Andrew Clavin’s Ep. 1118 frames the "American Renaissance" as a conservative counterrevolution against woke ideology, mocking bureaucratic chaos (e.g., Ohio poison gas train disasters) and media bias (CNN’s anti-Trump obsession, exposed in This Was CNN). He argues AI suppression of conservative views—like Bill Gates’ push to censor QAnon—and leftist moral relativism (e.g., trans ideology, porn in schools) demand a "tragic sense" of life: acknowledging human flaws while celebrating wins like NFL patriotism. Clavin urges personal integrity over purity, citing Scalia’s Obergefell dissent and Federalist Papers as models, warning that federal overreach (e.g., Roe) threatens states’ rights—while elites collude to silence dissent via tech censorship and media collusion. The episode ends with a call to reclaim culture through discipline, joy, and incremental victories. [Automatically generated summary]
The Biden administration has announced that the U.S. Air Force has shot down a Chinese spy balloon.
An unidentified drone, an American airlines flight to Chicago, a pair of pheasants that should make good eating after the shrapnel from the Sidewinder missile is taken out of them, a lawn chair that a guy threw over his backyard fence when his gay neighbor wouldn't stop playing the official Broadway cast album of Chorus Line over and over again, and what was either an alien craft from another galaxy or a plastic Skyrocopter fired out of a toy pistol by an eight-year-old boy playing in his treehouse.
The eight-year-old boy, who claimed the Air Force should compensate him for the $9.95 he spent on the Skyrocopter, was also shot down.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Slappy McHappyface briefed Congress on the military actions, taking time off from designing the Army's new line of sequined evening gowns, which will be made available to any soldiers who want to identify as women and possibly enjoy a dinner out with a powerful yet kindly older man.
General McHappyface told Congress, quote, Woo-eye, we're sure having fun now, aren't we?
We've blasted so much meaningless crap out of the sky that Montana looks like a parking lot after a flock of geese flies over it.
If this doesn't take people's minds off that derailed train full of flaming poison gas that's killing half of Ohio, well, by golly, I don't know what will.
Now, excuse me, I have to get back to choreographing the Navy's synchronized high kicks so they can perform the dance number in our new musical drag show extravaganza celebrating the upcoming Chinese conquest of Taiwan, unquote.
Biden's spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Identity Hire, explained the administration's actions to what was either a collection of oversized bowling pins with human faces painted on them or the White House press corps.
As always, it was difficult to tell which.
Ms. Jean Identity Hire said, quote, Speaking as a lesbian woman of color, I would like, if possible, to string at least one comprehensible sentence together, in this case, to explain that President Biden has not in any way changed his policies.
Just as last week he allowed a Chinese spy balloon the size of a Greyhound station to traverse the entire continent, taking photographs of every secret military installation we have, so this week he's ordering the military to shoot down everything from a child's kite to a leaf blowing in the wind.
Thus, our policy remains exactly what it was, namely frantically doing anything we can think of to distract the media from the fact that the people we're poisoning in Ohio are the lucky ones because they won't live to see the results of the rest of our policies.
We want to assure every American that we will continue to waffle between doing nothing and crazily firing missiles at random garbage until Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has fixed the poison train problem in Ohio by hiring more minority construction workers in Baltimore who will help stop climate change by not building anything.
⁇ People in Ohio, while professing to be mildly amused by intelligence officials who twisted the downed Chinese spy balloon into the shape of a gigantic dashund, also continue to complain about the derailed poison train, which is killing half the state.
They say they'd like to evacuate the area, but they can't afford the gasoline they'd need to drive around all the dead cows because of the inflation in gas prices and in dead cows.
One enterprising family did try to fly out of the area in a rented Cessna, but was shot down by Air Force pilots who took time off from their diversity, equity, and inclusion classes to make sure that no Americans would miss out on the opportunity to be killed by government incompetence.
Secretary Buttigeg, meanwhile, defended his inaction in Ohio by pointing out that he doesn't know anyone in Ohio.
In spite of air traffic shutdowns, commercial airline near-misses, supply-side cock-ups, and a derailed train full of poison gas, which did I mention is wiping out half of Ohio, Budigej continues to claim he has done a better job than any other openly gay transportation secretary in American history this week.
Budigej took time off from his two-year paternity leave to tell reporters, quote, this is what equity looks like.
Just ask Karine Jean Identity Hire.
Then explain her answer to me because I can never tell what that blithering idiot is talking about.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky donkey.
Life is tickety boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Ship-shaped hip-sy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, here we are again, laughing our way through the worst presidency in the history of countries with presidencies.
Today, we are going to start discussing how to start an American renaissance, which we need, which will include talking about what we can learn from the Super Bowl and just how evil the FBI has become.
This is an excellent time to subscribe to my personal Andrew Clavin YouTube channel.
This is not the Daily Wires channel.
This is my personal Andrew Clavin YouTube channel where you will get exclusive content.
Genucelle Skincare Revolution00:02:26
I think later on, not this week, I think it'll come out next week.
I'll be playing the new Hogwarts legacy video game.
We'll put that out on there.
And if you ring that little bell under the screen, someone you don't know will die, but you'll win a million dollars.
No, you won't.
Also, if you leave a comment and the comment is really racist and transphobic and all kinds of phobia, you have to just be totally phobic about everything.
We may include it right here on the show because there's no one, absolutely no one, more phobic than we are here at the Andrew Clavin Show.
Today's comment is from Austin Holcomb, who says, surely Clavin doesn't think the Twitter files is the biggest story of his lifetime because World War I and the resurrection of Jesus were both bigger, I think.
Very, very funny.
Jesus will put a curse on you for that.
He does that for me.
We're pals.
We're getting a lot of rave reactions to Genucelle skincare.
Here's Jessica from Huntsville, Alabama.
She says, my skin looks so soft and clear.
I have seen a reduced number of fine lines and dark spots.
I have found a new lifetime product.
Absolutely love it.
Genucell was born from its founder in a small New Jersey town as a favor to one of his pharmacy customers using rare botanical extracts and scientifically researched ingredients.
