they wanted it to be.
But the minute you spoke the truth, the bubble just burst and suddenly we were back in reality.
Before the tragedy, I mean, this is sad.
Before Elon took over Twitter, a man could become a woman simply by writing, trans women are women, five times in capital letters with exclamation points after it.
It was like a spell.
It was like a magic.
It was amazing.
It was amazing.
But now, disenchanted reality, you know, we're all living in this disenchanted reality because of Elon, where a guy like Rachel Levine, who wears a dress, will just look kind of silly because he's a guy wearing a dress.
You know, before Elon came, climate change, climate change was an existential threat.
So you could become a hero by gluing your face to a great work of art.
Even if you had never contributed a single thing to human thriving or cultural beauty, that would make you a hero.
But now that the magic is broken, the weather will just go on changing as it has from the beginning of time.
And we human beings will have to deal with it perfectly by using the massive amounts of wealth we've accrued from oil-driven capitalism.
And climate activists who glue their noses to works of art will just become useless schmucks who destroy beautiful things for no reason whatsoever.
Before Elon, the vaccines were effective in blocking disease transmission, and the pandemic was over, except for the fact that you had to stay indoors and wear a mask to keep everyone safe because the vaccines weren't effective in blocking disease transmission.
See, the tragic thing, the tragic thing about Twitter after Elon is that people will now be allowed to speak the simple truth without fear and all the capital letters in the world won't be enough to magic the left's lies into reality.
My heart is breaking.
And living in reality, you know, it means that you have to be who you were born to be.
You have to be male or female in the image of God.
You have to be not heroic at all because all of your emergencies are actually fancies he's ginned up to gain political power.
People Will Speak Truth00:16:31
And you're not a victim, but you're just a bully who silences people while saying that they're silencing you.
Reality, being who you really are, is very, very hard spiritual work.
It is the hard spiritual work of life.
So this is tremendously sad.
Thank God there's still TikTok.
It is amazing to say this, but the holiday season is coming.
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And right after Halloween, as you know, Thanksgiving starts, Christmas is on the way.
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And I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, oh, but how?
Tell me how.
Do you spell Clavin?
It is K-L-A-V-A-N.
No ease.
I just make it look this easy.
You know, it's not just Elon Musk taking over Twitter.
The fact that this midterm election is coming is highlighting the fact that where the Democrats are and where every sane person on Earth is are two entirely different places.
I mean, we're talking about planet crazy.
They are literally living on planet crazy.
The soundbites this week, I mean, I almost don't have to talk.
I'm almost just going to play the soundbites so you can hear what they're saying.
My favorite video, I think, of the week is this one.
This is from MSNBC.
One of their anchors, Elise Jordan, interviewed Western Pennsylvania Trump supporters about January 6th.
And the idea was we were either going to see that they had been enlightened by the January 6 hearings or they were just stubborn, horrible people.
They're still trying to sell this narrative that somehow this is important, especially because Doug Mastriano, who's running for governor in Pennsylvania, was at the January 6th kerfuffle.
And here is this amazing exchange, really, between Elise Jordan of MSNBC and these guys.
They even dressed up as Trump supporters.
Usually these people are all in suits and ties, but they dressed up in funny watch caps and sweaters so they would look like Trump supporters.
And here's their response to her question of whether Mastriano and anybody involved in January 6th, wink-wink, should be disqualified.
And the only one that died was a protester there, not a capital political.
Not armed female veteran.
That's the only one that died.
That's the only one who died.
A police officer did die.
No.
That was hard to say.
That's right.
That's not on site.
He shouldn't have been a police officer.
It was one woman.
So what do you make, though, overall of January 6th?
I mean, it was watching that footage.
It was pretty disturbing.
I mean, there were people throwing excrement at the walls, and it was our, you know, it's the Capitol.
It looked a lot like Antifa's action.
Except on a much smaller scale, it looked the same as the Black Lives Matter riots.
That's what I saw, the similarities.
Burns, Kenosha.
But so it's okay just because one side that you disagree with.
I'm saying Antiva infiltrated.
It's good for one.
It's good for the other.
What gets me about this is like their facts are right.
You know, I think their moral stand is right in the sense that they later go on to say both sides should be prosecuted for anything they did that was illegal or dangerous, but it was both sides, and the January 6th kerfuffle was much, much smaller than the Black Lives Riot matters, which killed many people and which burned down cities.
He's naming the cities.
It just amazes me that they know so much more than the MSNBC reporter.
And this is the thing.
I was a liberal in my youth, and what I remember is I didn't know anything about anything.
What I knew was that conservatives were evil and I was the cool kid.
I was the smartest guy in the room.
And I think that that's where we are now.
And now all this new information is coming out, for instance, that not only did Pfizer admit that they didn't test their vaccine for stopping transmissions before they announced it was 90% effective, but the White House also knew that the vaccine was not effective in stopping transmissions and yet told everybody that it was.
And all these people who shut down businesses, who forced people out of work because they didn't take the vaccine or they didn't obey the mandates in New York State, a Supreme Court judge ordered that more than 1,700 city workers who were fired for refusing to get vaccinated had to be reinstated and paid, and now they can also sue probably.
In other words, what the right said was true, and the smartest kids in the room were wrong.
The cool kids were wrong.
And it's not just that they were wrong.
Lots of top doctors signed.
Remember the Great Barrington resolution that said old people should take the vaccine?
I still believe that to be true.
I think for old people, the risks are more from COVID than from taking the vaccine, but everybody else should just go about their business.
They weren't just attacked.
They were excoriated.
They got death threats.
People were calling them.
So the smartest people in the room were not just wrong.
They were wrong with a passion.
They were wrong, so angry, they were threatening the lives of doctors for not saying what they had been told by their insect overlords.
That's how they were so wrong.
But they're the smartest people in the room, and you are an idiot because you're a conservative.
You know, you have to ask yourself this question.
What if you're not the smartest person in the room?
I mean, I think conservatives actually do this a lot.
We ask ourselves, maybe I'm wrong.
Let me check.
Let me check the facts.
Let me check the fact five times like I do before I come in.
I don't just read one place because he agrees with me and accept that.
I read the people who disagree with him and try to find a balanced place where I feel like, yeah, I can tell you something and have pretty strong reliance that it's wrong, that it's right.
And if it's wrong, I can come in and correct it.
Listen to what this administration has been saying from the very beginning.
This is just a montage of lies.
I think from Grabian, it's cut one.
You're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.
Vaccinated people do not carry the virus.
Don't get sick.
Getting those shots out for five to 11-year-olds is going to provide a lot of comfort to American families.
Horses, running them over, people being strapped.
A horrific video of the CBP officers on horses using brutal and inappropriate measures against innocent people.
We have a secure border.
The border is, in fact, secure.
The border is closed.
The border is secure.
The border is secure.
The border is closed.
We've been unequivocal in that.
On the issue of Afghanistan.