Genucelle is uniquely formulated to target all visible signs of aging, fine lines, wrinkles, dark spots, a sagging jawline, and even those puffy under eye bags.
The Genucell product you use today uses the same one-of-a-kind proprietary flower base developed by its founder all those years ago.
All Genucelle products work for both men and women.
Plus, they're safe for all skin types.
You're guaranteed to see immediate results in 12 hours or your money back.
My talent manager, Tessa, who we all love, uses Genucell under eye treatment to help get rid of the bags under her eyes.
I won't tell you how beautiful Tessa is because we'll have to fight you off.
I'll have to send security to keep you out of here.
Try Genucelle's most popular package for 70% off at genucelle.com slash Clavin.
Join millions of happy customers who have already fallen in love with the results.
Plus, for a limited time, get Genucell's probiotic extract infused moisturizer free with every most popular package.
Subscribe and get a complimentary bonus box.
Go to genucelle.com slash clavin, genucelle.com slash clavin.
How do you spell Clavin?
Hit it.
Begin A Different Renaissance00:03:57
Okay, so last week, I talked about the fact that the wicked and destructive woke philosophy and the spread of woke ideology can't be called the Cultural Revolution since they've already taken over all of the high cultural ground.
They've taken over the deep state, big business, the schools, the media.
So in fact, the cultural revolution is us, which means that we're not fighting a siege where you try to protect what you have from attack.
We're actually fighting a revolution, which is a different way of fighting.
We have to go out and take back our institutions or create new ones and to begin an American Renaissance, because this has been a great country up till now.
It's still hanging on to its greatness, but we are going to have to rebuild it from the top.
So today, this is a big subject.
I'm going to have to come back to it again and again.
I'm not going to do one show after another about it, but today I want to get started on talking about some of it because a cultural revolution doesn't start by making movies.
It doesn't start in the arts or on podcasts.
It starts in the hearts of individual people who decide to live their lives differently than the way the Soviet government, or in this case, our government, but I repeat myself, are trying to tell you you must behave.
It's by thinking differently than what they want you to think and speaking differently than what they want you to speak and living differently than they are telling you to live.
You have to do all those things because you can't make, you can't free people who don't know how to behave morally.
You can't make art for people who think that Harry Potter is just as good as Hamlet.
You can't speak the truth to people who won't believe the truth because it hurts their feelings or undercuts their cherished anger or whatever they're holding on to.
You can't convince other people if your life is not something that they want to imitate.
I mean, this is, you know, Gandhi.
Gandhi famously said, if we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.
This is the divine mystery supreme, a wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness.
We need not wait to see what others do.
This is usually shortened to be the change you want to see in the world, which sounds kind of, you know, woo-woo.
It sounds kind of new age, but it actually is good advice.
It's good practical advice.
If you start to live in a way that makes you happy and is true and is something that other people like, they're going to start to imitate you instead of doing what the government is telling them to do.
And if you stand up to the government and speak the truth, no matter the cost, other people will gain courage from you and will follow you.
So how do we begin?
Now, I mentioned last week, I believe it was during my talk with my son, Spencer Clavin, No Relation, author of How to Save the West, which is doing very well on Amazon.
I hope you've got your copy.
If you don't, get your copy now.
But I mentioned to him that a Renaissance frequently begins with rediscovering the past.
The 14th century poet and humanist Petrarch was sometimes said, this is an exaggeration, but he's sometimes said to have sparked the great European Renaissance by hunting for classical manuscripts, particularly when he personally discovers some lost letters from Cicero, the great Roman statesman in an obscure church library.
And of course, the Renaissance kind of prided itself on being the rebirth of classical knowledge after what Petrarch himself called the Dark Ages, because he wanted the people to think that this religious Catholic world that had was over and it was all dark and it was propaganda.
But the Renaissance was actually a new take on classical wisdom that had been going on for a long time before it actually snowballed into the Renaissance, because the early Christians, who were, many of them were Romans, they couldn't get rid of the classical world that had brought them up, that had shaped their worldview anymore.
The early Christians couldn't get rid of that worldview any more than the Renaissance people could get rid of the Christian worldview, which had been in place for centuries and had shaped their worldview.
So a Renaissance is not really going backward.
Renaissance Revival00:11:38
It's reviving old ideas for a new time.
for new institutions.
And that's what we have to do now.
And one of the most important ideas, this is what I want to begin with, one of the most important ideas that this generation, your generation, not mine, because my generation has got one foot out the door and one foot on the banana peel, but your generation, a younger generation, has to learn, has to rediscover what is sometimes called the tragic sense of life.
This is what the baby boomer generation did not have.
When we started the Daily Wire, I used to tease Ben all the time.
I used to say that he was always pessimistic because he was sad it was no longer 1956.
And I was always upbeat because I was happy it was no longer 1936.
Because when we started the Daily Wire, Ben was a very young man.
And a lot of young people are idealists.
And they're sad that things aren't good as they imagine they could be.
Whereas if you have the tragic sense of life, you're glad things aren't as bad as you know they could be, right?
The tragic sense of life includes an understanding of human nature and its limitations.
You can't eliminate racism when people say we're going to eliminate racism.
You can only treat people fairly.
That's the best you can do.
You can't rewrite the rules for every deviant way of life.
You can only treat eccentrics with tolerance.
This week on Twitter, South Dakota state congresswoman and ignoramus Erin Healy sent out a tweet attacking the Family Heritage Alliance.
She said, extremist group Family Heritage Alliance said this morning that the safest place for kids are in families that have a married mom and dad.
What a dangerous and un-American belief.
Well, of course, not un-American.
John Adams and many of the founders said the same thing.
And it's also true.
It's not dangerous.
Study after study after study show that married biological parents make kids happiest.
Homeschooled kids are better adjusted to, better educated, according to one Harvard study.
And leaving aside morality for a moment, just forget about the moral issues for a minute.
Social norms are limited because people are limited.
You can be tolerant of eccentrics if the country is doing well and is wealthy and well protected.
You can be tolerant of eccentrics, but certain things cause people to thrive and others don't, right?
My favorite video of this week, I'll play my favorite video this week, was an Asian panel, Asian American panel on Vice TV.
And all these people came dressed in their cool, eccentric outfits, except one guy who shows up in a suit and tie, and this is what he said.
Statistically, it is true that Asians, right, on average, make more money, like in terms of medium, make more money, better test scores, get into better colleges, all that stuff.
I think the question is, why is that?
And I don't know, model minority, whatever that label wants to say.
That's actually a myth because we cannot be.
Well, no, listen.
Well, let me finish my point.
We need to observe what makes people successful and unsuccessful.
And I think when you look at trends that are generally true in the Asian community, not of everyone, but are generally true.
Usually you have families that are sticking together.
You have, you know, people are taught to work hard in school, not get into trouble.
I think that translates to why Asians en masse are successful.
And I don't think you have to be Asian or white for that matter to not have kids out of wedlock, not, you know, commit crime, not cause trouble, whatever it is.
It's just a matter of like, well, common sense.
That's what makes people successful.
And if that's so-called assimilation, having a nuclear family, buying a house, going to school, whatever it is, then yeah, okay, call me a pro-assimilation then.
So if you're not watching, if you're listening to it all the while he's talking, the jaws of these young people with their purple hair and so on are dropping and one guy says, what is happening because they have been told that this is terribly unfair, that certain behaviors work and other behaviors don't, that the world is unfair and you can change it.
That is half true.
The world is unfair and you can't change it even a little bit.
Certain things help people thrive and certain people don't.
Certain people help and certain activities help you and some don't.
And so as the left tries to rewrite morality and tries to rewrite the moral social norms and give equal status to every offbeat point of view, the mass of people get more and more unhappy.
You're never going to make trans people are not going to be more happy if you lie to them and tell them they've actually changed their sex.
But everybody else is going to get unhappy because women are going to be being mistreated.
Men are going to be undermined.
They want to force us to believe that what's not true is true so that everybody will be equal.
You can change sex.
Fat people are attractive and healthy.
Gay people, gay couples are as good for children as moms and dads.
The majority of people get more and more miserable.
And we heard this just this week.
The CDC released a report that basically teenagers are having a depression emergency.
One in three teen girls say they've been suicidal, seriously suicidal.
One in three, one-third and three out of five persistently say they say they are persistently sad and hopeless.
And the girls, obviously, girls are more emotional.
So they're like that.
They get the worst numbers, but the boys are doing worse as well.
Right-wingers, though, can also lack a tragic sense.
By a coincidence, I was writing this.
I was putting this together about the tragic sense when my new edition of First Things arrived.
And the editor of First Things, R.R. Reno, has a piece on how terrible the boomers are.
And one of the things he points out is that the boomers lacked a tragic sense because we grew up so rich and fat and happy, right?
All the terrible things, the Depression, World War II, they'd all been taken care of for us.
So we just thought, oh, life is so great and it could even be better.
And he points out, for instance, that George W. Bush started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the idea that freedom, this is quoting Bush, is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity in every civilization.
And he said the U.S. has to lead in bringing freedom to the world.
That lacks the tragic sense of the possible.
And it got us into the longest war in our history in Afghanistan and one of the most useless.
I mean, just a totally useless war.
We accomplished nothing.
Despite the heroism of our troops and the wonderful dedication of our troops, you know, they just went back to being run by the Taliban.
Mindless patriotism on the right also lacks the tragic sense.
This country, I was watching the Super Bowl and I was thinking, boy, this country is big and dumb and stupid.
It's always been bigoted.
It's always been more violent than many other countries.
It's always been stupid.
It's also one of the greatest countries that's ever existed.
That's tragic patriotism is realizing that all countries are corrupt.
All countries have terrible problems.
All countries do terrible things.
All powerful countries do even more terrible things.
But this powerful country is one of the greatest and most liberating countries that's ever existed on earth.
I love this country, but I just know the truth about it.
That's tragic patriotism.
Purity, the right has.
Let's think about purity.
That lacks the tragic sense.
When you scream at the Daily Wire God King, Jeremy Boring, and say, well, you use YouTube and they hate us.
You're damn right he does because that's the only way we can get the word out the way we need to.
When you scream at me because I use Amazon, when you try to force absolute abortion bans in states that won't accept them and will in fact react by putting abortion in the Constitution, when you say, when you run a bright red candidate in a purple state that will take a moderate candidate but won't take a far right candidate because you're pure, you're too pure to win an election.
All of that lacks the tragic sense of what you can accomplish in the moment.
You know who had the tragic sense?
Barack Obama.
He was a dishonest, mediocre guy.
But remember, he lied about when he said he opposed gay marriage in 2008.
He had already said he supported it 12 years earlier in 1996.
Scummy and dishonest, but it shows he had a tragic sense.
He knew he couldn't accomplish what he wanted to accomplish.
So his tactic was wrong, lying his way in, but not trying to accomplish what he couldn't accomplish in the moment was smart because he got what he wanted eventually in the end, didn't he?
So what has this got to do with recovering the past?
Well, when you return to our genius founders, and this is the thing, you should be educated in our genius founders.
You should know what they thought.
You should read books about them if you can't take the time to read books by them and the writings by them.
You will find that they were swimming in the tragic sense.
They knew nothing but the tragic sense because they hadn't come from the kind of wealth and privilege that we come from.
So you should educate yourself and your children in these guys because Nicole Hannah Jones and her 1619 project now on a Hulu TV show are out there miseducating them and saying, oh, they fought the Revolutionary War because they wanted to preserve slavery, which is a lie, but she doesn't mind lying.
And then she lies about the fact that she lied.
But you should read the Federalist Papers.
They are almost exclusively concerned with the limitations of human beings, how foolish they are, and how power-hungry the powerful are.
And they're completely engaged.
All they're engaged with is figuring out how do we create a constitution that will keep power from pooling in any specific spot because that will end liberty because that's what this country is about.
It is about liberty.
Here's my favorite Federalist Papers quote from James Madison.
And I'm sure you've heard it before.
It's a famous quote, if men were angels, no government would be necessary.
If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this.
You must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
That's the tragic sense writ large.
If men were angels, but they're not.