And to that end, we have seen a successful drawdown of the embassy.
I think it's irresponsible to say Americans are stranded.
They are not.
This is Jim Crow on steroids, what they're doing in Georgia.
This is all about keeping working folks and ordinary folks that I grew up with from being able to vote.
The reconciliation package would cost $0.
The cost of these bills in terms of adding to the deficit is zero.
So here's why, you know, I don't even know if any liberals listen to the show.
I really don't.
I sometimes hear people say that they listened to this show while they were kind of moving from one side to the other.
But what if you're not the smartest person in the room?
What if you're not the smartest person in the room and yet you're threatening death to doctors who disagree with the administration?
If you want people censored on Twitter, if you think anybody who doesn't believe that a man can become a woman should be censored and is hateful and all this, but you're not the smartest person in the room, then isn't it possible that you're being manipulated by people who are smarter than you are or at least better than you are at manipulating people?
They know how to manipulate you by complimenting by saying you're the cool kid.
You're the smartest person in the room.
Go threaten that doctor with death for disagreeing with me and come back and tell me how it went.
Just the question that I always wonder, when I watch people who I think are sincere, like AOC, I don't think she's a total con woman.
I think she's an ignoramus, but I don't think she's a con woman.
I think, why does she ever ask herself, if I'm the radical resistance, if I'm the radical socialist, why does every corporation agree with me?
Why does Hollywood and the Academy agree with me?
Why does the deep state agree with me?
I mean, why do all these people who represent the man, the establishment, why do they all agree with me?
Isn't it possible that I'm being used?
Isn't it possible I just pawn in game of life?
It just seems if you're not the smartest person in the room, somebody smarter than you are, and you've been lied to, and you are being ginned up to this passion for suppression, for censorship, for fear, for cancellation by people who know what they're doing, who want something from you.
They want you to do something for them so they can solidify their power.
So let's go through some of these clips.
There's a poll.
I just picked one poll because they all say the same thing.
This is a Harvard Caps Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill.
74% of voters, 74% of voters, 74% of Americans agree on very little, but 74% of voters surveyed named inflation as very important in the upcoming midterms.
22% said it's somewhat important.
That means I'm an English major, but still that seems to come out to 96% of people who think inflation is important.
Here's what Nancy Pelosi says on TV, Cut 9.
When I hear people talk about inflation, as I heard them there, we have to change that subject.
Inflation is a global phenomenon.
The EU, the European Union, the UK, the British have a higher inflation rate than we do here.
It's not, the fight is not about inflation.
It's about the cost of living.
I don't even know what that means.
The fight is not about inflation.
It's about the cost of living.
But we've got to change the subject, she says.
We've got to change the subject.
So let's change it to, for instance, oil and energy, which is going to be in short supply.
There may be a diesel shortage which would shut this country down.
Obviously, much of the prices, the inflation is being driven by the fact that gas and oil are so expensive because we stopped being oil and gas and energy independent.
A lot of it having to do with shutting down pipelines, but also this animosity toward fracking, a perfectly clean way of getting perfectly clean energy.
So, okay, let's turn to someone else.
Let's turn to Pennsylvania governor candidate John Fetterman, who said this in 2018.
This is cut seven, said this in 2018 about fracking.
Fracking?
Yeah, fracking.
I don't support fracking at all, and I never have.
I don't support fracking.
I think it's something that has to eventually go away.
So he was asked about this stance at the debate this week, and here's what he said, cut six.
I do want to clarify something.
You're saying tonight that you support fracking, that you've always supported fracking, but there is that 2018 interview that you said, quote, I don't support fracking at all.
So how do you square the two?
I do support fracking, and I don't, I don't, I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.
Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Fetterman.
So, you know, again, you don't want to make fun of the guy because he's a stroke victim, but he's treating you like a stroke victim.
I mean, if you're supposed to be the smartest guy in the room, and he just, the only time in that entire debate he made any sense at all, it was when he was lying.
And so when somebody lies to you like that, do you not feel disrespected?
I wish I could ask the, because it's one thing to talk about the politicians.
It's one thing to talk about the powerful, the media leaders, the academics and all this.
But what about the voters?
What about the voters who say, well, you know, my candidates may not be good, but I know those conservatives are evil.
I know the one thing I know is I know they're semi-fascist, Nazi, semi-Nazi, fascist Nazis.
You know, I mean, that's the one thing they know about us.
But when a guy treats you like that, when he just lies in your face, don't you think like, I mean, after this debate where Fetterman was just embarrassingly disabled by his stroke, which is not, it's kind of hilarious because he's standing up there, but it's not funny in a human way.
Obviously, I feel bad for the guy.
But all of that time, the press was telling us beforehand that he was fine.
I talked to him.
He was doing great.
There's no, he's really coming back.
And now afterwards, they're telling us he was a hero for standing up on that debate stage and looking like that.
And I mean, the one thing I can say is at least he addressed, for instance, some economic issues like the minimum wage is cut 13.
Do you support raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour?
Why or why not?
You have 60 seconds.
Yeah, I do, absolutely.
I think it's a disgrace at $7.25 an hour.
And how can a man, you know, with 10 gigantic mansions, you know, has unwilling to talk about a willing wage for anybody?
Imagine a signal mom trying with two children trying to raise with them, realizing making $31,000 a year, $15 an hour.
You know, I believe every work has dignity and every paycheck must have dignity in it as well.
True.
I've always supported a living wage.
Now, you may look at that and think the guy's incoherent.
How can he do his job?
That's because you're ableist.
This is the other thing.
They're insulting you.
They're saying to you, you know, what I just saw with my eyes is not a guy who should be the governor of a state.
What are they telling you?
What is the press telling you?
Let's look at Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC, comparing him to FDR.
This is cut three, because everybody said, look, this was painful to watch.
And it was.
I was watching.
It was painful to watch.
This is what Lawrence O'Donnell says, cut three.
While he was brilliantly winning World War II, Franklin Roosevelt once fell asleep in the Oval Office in the middle of signing his name to a letter.
That was not painful to watch because no one got to see that.
See, the problem is you.
The problem is that you were watching it.
If you weren't watching it, it wouldn't have been painful.
If you just do what they say, and now that it's over, now that it's over, and we all saw that this was one of the true collapses in political history on a debate stage, now they're going to feed you what you should think.
This is cut five.
Cognitively, he's fine.
Fetterman made it through.
And I think John did well in that exchange.
Came across that he's healing, but it doesn't affect his ability to think.
Mentally, you know, his brain is working fine.
At the end of the day, I don't think that there was such a difference that met the expectations of what it could be.
This idea that the speed of your response is somehow indicative of the way you would do the job is really faulty.
And John understands everything.
He's able to think.
So there was just no chance, and certainly in that format, no chance for Fetterman to interrupt, whereas Oz broke the rules and kept jumping in.
Now, I accidentally called that debate a gubernatorial debate.
Obviously, it was a Senate debate.
But listen, FDR once fell asleep writing a letter while bombing Pearl Harbor or something.
So, oh, no, I'm totally fine.
I am totally fine.
So the press lies to you.
You see what you see, but the press lies to you.
The government lied to you.
Twitter has been silencing the people who tell you the truth.
At what point, at what point do you say we're not going to take this anymore?
I mean, it is just amazing.
And then you think, well, at least they're paying attention.
Maybe behind the scenes, they're paying attention to the things that matter.
Here's what Joe Biden was doing this week.
He was talking to a comedian, Dylan Mulvaney, dressed up as a girl.
Why Democracy Is At Risk00:10:10
This is cut eight.
Do you think states should have a right to ban gender-affirming health care?
I don't think any state or anybody should have the right to do that.
As a moral question, as a legal question.
I just think it's wrong.
I call them reality deniers because they are completely on planet crazy and we want off.
96% of people are worried about inflation.
And the Democrats say, let's change the subject.
And the President of the United States is talking to a comedian who is dressed up as a girl and says his mission is to normalize the idea that girls can have penises.
This is what the President of the United States is doing.
It's just wrong.
It's just wrong not to cut that person's body up so that he can look like what he wants.
He's not talking about nuclear war in Ukraine.
He's not talking about inflation.
All right, back to this poll.
68% say crime is very important.
26% say it's somewhat important.
So that's 94% of people who say that crime is important.
Here is appointed New York governor Kathy Hochul debating some guy, Lee Zeldin, who nobody knows, even he doesn't know who he is.
He's like, I don't know who I am, but I'm running for governor.
And he's pulled neck and neck.
Here is Kathy Hochul talking about crime with Lee Zeldon, Cut 14.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I stated that the first day that I'm in office, I'm going to declare a crime emergency and suspend Castle's bail and these other pro-criminal laws because there is a crime emergency.
My opponent thinks that right now there's a polio emergency going on, but there's not a crime emergency.
Different priorities that I'm hearing from people right now, they're not being represented from this governor, who still, to this moment, what are we halfway through the debate?
She still hasn't talked about locking up anyone committing any crimes.
Okay.
Anyone who commits a crime under our laws, especially with the change they made to bail, has consequences.
I don't know why that's so important.
I call them reality deniers because they are completely on planet crazy and we want off.
I like the fact that she said that there will be a consequence, especially because of bail reform, which means they get off.
They get let out and then go do something else to somebody else.
You know, there are no consequences, especially because of bail reform.
Henry Olson, the pollster that we love to have on, because he's not a pollster.
He reads the polls, but he reads them so well.
You know, he says that when they start to panic, when a party starts to panic, one way you can tell without looking at the polls is they start to try to make you afraid.
Here is the press as the midterms approach.
As we know, the press, and it's left-wing press specifically.
This is CUT 17.
We are watching Republicans not just destroying democracy in the dark, breaking into election officers and plugging stuff in.
We're watching them do it from rally stages, debate stages.
We could lose our democracy, and it could happen in 17 days.
A majority of Americans believe that democracy is under threat.
Democracy on the ballot.
It's not just a slogan.
A lot of Republicans in the last three weeks have suddenly found themselves deciding, hey, party over country.
I'm wondering whether this puts America into the fast lane towards illiberal democracy.
I'm not going to say that the GOP are Nazis at this point or whatever, but it certainly sounds very familiar.
We will wake up the morning after Election Day.
We might not even call it that anymore in two years.
The future is not Republican Party, so they have to cheat.
So now I'm so afraid of losing my democracy.
I had it here a minute ago and I can't find, so it may have already slipped away.
Now I'm so afraid.
The most important thing to me is that Joe Biden runs again to save our democracy.
Let's find out if he will.
This is Cut 11.
I have not made that formal decision, but it's my intention, my intention to run again.
And we have time to make that decision.
Dr. Biden is for it.
Mr. President.
Oh.
He fell asleep.
He fell asleep in the middle of the question.
So I'm more afraid of the guy with his finger on the nuclear button falling asleep.
But listen, all I'm wondering, I really do wonder about this, because, you know, a lot of leftists won't come on the show.
It's hard for me to talk to the left wing these days.
I just wonder, like, if they're the smartest people in the room, shouldn't they be smart enough to ask themselves whether they're the smartest people in the room?
And if they're not the smartest people in the room, why are they so passionate about what they're being told to believe?
That they want to silence people, that they want to end free speech, that they're ready to hate on their fellow Americans for disagreeing with them.
Maybe they're just being manipulated by people who are smarter than they are.
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So the one thing always, always, that the smartest people in the room, the cool kids, the Democrats, the left, the one thing they know is that we are fascists.
You know, Joe Biden was kind to us.
He said we were only semi-fascist.
But really, they think that we are the fascists.
And that is why I want to talk about the DOJ and the FBI, because if the DOJ and the FBI have gone bad, then you really are flirting, maybe not with fascism, but with some very strong and corrupt authoritarianism.
In The Atlantic, A staff writer, Franklin Forer, writes about what he calls the inevitable indictment of Donald Trump.
And he says that Merrick Garland, the corrupt attorney general, he says his devotion to procedure, his belief in the rule of law, and in particular, his reverence for the duties, responsibilities, and traditions of the U.S. Department of Justice will cause him to make the most monumental decision an attorney general can make and indict the former president of the United States, a criminal indictment against the former president, which has never, of course, happened before.
But the thing is, those of us who are not the smartest people, who aren't the cool kids, who are maybe semi-fascist, we know the DOJ has gone bad.
We know the FBI has gone bad.
And we know Merrick Garland is involved with it, right?
We have, remember that letter from the National School Board Association when parents started to complain about the things, the critical race theory that teachers said wasn't being taught but was, the sexual deviance that was being sold to little children, the pornographic material.
They say, oh, those right-wingers are banning books because we don't want pornographic material in kindergarten, in elementary schools, in middle schools.
And remember, the National School Boards Association wrote, first they visited with the Biden White House, with political people in the Biden White House.
Then they sent a letter to the DOJ and the FBI asking them to investigate these parents as if they might be domestic terrorists.
And within six days, the DOJ, which never answers a letter in less than six months, you can be a senator saying, hey, what's going on over there?
They will not tell you.
In six days, Merrick Garland said, absolutely, we are on it.
Merrick Garland, you know, federal law guy, is going after parents as if they were terrorists.
So we know, we know there's something wrong.
We know they've been politicized during this administration.
We know that through the cases that John Durham has been losing, people keep saying, well, why is John Durham bringing these minor cases where people lie to the FBI?
But he has been in court explaining to people that the FBI investigated Donald Trump's relationship with Russia long after they knew the Russian collusion story was a hoax and the steel dossier was completely fraudulent and ridiculous.
It had no merit whatsoever.
They were still selling that to FISA courts so they could bug American citizens.