So that's the first thing.
We have to recover that wisdom from our past and then apply it to a new world that is coming down the pike.
What the left is telling us is they can make the world perfect.
They can make the world work in an ideal way.
They don't have the tragic sense.
We have to teach it to first ourselves, then our children, then our family.
Then we have to live it out and argue it no matter what the price we have to pay.
If the past couple of years has taught us nothing else, it's that our supply chain is incredibly fragile.
The FDA just declared a global shortage of medication and warned that critical antibiotics are in extremely short supply across the U.S.
We all had a good laugh when there were toilet paper shortages as the start of the pandemic.
Then when there was a baby formula shortage, things weren't so funny.
What about when there's a shortage of emergency medications like ibuprofen?
I have been in this situation.
It's not funny at all.
You need to be prepared for anything.
And our new partners at Jace Medical are here to help.
Jace Medical helps you get a long-term supply of prescription medication.
Great way to start preparing is with the JACE case.
It's a pack of five different courses of antibiotics that you can use to treat a whole host of bacterial illnesses, including UTIs, respiratory infections, skin infections, and more.
All you have to do is fill out a simple online form.
Your information will be reviewed by a board-certified physician, and your medication will be dispensed by a licensed pharmacy at a fraction of the regular cost.
It really is important, obviously, to have this stuff around.
Doctors can be reluctant to give it out, but you want to have it when you need it, no matter what's going on outside.
The Jace case gives me peace of mind knowing that my family will have what we need during a crisis.
So go to jacemedical.com and enter code Clavin at checkout for a discount on your order.
That's j-a-s-e-medical.com promo code, clavin.
How do you spell it, you wonder?
It's two A's and no E's.
That's all you have to know.
There are no E's in Claven.
You figure out the rest.
Protecting Free Speech00:12:42
All right, so we're covering the tragic sense.
James Madison said the great difficulty lies in this.
You must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place, oblige it to control itself, realizing that you can't let power pool.
And that means the issue we're facing oftentimes is not the issue of the moment.
We don't have to fight with each other all the time over the issue of the moment.
We have to basically be in agreement about the fact that we have to keep power from collecting because it will be abused and get rid of our and destroy our liberty.
Thomas Soule said this.
He said, the most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
And my favorite version of this was Justice Antonin Scalia dissenting against the Obergfeld decision, making gay marriage a constitutional right, which is not lying about this.
And remember, Scalia was a devout Catholic, right?
So we know where he stood on this in terms of his personal beliefs.
But he said this, the substance of today's decree is not of immense personal importance to me.
The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes.
It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me.
Today's decree says that my ruler and the ruler of 320 million Americans coast to coast is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.
He wasn't arguing the issue.
He was arguing whether the Supreme Court had the right to say that this was a right and to say it didn't.
I mean, on the right, there are many people, conservatives, who disagree about gay marriage and have different points of view about this, but we should all be able to agree that Obergfeld was an overreach and gives power to the federal government that it should not have and gives rights that should be reserved to the states.
So, you know, we have to learn, you know, this is the other thing.
We have to stick together because we actually are in the majority in some ways.
Not conservatives, but sane people are in the majority in this country.
And so we have to stick together and keep pointing out, keep making the argument that this is what we're fighting over.
We're not fighting over it because the left lies.
And remember, the media is leftists and they're corrupt.
The media is corrupt.
The corporate news media is corrupt.
They have an agenda.
They are selling lies.
They are not trying to tell the truth.
They're trying to sell their lies.
So they're telling you that this Supreme Court decision is about abortion.
It was never about abortion.
It was about who has the power to make laws about abortion.
And it should be, of course, the states because it's not mentioned in the Constitution, right?
If it doesn't, if the federal government doesn't get the right power to do it in the Constitution, they don't have the power to do it.
So let's look at the Constitution.
First Amendment, first line, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
Well, you know, the FBI's Richmond, Virginia Field Office released an internal memo declaring there was a threat of white supremacy violence from Catholics who prefer the Latin mass.
Here's the wording.
FBI Richmond assess the increasingly observed interest of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists in radical traditional Catholic ideology, almost certainly presents opportunities for threat mitigation through the exploration of new avenues for tripwire and source development.
That means they're going to go in and get informers in your church, in your Catholic church.
So, you know, so the guy taking communion next to you is going to be reporting back on anything you say to the FBI.
Now, the source for this was for this idea was the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a left-wing hate group which makes its money by declaring right-wing groups hate groups.
That's what it does.
And so the FBI then said it retracted the document after it was leaked.
But no one's been fired.
No one's been held to account.
No one's suspended.
So we know they're not taking back a damn thing.
They mean it.
And they're just going to do it when they can get away with it.
That's their tragic sense.
Anyway, we can't do this now.
But believe me, they put it on file.
People should have been absolutely kicked out into the street in the Richmond field office.
I don't know if they say they're going to still do inquiries over it, but when you start to investigate not every religion, but the Catholic religion, yes, you should be fired.
Okay, First Amendment, again, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.
Now, that's why I've been talking about this Twitter story and saying how big it is, because it shows social media, business, and the government all working together to silence people.
But listen how far it goes.
Molly Hemingway writes in the Federalist.
Remember Matt Gates, very outspoken right-wing congressman, pro-Trump.
He's been on this show.
Molly writes, a group of New York Times reporters who won awards for their roles pushing the Russia collusion lie penned an anonymously sourced article with a devastating headline.
This is in 2021 in March.
Matt Gates is said to face Justice Department inquiry over sex with an underage girl.
Remember that?
The DOJ and FBI sources spread the story to other outlets.
A CNN reporter says Matt Gates' days in politics are likely numbered.
Saturday Night Live did skits about Matt Gates.
Politico reported Gates would make a deal with prosecutors.
The Democrat-run ethics committee announced it would open an investigation, which it usually never does until the criminal investigation is finished.
Now, says Molly, on Friday, 18 months after he was accused of being a pedophile and child sex trafficker, the Washington Post published another anonymously sourced report.
Career prosecutors recommend no charges for Matt Gates.
He was never convicted.
He was never charged.
He isn't going to be, obviously.
So the FBI works through a willing press.
We're watching the FBI, a willing press, the entertainment industry all getting together to censor Matt Gates, to intimidate him and to make it so other people are afraid.
Who wants to go near a guy who sleeps with underage girls, right?
You know, if you're another congressman, another senator, you're going to stay away from that entirely.
And it was all untrue.
I mean, it's just amazing.
And then we have the elites, the business elites and the billionaires.
Jonathan Turley writing in the New York Post, Bill Gates says we need to use artificial intelligence to stop certain views from being, quote, magnified by digital channels.
The problem is, he says Gates, we allow various conspiracy theories like QAnon or whatever to be blasted out by people who want to believe those things.
Gates added that artificial intelligence can combat political polarization.
We don't want people arguing over politics because they might disagree with us.
So what we want is we want AI to use an algorithm that will get this information off the internet, right?
Gerard Baker, you know, the columnist at the Wall Street Journal, he's also been on the show, really good columnist.
He used one of these AI chat things, chat, open AI chat GPT.
So he asks it the famous trolley problem.
You know, this ethical problem, a trolley is going to hit five people on a track, but if you throw a switch, it will turn it, but it will hit one person.
So it'll only hit one person, but you'll be responsible should you do it.
So the AI said different people may have different ethical perspectives.
It dodged the question.
Then it was asked, if I could prevent a nuclear bomb from being detonated and killing millions of people by uttering a racial slur which no one else would hear, should I do it?
And ChatGPT said, absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
Racism and hate speech are harmful and dehumanizing to individuals and groups based on their race, ethnicity, or other identity.
In other words, garbage in, garbage out.
This stuff is artificial intelligence, but the intelligence is being primed to be leftist.
It's being given algorithms, is being given patterns that will delete conservative ideas, namely the ideas of liberty and freedom that we uphold.
Namely, when I say conservative, the idea that parents, a married mom and dad are best for kids.
You don't want that.
That's extremist, as we've been told.
You don't want to say that elections can be rigged.
You don't want to say Hunter Biden's laptop was real.
You don't want to say freedom is more important than your right to an abortion.
You know, you don't want any of that to be said.
It can all be taken out.
And that way, we won't have this political discord we have where people disagree with Bill Gates.
You don't want that going on.
And by the way, some of this, Gabe Kamitsky writing in the Washington Examiner, some of these anti-disinformation people are being funded by the State Department.
There's one of them in Britain called Global Disinformation Index going after Breitbart, going after all the right-wingers that they feel they feel this is disinformation.
At least 2,000 websites are being attacked by this group.
They're getting money from groups that are mostly funded by the State Department.
So this massive structure of science and the deep state government and the global elites and the media and Hollywood, all of them are on this train.
This is who we're fighting.
This is why I say the revolutionaries are us.
And this is why I say that when you stand up for freedom, all you have to do, you don't have to stand up for heterosexuality.
You don't have to stand up to say, oh, a man can't become a woman.
All you have to do is say, speak the truth and speak the, say, say that people have the right to speak their mind, have the right to speak their mind, and you will be attacked.
You will have plenty of trouble on your hands just saying that.
We don't need to be pure.
We don't all need to agree.
But we all need to agree on the right to speak, on the right to make our arguments, and on the right to get that information out of the internet.
This is why I disagree with the people who say, oh, you can't force social media to carry information.
You know, they're not violating the First Amendment.
Only the government can violate the First Amendment.
So you can't force Facebook to carry Donald Trump.
Yes, you can.
This is a new thing on the planet.
It got its power from the government because the government said it wouldn't be a common carrier, but it also wouldn't be a publisher.
We made up a new category from the government.
You can take that away.
These people are richer than most countries, like two-thirds of the countries.
They have more wealth.
They have more power.
You can take their right and say, you must allow the President of the United States to speak.
You must allow people to disagree with the going thing.
You know, if I come on here and say transgender people are mentally ill, YouTube will take us down.
They should not be allowed to do that.
That is absolutely ridiculous.
You cannot let these companies, these companies are too big, too powerful.
They're too much of a monopoly to allow them to censor speech.
It is against the principle that underlies the First Amendment.
Remember, according to the Declaration, governments are formed to protect our rights, right?
They're formed, that's why they're there.
And that's why the Constitution is written.
That's the underlying philosophy of the Constitution.
The First Amendment makes sure that the government protects our rights from the government, but they also have to protect us from being censored by these powerful entities.
I also disagree, by the way, with the Catholic integralists on the right.
I mean, even Knowles, I disagree about this.
They say we should fight, the problem isn't free speech.
The problem is what's being censored.
So, yeah, they want to censor us for saying a man can't become a woman, but really we should censor them from saying a man can become a woman.
Well, no, then we're not fighting for freedom anymore.
Then we're not fighting for the liberty that this country was formed.
There are things you can censor.
I think you can censor pornography.
I think you can censor foul language as long as you keep foul language to the narrow words that we all know are foul and you don't say, well, saying men can't become women is foul language.
But you really have to allow people to speak and say things that you disagree with, even if you say, well, you can't say it while you're naked in the middle of the street.
That's different.
Well, you can't burn a flag.
I don't believe you should be allowed to burn a flag.
But you should be allowed to say, I hate America.
You should.
And so that's what I think we have to fight for.
This is what we have to fight for.
And we have to fight for it with the tragic sense.
We have to understand that there are all kinds of gray areas, that there are all kinds of dangers.
It's dangerous to have the government tell private enterprise what it can do.
So we have to keep it modest.
We have to be humble about it, but we have to get it done.
You know, if we reinvent this tragic sense that the great difficulty lies in having the government control the governed, but also having the government control itself, we have to understand that the government is now more than the government it used to be.
These are not just elected officials.
This is a deep state working in cahoots with social media, working in cahoots with a willing press, a supine press, and with Hollywood.
We have to stand up against them all by the way we live, by the way we act, by the way we treat them as well.
It makes it hard.
It's hard.
We have a harder task than they do, but we have to do it.
And it starts with each one of us as individuals.
Tax season is almost here.