We have a letter sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray and Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss by Senator Chuck Grassley, in which he says the FBI is holding on to significant, impactful, and voluminous evidence of potential criminal conduct by Joe Biden's son Hunter and his brother James Biden relating to their business dealings in China and Ukraine.
And we knew the big guy was supposed to get 10% of whatever they were making over there.
So the FBI knows about this.
They've got the letter.
They keep dropping hints, little leaks that it's going to be investigated, that there'll be an indictment.
I haven't seen any trace of that at all.
Rolling Stone has a piece about an award-winning national security producer for ABC named James Gordon Meek.
There was an FBI raid on his house, one of these incredible SWAT raids they've been pulling on nonviolent people, and Meek has not been seen since.
Nobody, nobody knows where he went.
We have Megan Basham, our own Megan Bashram, coming on to talk more about what the FBI is doing.
We have an FBI whistleblower, Scott Friend, who's going to come on and talk to us about what he personally saw going on at the FBI.
If the FBI has gone bad, if the DOJ has been politicized, who are the semi-fascists?
Rockauto.com Parts Scandal00:02:06
Who are the semi-fascists?
You do not see, not since Nixon, have you seen a president try to get the IRS to target his enemies?
The IRS refused to do it with Nixon, but they did it for Obama.
Not since Nixon have we seen the misuse of law enforcement agencies to intimidate people the way they are doing it now, just intimidating people and raiding their houses just because they disagree.
I don't know who the smartest people in the room are, but I know one thing, the fascists are not on the right, at least not the ones who are in actual power.
All right, my wife is here watching the show today.
That's why I'm so happy to do the Rock Auto commercial because I get to say rockauto.com.
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So as you know, we always love once a month to have Megan Basham come on.
She is the cultural reporter for the Daily Wire and an excellent, excellent cultural reporter.
If you don't have a reader's pass, you are missing some great, great content that she is producing.
Face Act Violations Ramp Up00:15:58
Last time she was here, we talked about a FBI raid on a pro-life protester, and I wanted to know more about that.
And so I've asked Megan to kind of follow that story up.
Megan, first of all, it's good to see you.
How you doing?
I'm doing well.
Thanks for having me.
I'm not as well as you because I didn't just come off a whirlwind European tour, but I'm good.
Believe me, I'm about to pitch forward.
This is the second week I've done the show absolutely exhausted.
But, you know, this turns out to be a bigger story than we were talking about last time.
I mean, there is actually, there's actually a task force formed after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe to deal with pro-life protesters.
Is that a fair statement?
No, that's exactly what's happening.
So essentially what we've seen is that after the Dobbs decision came down, in July, the Biden administration formed a reproductive rights task force.
And it's housed in the DOJ in the Office of Civil Rights, which is the same division that houses these FACE Act.
They investigate these FACE Act violations, which is freedom of access to reproductive clinics or something like that.
I can't remember what the exact acronym stands for, but it's basically freedom of access to things like both pro-life centers and also abortionists.
So essentially, once the Biden administration launched that, we started to see this ramp up in these FACE Act arrests.
But what's interesting is, as we talked about last time, there was a pro-life case that was fairly astonishing to the nation.
This father, Mark Hauck in Pennsylvania, who was arrested with, there's been a debate over whether or not it was a SWAT raid, but it was a lot of FBI agents showing up at his house early in the morning for a man who had no criminal history.
And this certainly wasn't a violent actor.
This wasn't somebody that people would have characterized that way.
So after that, now in October, we had another arrest like that of another 11 pro-life demonstrators.
And we've had 28 so far this year.
So what we're seeing is just a lot of ramp up of activity coming out of these face act violations.
So when I started digging into it, before we get to talking about how this happened, I think it's worth going back and saying, look, here is how these arrests are being made for charges like trespassing, charges like, you know, blocking an entrance.
So hardly something you would expect the full weight of federal authority to come down on.
And so I went ahead and I called one of the people who was arrested in that last case.
And it's a man named Cal Zastro and his group of demonstrators were in front of a clinic in Tennessee.
And the DOJ is claiming that they obstructed and intimidated and there was a suggestion of violence.
I asked them about that.
He said, no, there was no violence.
There was nothing like that.
There wasn't even a little shoving match or any sort of little scuffle like we heard about in the Mark Hout case.
What he said was that essentially they were just praying and singing.
They were trespassing.
And so they got a trespassing charge from local authorities.
And that seems to have been what brought the FBI to their doors.
And I just want to play a real quick clip of Cal Zastro, who was out of the country at the time, but he received a call from his colleagues about what happened when the FBI came to arrest them.
And so he called me when I was in Ukraine and said, hey, the FBI have just raided Paul's house.
They got guns pointed at the kids' heads.
And they haven't heard from Paul for six hours.
And it's bad.
So I said, well, get over there and comfort them and love them and help them out till he hopefully gets home or they find out where they've taken him to.
It was, yeah, it's a real cowboy raid.
So fairly dramatic stuff there.
Yeah, have you called the FBI and the DOJ to ask them about this?
Yes.
So, you know, that's another part of the story is that I have tried to get in touch with the DOJ, specifically this reproductive rights task force, several times.
They're not the only ones I've called, but I've tried multiple avenues and I'm getting nowhere.
And what's interesting is, you know, a lot of reporters who cover this beat, we talk to each other and they're getting the same thing.
So I made a call to Roger Severino, who worked in the DOJ under the Obama administration when they very first started to prosecute some of these FACE act violations against pro-lifers.
And he also headed up the civil rights division in the Trump administration.
And what he told me is that this is something that he's hearing all reporters are experiencing.
I've got a clip of that as well.
They've been asked multiple times by media outlets.
I just spoke with a reporter yesterday who told me, yes, we said the request.
And they said they're investigating FACE Act cases on all bases.
Okay.
How many?
They refused to answer.
So an interesting note here is it's not just us lowly reporters who are not getting answers from the DOJ.
Congressman Chip Roy of Texas has also demanded some details on, okay, exactly how many arrests have you made in these attacks on something like 84 churches and something around 80 pro-life organizations.
So that's together.
So separate 80 churches, 75 or so pro-life organizations.
How many arrests have been made under the FACE Act in those cases?
Because those are also FACE Act violations.
And he is also not getting any information from the DOJ.
So there seems to be just a really wide stonewalling here for not just reporters, but also congressmen.
And, you know, I made a lot of calls about that.
Like I said, I didn't get any answers.
But what I did do this morning was I attended a Heritage Foundation panel on some of the people who have been targeted by these kind of abortion activists, really sort of violent people.
And one of them was a woman named Julaine Appling.
And she's the, I'll have to check my notes, but she's the president of the Wisconsin Family Action Group.
And they are a pro-life group.
And her offices were attacked with two Molotov cocktails.
And it was set on fire.
So a little bit more than singing and praying in front of the entrances.
And she says that she has only heard from the FBI once.
This happened back in May.
It was on Mother's Day.
And when she heard from the FBI, it was because she called them.
And not to inundate you with sound bites, but I do feel like it's worth hearing her describe that.
It came out with three cans of physical evidence left and said, this is an active, ongoing, aggressive investigation.
I've heard from FBI once, and it was at my calling them because someone was trying to say, hey, we're trying to track down a phone number, and it just sounded suspicious.
So I called the FBI.
I've heard nothing from ATF.
So there you go.
That kind of lays out the situation.
So really, what we're seeing here is very unequal justice, or at least it appears like very unequal justice because the DOJ won't give anyone any information about what's happening.
So this has been going on.
The FACE Act isn't new.
The task force is new.
The task force was formed after Dobbs, but the FACE Act has been around at least since Obama, right?
This happened a while ago.
Yeah, so the FACE Act was, it actually was established in the 90s during the Clinton era, but it was established with, you would have to say sort of a bipartisan council.
They said there were both pro-life advisors, there were pro-choice advisors, and they helped to develop this.
But under Obama, what Severino told me is that it came to be enforced only against pro-lifers.
So at that point, when they were bringing cases, some federal judges stepped in and basically said, okay, you guys can't do this and told them to knock it off to sort of put it colloquially.
And yeah, they said, it looks like you're doing the bidding of the abortion group.
So you need to not do that.
And at that point, I think it kind of just dropped off the radar until after Dobbs.
But, you know, I heard some of the people I talked to this week say, if there is a lever of power that DC is going to use, they will eventually remember to use it.
And that's what we're seeing here with this FACE Act.
Can we expect those judges to slap them down again?
Well, you know, Severino said in this case, he thinks that most of them are going to go back to probably Biden appointees.
So he is not expecting that right now.
And he thinks that's why it has gotten so sort of almost belligerent in how it's being enforced.
Like I said, a lot of people are asking questions.
And if it were just pro-life groups asking questions, I think that would make a little more sense.
But when you see that they're stonewalling all reporters, I mean, it was really hard to get any information.
If you go onto the DOJ site, you cannot find any details whatsoever about them investigating any of these attacks on pro-life organizations.
And again, we're talking about blocking an entrance versus Molotov cocktails.
So it's a pretty stark difference.
This is dirty stuff.
This is really bad stuff because these are, you know, obviously you can trespass.
You should get a ticket for trespassing.
You can do things that are wrong even when you're on the right side.
But to, you know, we had An FBI whistleblower who was investigating real crimes like murder and things like that.
And he said he never used SWAT team.
He was on a SWAT team.
He said he would never use a SWAT team in situations like this.
So who's running this thing?
Who is running the task force?
Who's running this operation?
Yeah, and I do want to actually, before we get to that, really quickly say about that SWAT team issue, one of the things that Severino pointed out was that, look, it's actually very dangerous to bring SWAT teams into situations where they're not needed.
You know, there have been cases where people have been shot who were not violent offenders.
One of them, he said, you know, in a gambling ring.
So people who they were not expecting to be violent and someone actually ended up dying, weapons discharge.
It's not a good idea to do that.
And so anyway, that was a really important point that I thought, man, when you're dealing with people who have no criminal history and you have no reason to think they're going to be violent, you can create some really tragic situations when you show up with a lot of armed officers.
And he acknowledged that.
He's somebody who's worked in the DOJ.
I haven't, but I thought that was a pretty cogent point.
And getting to who is running this, you know, we talked a little bit about that as well.
And so he actually worked with this woman, Vanita Gupta, who was running it and described her as a leftist.
So they worked together at the DOJ in the Obama era.
And, you know, I'll let him describe her.
Okay.
She was at DOJ Civil Rights.
And we overlapped, I believe.
Yeah.
And she was a left-winger then and is even more left-wing now.
There is good reason to believe, given her high position at DOJ, that she's deeply involved, regardless of her politics, because that's the nature of her job.
When you add in her politics and her known left-wing views, then of course she's going to be not only informed, but deeply involved in pushing this.
That's what one would expect, given her background.
Wow.
Wow.
I mean, yeah.
Yeah, I was going to say, I would like to say also, I would have really wanted to give Vanita Gupta the chance to answer that, but like I said, I can't get through to her.
Yeah.
And yeah, the second in command, she is also sort of known for being very pro-choice, aggressively so.
It's a woman named Kristen Clark.
And she has on Twitter called crisis pregnancy centers predatory and fake clinics.
And so we have two known fairly biased actors running this task force.
She is, this is what about these clinics?
You know, I do hear liberal people sort of talk about these clinics as if they were like the Salvation Army in the old days, converting people by giving them food, that they draw women in and then they get them to give birth and then they don't help them at all.
What do they do exactly?
Are they suspect?
No, well, look, I mean, they are what they wear what they do on their sleeves.
They are pro-life.
So they're very clear that we're not going to help you get an abortion.
So I don't think they're tricking anyone.
What they will do, though, is they provide a lot of free medical care.
They provide ultrasounds, prenatals.
They'll do STD testing.
And then what they also will do is help women connect with health services ongoing, not abortions, but other health services if they can't afford it to allow them to get medical care.
They connect them with adoption services if they want that.
I talked to a gentleman today who works with an adoption service, and he says that crisis pregnancy centers are vital to their work, that they help them connect people who want to be moms and dads with people who don't feel that they can be moms and dads.
And they also give away a lot of free stuff.
Very dastardly.
They give away diapers, wipes, clothes, cribs.
So a lot of stuff like that.
You know, I have to get one of these people.
I don't know if I can, but I'd like to get one of these pro-abortion activists to come on and explain this to me because I do not see this commitment to killing children over, you know, giving them to people who want them.
Megan, really good job.
And I really appreciate it.
Next time you come on, let's talk about the movies or something a little bit more cheerful.
But I just feel the FBI, an organization I have admired my whole life, has gone bad is rotting from the head down.
And I think that it's important to cover it.
And so maybe the next time you see me, I'll have been carted off myself.
But I hope to see you again.
I hope not.
Yes, me too.
And I hope to see you again next month.
Thank you very much.
Megan Basham, if you're not reading your stuff at the Daily Wire, you should be.
So do.
Thanks a lot, Megan.
Thanks so much.
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Field Offices and Domestic Terrorism00:15:30
There are no E's in Clavin.
So my wife is here today watching the show because I wanted to prove to her that I actually was gainfully employed.
We have been married for more than 40 years.
I've been married longer than I haven't been married.
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So we're talking about the FBI, and I'm really happy to have Steve Friend come on.
He has been an FBI special agent since 2014.
Prior to his reassignment to focus on domestic terrorism in 2021, he devoted his career to investigating violent crime and child pornography and all the other things that FBI agents are supposed to be investigating.
He has now been suspended for whistleblowing, which I think in and of itself is telling.
Steve, thank you so much for coming on.