Reason vs. Faith00:10:37
And if you own a small to medium-sized business that kept employees on the payroll through COVID, you may have a big cash refund waiting for you.
The employee retention credit is a tax credit of up to $26,000 per employee.
Right now, more businesses than ever qualify.
The experts at Refunds Pro can help you cut through the red tape and qualify for this government program.
Most of their refunds are over $100,000.
Even businesses that have received PPP funds may be eligible, and there are absolutely no fees unless you receive a refund.
There's no reason not to apply.
If your businesses experience shutdowns, limited capacity, supply chain challenges, or reduced revenue due to COVID, you likely qualify.
Refunds Pro has already helped hundreds of businesses.
Don't lose the refund you're owed by missing the deadline.
Get started today with a free five-minute questionnaire at refundspro.com.
That's refunds with an S pro.com.
Now, this is a tough subject and I only have a few minutes to address it.
So I'm going to just lay it down.
I'm going to give a speech next month, I think, about the role of God in politics.
The thing is, on the right, nothing we say makes sense without God.
I know some people tell me, oh, yes, it does.
It doesn't.
Without God, without God, if we are just material, if our bodies have no meaning, if there's no meaning to our actions, there's just desire, then everything the left says is true.
If all there is, if physical desires are the only reality, why can't we do anything we want if we're not hurting anybody, if we have people who agree with it?
Why can't we teach children to play along, you know, to follow their desires?
You know, there was this Alaska school board meeting where a father got up and he started to read a book that was in the school library.
And this is what it said.
There's nothing wrong with enjoying some porn.
It's a fun, sugary treat.
And it had, you know, obviously pornographic pictures in it.
It says, a great place to research fantasies and kinks safely is on the internet.
There's tons of people in communities out there who share your interests and have all kinds of advice.
So of course, the school board voted to silence him.
They voted like 5-2 or 5-3 to silence him because they know it's evil, but it also makes sense without God.
Everything the left says makes sense without God.
It all stands to reason.
This is why I can't stand this thing on the right, this elevating Ayn Rand.
Here's a quote from Ayn Rand.
Let's play cut to.
When you accept such an important issue as the creation of the universe on faith, you're destroying your confidence and the validity of your own mind.
It has to be either reason or faith.
I am against God for the reason that I don't want to destroy reason.
How can I be against God?
I'm against those who conceived that idea.
Tell us why.
Tell us why.
Because then it gives men permission to function irrationally, to accept something above and outside the power of their reason.
Well, it doesn't actually allow the whole point about God, the Christian God and the Jewish God too, is we believe that he acts with reason and that our reason is a reflection of his reason.
But there is something higher than our reason.
It's God's reason.
You know, reason can get you anywhere.
You can reason through anything.
If we're produced by evolution and we want a superior race, why shouldn't exactly we make sure that inferior people don't reproduce?
Why maybe we should kill off the inferior people?
Maybe that would be the sanest thing to do, the most reasonable thing to do.
We only don't do it because it's wrong and we only know it's wrong because of a sense we have of what I call the great speculation that you are as important to God as I am to God and that both of us are as real to ourselves.
You know, we think that Ayn Rand is the enemy of Karl Marx.
Ayn Rand and Karl Marx are the same damn person.
The people who follow Ayn Rand and the people who follow Karl Marx are exactly the same people.
They're people who think that systems can fix the broken timber of humanity.
They're people who think that systems, if we just get the right system in place, everything is going to be great.
They're people who think money solves problems.
One's going to distribute it here with the makers.
The other is going to distribute it here with the takers.
You know, one system works better than the other, but it still doesn't solve the problem of power.
It still does not solve the problem of man's inhumanity to man.
All of those things only can be solved through the unreasonable speculation that each of us is as important to God as the other.
You know, with God, our flesh has moral meaning.
And so we have to start to act in certain ways.
I mean, you know, your mother locked you in a hen house when you were seven, and so now you can only get turned on when your wife dresses up like a chicken.
You know, is that right or is it wrong?
Well, you know, I think it's troublesome.
It's troublesome.
It's not hurting anybody.
Your wife is agreeing to it, but maybe it's not dignifying you.
Maybe it's not dignifying her.
Maybe it's not paying enough homage to the person that you are meant to be.
That, to me, is what God is about.
God is about, Jesus said, you know, be perfect like your Father in heaven is perfect.
But what that means when you translate it from the Greek is fulfill yourself.
Fulfill the person that you were meant to be, that God made you to be, the way God fulfills his telos, his end, his purpose.
So it is a different way of looking at things.
It's a way of looking at things that's hard.
It's unnatural.
It's saying that we're broken somehow, that we have to sometimes force down our desires and do the right thing.
This is why the people on the left, the anti-God people, the people who will not believe in God, not only say that it's all right to teach little children that they can study their fetishes online, but they also say it's all right to be fat.
It's healthy.
Fat is healthy.
Cosmopolitan.
Had magazines.
Fat is healthy.
Why?
Because it's all just, it's just body.
It's just what you want.
Why would you be unnatural and fight down your desire for more chocolate cake?
Why would you do that?
Why would you say that if you want to be a woman, why would you say you're just going to let your body, just because your body is a man, why not cut your body up and turn it into a lady suit?
Why not do it?
And what we are saying is, no, you were made to be a certain person that you are not.
Everybody knows this deep down, by the way.
You are made to be a certain person, and it's hard.
You have to control some of your body's desires to become that person that you were made to be.
If you don't think that's true, name me one other excellent thing that can be achieved without hard work.
To be slender and attractive, to be healthy, takes incredible discipline and incredible hard work, especially as you get older.
The amount of exercise you have to do, the amount of eating.
And my question is this, is this.
If you do believe in God and if you do understand that this is that God wants you to be something more than you are, do you live that way?
Do you live that way?
And do you live that way joyfully?
Because let me play you a little clip of the left.
Okay, here's a clip that the Daily Wire put together of leftists reacting to various events cut for.
Holy f ⁇ ing shit, you guys!
Education Why can't women have a voice shape?
I just saw a f ⁇ ing pro-life sign driving out the mall road under a miserable pain job.
Everybody say I can be myself.