I appreciate it.
Thank you very much, Drew.
I really appreciate the opportunity.
So you're investigating domestic terrorism.
How does that become, how does that move you into investigating the January 6th events?
So I got folded into the Joint Terrorism Task Force in my office when the fiscal year rolled over in 2021.
It was staffed at that point, including me, by four individuals.
And just by sheer volume of cases that were there, for the most part, they were all derivative of January 6th investigations.
So in other words, that's what domestic terrorism was.
It was all about January 6th?
Yes.
So when I was moved over from my child exploitation cases, the assistant special agent in charge even mentioned that he felt that child pornography was going to be a local issue and that domestic terrorism, specifically January 6th, was the higher priority.
So how did that strike you?
When you first realized that, did you think, okay, if that's the way it is, that's the way it is?
Or did that immediately strike you as being wrong?
I was pretty upset.
And I voiced my concerns.
I transferred to the office that I'm in now a few months prior to that with the understanding that I would be doing the child exploitation investigations.
And in just the 10 weeks that I had been doing them, I had been working with a lot of locals and made a lot of promises.
And we started some really good casework and actually had some subjects already in custody.
So I felt like it was a success.
And then just being moved over like that was upsetting.
But I tell them, I'm a team guy.
If that's where the priority is for the field office, then I will do that.
So when the investigation started, when you were part of it, did any of it strike you as being wrong in some way?
Yes, right from the outset.
So a little bit on my background, coming from the violent crimes on Indian country reservation work, you have an opportunity to open up a lot of cases.
So in my eight years in the FBI, I opened up more than 200 cases and arrested over 150 violent subjects.
So when I got brought in to look at the January 6th cases, my instinct is to move quickly one case to the next.
You're turning a wrench.
You don't want to get bogged down.
And when I looked into the January 6th cases, right away noted that the cases were more or less being directed from Washington, D.C., as opposed to being within the control of our office and the agents who were supposed to be being the case managers.
All right, so you're supposed to manage those cases when they come to you, but they're being run from D.C. Were they being run badly from D.C.?
Well, I think it's just inconsistent with the FBI rules.
So we have very specific rules when it comes to having cases open.
Once they're opened and assigned to a specific field office and there's agents or task force officers who are running that case, it's really their responsibility to carry the case forward and make all the investigative decisions.
When I talked to my colleagues, since I was late to the game and they had already done some of the work on these cases, they were just kind of standing in limbo and not progressing forward.
I asked, what are we doing?
And they said, we're just waiting for Washington, D.C. to decide if they're going to charge these, if they're going to want more work done on them, or for a lot of them, they were really just hoping that they were going to be declined to prosecute because there wasn't a lot of derogatory information in them.
So at what point do you begin to complain?
I mean, at what point do you say anything to your superiors?
So I was fortunate that I had a good situation with my supervisor where he sort of recognized there wasn't a lot of casework to be done.
So he really let me continue my child exploitation investigation sort of on the DL.
So I kind of kept my head down doing that because I was really satisfied with the work I was doing until an email was circulated around my office in August of this year that we were going to be doing some arrests and some search warrant operations.
And it was going to be the first opportunity that I really had to arrest any of these January 6th subjects.
Just from the way the cases had been managed and the little bit of work that I'd done on them, I felt really uncomfortable with it.
And at that point, decided to vocalize it to my manager, what my concerns were.
So to be specific, when you say that, you thought there wasn't enough evidence to arrest them?
Is that what you're saying?
Correct.
I can specifically remember interviewing an individual at a law office because he was already represented and him telling us how he had gone to President Trump's speech and walked to the Capitol.
He'd never been to the Capitol, so it was his first trip to Washington, D.C.
He saw an open door, asked a Capitol police officer for permission to go in, went inside.
We had him on surveillance tape looking at the artwork.
Didn't even walk beyond a red velvet rope.
On his way out, he took one of the free brochures for the tourists and left and even apologized for taking that.
And at that point, he'd already lost his job.
He was out, however many funds he was to hire an attorney.
So I really just felt like the process we were putting him through was a punishment for something that he mightn't even be guilty of even committing a crime.
So when you complain, what's the reaction?
I had a real cordial conversation with my frontline manager.
He obviously voiced support for my sticking to principal, but ultimately he decided that he was going to be, he had to pass my situation on up the chain of command because as a domestic terrorism investigator and me obviously objecting to doing domestic terrorism arrests on the biggest case in the FBI, he wanted that kind of handled at a higher level.
So I had a sit-down meeting with two assistant special agents in charge of my field office to voice all the similar concerns that I have and also bring to their attention because they had been at that point in the Bureau for, I'm sure, a decade plus.
I wasn't aware if they had done the similar training that I'd done, where at the FBI Academy, you go to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and you have a day where you have a conversation with a representative from the Anti-Defamation League.
And the point of that training is to really drill home to the new agents that abuses of power and genocide and civil rights violations are only made possible when nobody rings the alarm when these abuses come in.
So I felt like it was incumbent on me and consistent with the training I'd received to draw attention to that and as well as the fact that I'd taken my oath to the Constitution and the mechanisms we were using I felt were inconsistent with due process and potentially violating cruel and unusual punishment of the Eighth Amendment with the way that even people who had been convicted of crimes were being treated in the lead up to their trials and subsequently in their sentencing.
Could you be more specific about that?
Why did you feel that their treatment was a violation?
Well, I just noticed that there was a really heavy hand in how we were going about our investigations.
The FBI really prides itself on liaising with local law enforcement, and I'd done that throughout my career.
I've said before, I've arrested 150 violent criminals.
I never had to use a SWAT team to do it.
And these were individuals who, you know, sexual assault, molestation, aggravated assault, even murder charges.
But I leaned heavily on the police officers who I worked with on a day-to-day basis.
They had a great relationship, or at least not great, but at least they were a familiar person to those individuals because they were the local police officer.
So it was really just a question of local police officer knocks on the door with somebody.
We had an open dialogue with that individual so he knew that he was being investigated.
SWAT team at six o'clock in the morning throwing flashbangs and breaching a house to me seemed like over the top.
And I'm saying that as somebody who actually was on a SWAT team for five years.
So guys taking a pamphlet out of the Capitol and they're being, they've got SWAT team waking them up.
And what was the reaction?
What was their reaction?
You go and you talk to these two agents in charge.
What do they say to you?
So they pushed back on me and said I was being a bad teammate.
They said that I was being insubordinate.
Even brought up the fact that what's my future going to be with the FBI, despite having my work reputation being really good, I actually received an award about a month before all of this happened.
And then I also had a really kind of scary question from one of them where he said, Steve, why do you think people who killed police officers shouldn't be charged with a crime?
And I looked back at him and told him that none of the protesters or insurrectionists, whatever you want to call them, actually killed a police officer that day.
And he reacted as if it was new information to him.