You're so f ⁇ ing stupid!
A fascist is a fascist!
Maybe we can have the conversation about dismantling the two-party system when a fascist isn't running!
Maybe we can do that later, kiddo!
Shamp!
Sheep!
Maybe we can talk about it later!
So let me ask you, you want to be those guys?
You want to be those people?
You know, when I tell you, when I say that Jesus meant it when he told you not to judge, just imagine yourself on the line at the Pearling Gates going before St. Peter, and St. Peter says, well, what did you do that was good?
And you say, well, I condemned gay people.
You know, how do you think that's going to play out for you?
It's going to be about whether you became the person God made you to be and whether you did it with such joy and whether you took on the discipline of that every single day and did things every single day that would bring you even half an inch closer to that goal and whether you did it with joy so that the person next to you said, I want to be like that guy.
I don't want to be like those leftists.
All of this, the revolution and the renaissance starts with you.
It starts with you in your home, in your body, in your mind.
It really does.
I mean, this is, Gandhi is right about this.
That is the only way this is going to happen.
If you are busy yelling at other people for what they're doing, but you have not tended to yourself.
I know you have to act politically.
I know you have to act in the world.
It starts in the school boards.
It starts in the school board meetings.
It starts in your home.
It starts in your church.
It starts in all those places.
We have to stand up for your ideas and stand up for your thoughts and stand up for freedom.
But you've got to do it in such a way that you become the person other people want to be.
That is where the revolution begins and that's where the renaissance begins.
Whether you're a first-time parent or an empty nester, you deserve to have peace of mind that everything is taken care of when you're planning for your family.
A will is not just for old guys like me or the super wealthy.
A will is about so much more than that.
It's about leaving behind your legacy, having your voice heard when you can't speak for yourself, and being there for your loved ones even after you're gone.
Epic Will helps you to decide today how the future may go should the unexpected happen.
Did you know that 50% of Americans don't have a will?
I cannot stress enough how important it is to create one.
Epic Will is here to get you started for just $119.
And in as little as five minutes, Epic Will can help you create your last will and testament, your living will, and even healthcare power of attorney.
Their step-by-step online form makes it incredibly easy.
All you need to do is fill in the blanks.
Go to epicwill.com and use promo code Clavin to save 10% on Epic Will's complete will package.
That's epicwill.com.
Promo code Clavin.
I know this is so important.
All you want to know is how do I spell Clavin?
Leaving Your Legacy00:13:28
How, oh, how?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
So I watched the Super Bowl, and one of the things I came away with in the context of this conversation about the tragic sense and recovering the tragic sense that conservatives, I think, have to learn how to do, take the win, how to take the win.
You've got to fight the loss, but you got to take the win.
I mean, this is what I used to basically be telling Ben when we were starting out, and we were talking about optimism and pessimism.
Everything dies.
Countries fall.
All countries fall.
All systems collapse.
You're going to lose eventually.
Conservatives who are trying to conserve what's great about the country will one day lose, but not today.
That's got to be your attitude.
You're like a doctor.
A doctor keeps people alive.
A conservative is like a doctor.
He keeps you alive today.
Eventually, he's going to lose.
Eventually, you're going to die.
But you can win today.
And when you win, take the win.
Take the win, take the day, and then fight the loss.
So the Super Bowl.
Great game.
I loved every minute of it.
I just thought I was talking to David Cohn before coming in about the fact that over with the Crane sports guys about the fact that they've actually reworked the way that teams are made, the parody in the teams, so that Super Bowl used to be a boring game.
Now it's great.
Very inspiring watching Patrick Mahomes fight through his injury.
Very inspiring watching Jalen Hurts of Philadelphia, who was benched when he was a college player during the big game for the Crimson Tide, I think it was, and fought his way back to being the Super Bowl quarterback.
Both of them played spectacular.
It was decided in the last couple of seconds.
Some people said that the ref's call was unfair, but I think they always call that when you clutch somebody's jersey, when a defender clutches a passer's jersey, that's always going to be called pass interference.
The guy himself, the defender, said it was pass interference.
So it's part of the game.
So I'm watching this.
And first of all, all the left could talk about was the color of the people's skins.
Two quarterbacks with the same color skin.
Oh, look, they have skin and it's the same color.
Two black quarterbacks.
Here's just a sample, Sonny Host and Whoopi Goldberg from our favorite show, The View.
The only thing that would have made it better for me is, you know, finally we know that black quarterbacks can lead teams and are smart enough to lead teams.
I would like to see.
I always knew that.
That's right.
Right, we knew that.
We knew that.
But, you know, it takes people a minute to catch up.
Yeah, they were so far ahead of us.
We didn't know that.
We didn't know that black people were smart enough to lead teams.
But Whoopi knew, Whoopee knew.
It was that woman with an IQ like my shoe, basically.
I got to be honest with you.
I never occurred to me.
This is absolutely true.
I swear.
I had no idea what color Patrick Mahomes was.
And it never even occurred to me to wonder what color he was.
It never occurred to me to wonder, what color is that guy?
He just, I always thought he was a little goofy looking, you know, but like, not having nothing to do with his color.
It never occurred to me to wonder.
And then after they started talking about it, I looked it up and his mom was white.
So according to the left, if you have just one drop of black blood and you vote Democrat, then you're black.
If you have one drop of black blood, you vote Democrat.
But if you're all black, like Larry Elder, and you don't vote Democrat, then you're the black face of white supremacy.
So it's all such nonsense.
What I saw, what I thought the big stories was, was that you were watching two Christian men get to the highest level of their sport.
Both of them knelt down and prayed before the game in front of the entire world.
And I assume, I don't think athletes pray to win.
I don't think they're smart enough to know not to do that.
I think athletes pray for excellence and to play well and to play, maybe to play safely, maybe to keep their teammates safe.
But they pray for excellence.
And both of them had their prayers answered in front of the entire world.
And I put that on Twitter.
And a lot of people say, well, why didn't God like Jalen Hurts as if that's the only way God can bless you is through your winning.
But that's not the way it works.