So they told me at the end of that meeting that they appreciated me coming forward, but the process was starting, but it was going to be really slow and evolving because it's a federal government and it's like turning an aircraft carrier.
But apparently I found the fastest process in the FBI because three hours later, I was told not to report to work the next day and then I was going to be absent without leave during the, because the next day was going to be the arrest operation.
Wow.
So you were sent home.
Did you ever come back or I mean, you've been suspended now indefinitely, right?
Yes.
I was able to come back the next day following my AWOL experience.
About a week later, I had a meeting with the highest level of management in my field office, and that was the special agent in charge, Sherry Youngs.
We had about a 20-minute conversation during which she told me that never in her 24 years had she ever had an agent behave like me and that I represented a really fringe belief within the FBI that what was going on was inappropriate.
And she told me that I needed to do some soul searching as to whether or not I was going to have a career going forward.
And that she expressed to me that on January 6th, she was in Washington, D.C. on the seventh floor of the Hoover Building where the director is.
And the real fear that she felt when those people tried to seize our democracy was palpable to her.
And I couldn't possibly understand how serious it was.
So, you know, one of the things that people like me keep wondering is how far down does this kind of attitude go?
How far down do the people who decided that Trump's relationship with Russia needed to be investigated for two years, that Pfizer courts could be lied to in order to get the right to buy, how far down does that go?
Because as a reporter, I've talked to FBI agents really most of my adult life, and they've always been incredibly professional, incredibly on top of the kinds of crimes you've investigated most of your life.
And now it seems that there's a lot of this stuff going on.
When you are in an FBI field office, do you feel that you're surrounded by people who are out to get half of their fellow citizens for their political opinions?
So I've been in two field offices since January 6th happened to a person.
The agents that are street agents, agents on the ground have agreed with my sentiments that we're being overly aggressive.
We all definitely think that if somebody broke the law and did so egregiously or violently, that there are consequences for that and charges should be pursued.
But I think there's just a giant, giant gap between management at headquarters of the FBI and the rank and file.
And that might be political.
I think it's probably more of a combination of the political nature slash opportunism because this is the next 9-11.
We're 20 years after September 11th.
It's a whole another generation of agents looking to make their mark and definitely having your name on the biggest case of the generation is going to be something that anybody with ambition is going to want to take advantage of.
They actually went after your wife at one point.
Actually, was it they didn't go after her, but Facebook sort of mysteriously went after her.
Is that right?
Yes, yes.
So I mean, I can only surmise who was really pulling the strings on that.
But right after my name became public, a friend of ours reached out with a request from a woman from Moms for Liberty.
She didn't know me and she was just trying to get in touch and express her support.
So I don't have a Facebook account.
My wife does.
My wife's from Ukraine.
So her native tongue is Russian.
So her name is in the Cyrillic alphabet.
So you would have no idea that she's my wife.
She doesn't post.
She's not a troll.
She just sends private messages and has pictures.
So she sent this woman a private message saying, I'm Steve Friend's wife.
Thank you.
We just would appreciate it if you could share the information out there, but I hadn't come forward yet.
And 30 minutes later, her account was suspended for violating community standards.
She appealed it immediately.
And the following day, the account was completely shut down.
Wow.
Wow.
That's really, so I've only got a minute left.
Trunk Incident00:04:09
What do you think is going to happen next?
I mean, are there more, I know there are more whistleblowers, but are there enough?
Are there enough people to turn this around?
Is this something that you feel can be fixed fairly easily by getting rid of skimming some of the people off the top?
Or has this really gone through the entire agency?
I think there needs to be a massive reform of our headquarters.
I think that the mindset there is really the problem.
The rank and file people just want to put bad guys in jail.
But as far as headquarters goes, you know, I was in a meeting a few months ago where a representative from human resources told us that they considered the field fully staffed and they really just need to beef up management, middle management in Washington, D.C.
And that to me is the problem.
If you're clicking apply to the FBI and you want to just be a middle manager, I don't know if you really have the forethought to be the special agent who's going to uphold the fidelity, bravery, integrity motto that the FBI has stood for for 100 years.
Right, right, because you've never been on the street.
Steve Friend, thank you so much.
I hope you find your feet and find a place to rest because I think you're doing the right thing.
And you always have to pay a price for that.
Thank you very much, Drew.
I'm honored to talk to you.
It's great to talk to you.
Thanks.
All right.
We have studied a lot of corruption today, but now we move into the pure stream of spiritual guidance and love before we get to the darkness and hell of the Clavenless Week, which is to say that we are about to solve all your problems with the mailbag.
Yeah, again, my Dr. L believes that I'm fit to be serving, and that's what I believe is where I'm standing.
Oh, God.
You guys are just cruel now.
This is cruel.
All right.
From Joel.
Dear Andrew, I just finished reading A Killer in the Wind, which is one of my novels.
What a gripping story.
As I read the part where one of the characters gets locked in the trunk of the car.
That is the scene that a lot of people mention.
I imagined you possibly getting into a car trunk yourself to figure out the realities of what your character would experience there.
That is exactly what I did.
I got into the trunk of my own car, and it was harrowing.
I don't have a big case of claustrophobia, but I've got a little case of claustrophobia, and it was terrifying.
It got me to wondering, what is the strangest thing you have ever personally done or tried to do in order to figure out a plot element for a character in your books?
Thank you for your contributions to the conservative, and then it just drops off.
So I assume that Joel was driving while he was writing this.
But I don't know, the conservative movement, maybe the conservative arts, whatever.
But anyway, yeah, I've done some pretty offbeat stuff.
Locking myself in a car trunk was one.
I'm not even sure I told my wife about that one.
I once ran into a burning building, a burning house, to see what that looked like.
And I think the strangest and most depressing one I ever, I've been in a lot of prisons, and that's always depressing.
Whenever I have to, I always promise myself I'll never go back into prison.
I'll never write another prison scene, but I always end up doing it.
And for some reason, I can't use the old material.
I have to go into a new prison.
I just hate those places.
You do not want to go to prison.
I always tell the guards, remind me never to commit a crime.
Although nowadays, maybe you don't have to do that.
But still, prisons are bad places.
But I think the most depressing thing I ever did was I visited a couple of whorehouses, brothels, let's call them, outside of Reno, Nevada, where it's legal, for my novel, Damnation Street, which has a sequence that takes place there, a kind of central sequence that takes place at a Nevada brothel.
And I just went in and kind of pretended to buy a drink like I was a customer.
Packed, I have to say, with cross-country truckers.
The truckers are lined up outside these places.
Very depressing, very sleazy.
You'll be surprised to hear that a whorehouse is not the most savory place to be.
Prepare for Gotcha Questions00:03:06
And I got to tell you, it sounds old fogieish, but it was true.
I was so glad to get out of there into the air, into the fresh air.
But I felt like I had to, you know, it's not the kind of place I hang out, and I felt I had to see what it was so I could write it.
A lot of times you can write things by researching them.
I'm not big into jumping off a cliff to see what it was like to jump off a cliff.
I can also, I can usually find somebody who's done something, but this was something I felt I had to do for myself, and it was haunting.
Sorry.
Hi, Andrew.
First, I really enjoyed your interview with the heroic Tulsi Gabbard, even though she wouldn't let you pin her down on what her next moves will be.
Earlier in the same show, you spoke about how Republicans and conservatives need to understand that the media is their enemy just as much as Democrats are, as Carrie Lake does understand, but they fail, but the GOP fails to do this every time.
How can would-be candidates better prepare for confrontations with the media?
How can they, or anyone for that matter, get over the very natural fear of being denounced by the cool kids?
Thanks.
Love the show.
Those are two separate questions.
You can't get over your fear of being denounced by the cool kids.
You have to stop being afraid of being denounced by the cool kids.
If you are worried about being one of the cool kids, you are already out of the game.
You're done.
You're finished.
If you're one of these people who curses the New York Times, but just can't, you know, but has daydreams that one day the New York Times is going to say, ooh, you know, he's a good Republican.
He's a good conservative.
You're done.
You're finished.
You're through.
Just don't do it.
You know, like that is not going to happen if you are telling the truth.
The New York Times is going to come after you unless they can use you to attack somebody else.
So if you go out and attack Donald Trump, the New York Times will interview you and talk to you.
But the minute you are up against one of their guys, namely a Democrat, you will then become the devil again.
So don't be a fool.
So it's simple.
It's simple.
Aside from that, once you get rid of that, if you want to prepare to go on a debate, just remember they are going to ask you things that they're not going to ask your opponent.
They are going to ask you gotcha questions.
You know what the gotcha questions are.
This is what drives me crazy.
It drives me crazy when a guy, a Republican, is pro-life and they say, well, what about in cases of incest?
And he goes, ah, incest.
You know they're going to ask you that question.
You know they're going to ask.
They're never going to ask the Democrat, what about aborting somebody because he's Pisces instead of Sagittarius.
They're just going to ask you about what if it's an 11-year-old girl who was raped by his father, her father.
That's what they're going to do.
So you know when you look at left-wing talking points, when you look at your opponent's talking points, when you look at what the left-wing press is saying, that's what they're going to say to you on the debate stage because they are leftists too.
They don't care about making money.
They don't care about being famous.
They care about getting you.
That is what they care about.
And you have to be ready for them.
And if you're afraid of being disliked by them, you're done.
From Garrett, I'm an aspiring storyteller in any form, books, movies, et cetera, but I'm having trouble pushing myself to write.
I believe it stems from a fear that because I'm just getting started, my early work will probably suck.
And I don't want to waste my favorite ideas on my amateur talent.
Should I get over it and write anyway or keep them on the back burner while working on blander projects to hone my skill?
Is it common to think you've come up with your best ideas only to be blindsided later by better ones?
Renaissance Fear00:04:29
Thank you for your insight.
Garrett, I got to tell you, any professional writer would take this letter and throw it in your face.
I mean, I'm going to be honest with you.
Like, writers write.
You write because you have ideas.
You put those ideas into action.
You hone your craft and you write your ideas.
If you don't write, you're not a writer.
If you do write, you might be a writer.
That's it.
So like, you're afraid?
Guess what?
Anybody who looks at a blank page is afraid if this is what he wants to do.
You know, to save your ideas for when you get better is ridiculous.
Get better now.
I mean, get good enough to write your ideas and do it.
I mean, if you're not doing the job, that's not your job.
If you're not writing, you're not a writer.
And any writer will tell you this.
I mean, we've all heard that, you know, I'm afraid of this.
I'm a perfectionist.
What if I this?
What if that happens?
And every one of us faces that every single day that we sit down to go to work.
It never gets easier, except for, I guess, you have a history, you know, you can do it.
But still, this is the job.
You know, it's a difficult job, and it is a very, very difficult.
It's a great job if you can make a living at it, but it's a very, very difficult profession.
So, yeah, do it or don't.
But that's the answer.
If you do it, you're doing it.
If you're not doing it, you're not doing it.
That's it.
Dear Mr. Devin, thanks for all you do and all the insight you provide, especially in regards to the arts and faith.
I think that it was rather fortuitous that this week you were talking about the Renaissance on your show.
I'm currently researching the Renaissance on my own time and was wondering if you could give me insight on something that I've been trying to figure out.
All through school, I was told that the Renaissance was caused by the Western world rediscovering the classical world and driven by humanistic thought, leading the West away from the church.
Lately, I've been thinking that the real story is more complicated than this, and I think that the main philosophy driving this period was not secular humanism, but instead was influenced more by Thomas Aquinas and the belief that God's transcendent nature can be discovered and glorified by us through our acts of discovery and artistic expression.
Do you think this way?
If so, do you have any sources I can read that show this?
And do you think that it is the loss of this philosophy in evangelical circles that has caused the Western church to turn away from the arts?
Yeah, listen, there's no question about this.
The Renaissance and the humanist factor of the Renaissance had a PR campaign going.
It included things like calling it the Renaissance, calling what we now call the Middle Ages the Middle Ages.
The people in the Middle Ages didn't think they were in the beginning in the middle of anything.
It was the humanists in the Renaissance who said, well, first there was the Dark Ages, then there was the Middle Ages.
And what was middle of?
It was middle between the fall of the classical world, the fall of the Roman Empire, and the wonderful things that were happening now.
But of course, that was all just PR.
None of it was true.
It was the humanizing force of the church.
Much of the Counter-Reformation, much of the beautiful paintings you've seen during the Renaissance are paintings that were made by the church, commissioned by the church to make theological points that they wanted to make against the Protestants.
You know, yes, there was a humanist element.
Yes, there was a breaking away from the church over time.
But the Renaissance is the product of church thinking.
Science, the invention of science, is a product of church religious thinking.
And yeah, were there other elements?
Of course there were.
Were there elements the church opposed?
Yes, there were.
But you should be able to read any honest description of the Renaissance and find this out.
I mean, if you want to look at somebody who's just a partisan, look at the Catholic Encyclopedia or something like this, but there's no question about this.
There's absolutely no question about it.
And like I said, this whole idea of dark ages, middle ages, these were propaganda words.
Renaissance, which means rebirth, meaning the rebirth of the classical world.
All of these were propaganda words to push humanism and push a sort of anti-church agenda.
But it was the church that created the minds that created, and the talents, in fact, that created the Renaissance.
All of those things like the Sistine Chapel were paid for by the church.
I got to stop there for non-members, but a member's block is coming out.
Non-members, so long, darkness, hell, you know, you know the routine.
I mean, so what can I tell you?
However, if you get a strange habit of mind, you can stave off the Clavenless Week.
Get a strange habit of mind.
You will love it.
It will be a good thing to have done, and you will be happy you did it as the series continues and gets even better.