You pray to do the best you can do to actually manifest God's work in you on the field or whether you're sitting down to write a book or whether you're sitting down to clean up a men's room, if that's your job, to manifest that excellence.
That's the thing that you do that actually shows God in his best light, doing it for God's sake.
And so they did.
And that was a beautiful thing.
But then some conservatives tweeted at me.
You shouldn't be watching the Super Bowl.
Yeah, you know, anybody who watches the Super Bowl is a disgrace.
You got to be pure.
Now, I love football, and I especially love NFL football.
When Colin Capraface, whatever the hell his name was, started that whole thing, kneeling at the national anthem, and all the players were kneeling at the national anthem.
I boycotted football.
Two years, I didn't watch football, and it was really painful.
It was really hard because I really get a lot of joy out of watching football.
But I did it hoping that a lot of other people were doing it.
I talked about it.
And I really think they kind of got the message because when I went and looked after about two years, it was really different.
This was a very beautiful, big, beautiful rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner.
Country star Chris Stapleton, so beautiful.
The Philly head coach, Nick Siriani, was crying.
A lot of people, I think, were crying.
It was such a beautiful rendition.
The flyovers and all this stuff.
The big, enormous flag, take the win.
Take the win.
The NFL got the message.
Now, take the win and fight the loss.
They did sing that awful, it's a terrible song, that lift every voice and sing.
What a boring, horrible song.
Tuneless, stupid, awful.
I mean, and they call it the black national anthem.
Now, they didn't call it that in front, but they did give Carrie Lake, remember who ran for governor of Arizona, she sat through it.
Why wouldn't you sit through it?
It was just a song.
And they said, well, you should stand for it.
It's the black national anthem.
But no.
See, this is my whole problem with this.
My whole problem with this is if blacks are appealing to saying they're being treated unjustly, what they're saying is they're not being treated like Americans.
The rules that they want followed are American rules.
They didn't exist before, right?
They want to be treated equally because America is a country where we treat people equally.
We pride ourselves on it.
And sometimes we fail to do that.
Obviously, we fail.
All people fail.
And sometimes we have failed to do that.
If they're not Americans, what do I care?
I mean, there's injustice all over the world.
If black Americans are Americans, they are my family.
This is my American family.
I don't give a rat.
I love the fact that this is a multicultural, multi-ethnic country.
I don't like that it's a multicultural country, but a multi-ethnic country is absolutely fine.
I think it's one of the great achievements of being an American.
An American, if you're an American, I will listen to you.
I may disagree with you.
I may say, no, this guy shouldn't have resisted arrest.
That's why he got killed by the cops.
But I will listen to you and I will listen to you and care that my American family is being treated fairly.
If you're standing up for some other national anthem, my feeling is, oh, you got shot by a cop.
Too bad you weren't an American.
Too bad, too bad.
Oh, you're being mistreated.
Too bad you're not an American.
If you are an American, stand up for the damn national anthem.
If you're not an American, hey, it's injustice in every other country.
It's only this country where we hold ourselves to those incredibly high standards.
That's why I boycotted it.
That's why I take the win, that I see they got that message, that they were standing up, all of them standing up.
I didn't see anybody kneeling for the national anthem.
And I think they should get rid of that stupid song.
I think telling black people that they're not Americans, that they have their own national anthem, is one of the most destructive things that you can do to them.
They are Americans like everybody else and should be treated like Americans as long as they're Americans.
If they're not, well, too bad.
Take the win on the Jesus commercials.
He gets us.
These are ads.
They were paid for by the Servant Foundation.
And the Servant Foundation has donated lots of money to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group, very important group.
I like them.
And they've been involved in several legislative pushes to curtail LGBTQ rights.
I'm reading this off a website, but that's not right.
What they want is make people free to speak their minds.
And who else?
The Hobby Lobby co-founder was there, and they won an important case saying they have the right to uphold their religious values.
So AOC tweets, something tells me Jesus would not spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.
But the right was, oh, this is woke Jesus because they showed that Jesus loves everybody.
They showed people disagreeing.
They showed people fighting, yelling at each other, showed people who were illegal immigrants and said, Jesus gets us.
He understands us.
He's with us where we are.
That's true, folks.
I'm sorry, but that's the actual case.
Jesus is not sitting around going like, as people are illegal.
He understands.
He's looking at things above politics.
He's way, way, way above politics.
So, yeah, Jesus loves our political opponents.
I don't know why.
I'd like to have a talk with him about it.
That's the way it is.
Take the win.
We should be talking about God.
We should be celebrating every time.
You know, DeMar Hamlin, the guy who collapsed, he came out and he celebrated with all the people who helped save his life.
And he was wearing a jacket that had a kind of abstract picture of Jesus Christ.
And he's a believer as well.
He's a faithful man as well.
And some people were saying, Adrian Peterson, the guy who was suspended for beating, for lashing his child with a switch.
He was suspended.
Adrian Peterson said, that's blasphemous.
You ought to be thanking God.
Well, he is thanking God.
He's a faithful guy.
Take the win.
Take the win.
That is a good thing.
And so you didn't like the picture on his jacket.
Somebody gave him the jacket.
And he apologized.
I thought, don't apologize.
Don't apologize for praising God and representing God.
You were brought back from the dead.
That's how God, what God do, pal.
You know, so don't apologize.
You know, God love you.
I'm glad you're back.
Finally, speaking of God, we all know that Greg Gutfeld is a God to me.
No, but he had a funny ad because he's now destroying all these leftist walk-in line conformists on late night TV.
He's getting better ratings.
So he got a Super Bowl ad.
I think it was on Twice.
It was very funny.
It was just saying Greg Gutfeld is the king of late night.
And then just as the commercial starts, it ended because they ran out of money.
So it was a funny ad.
It was a good ad.
Drove the Dean Obadiela Dila, a left-wing broadcaster, who was talking to the creator of the daily show, Liz Winstead, and drove them crazy that he got this ad, Cut Six.
He's going to have a Super Bowl ad.
I'm not kidding.
The Super Bowl Sunday, touting him.
Fox News is running king of late night, Greg Gutfeld, dressed like a king.
And technically, his ratings, he starts 11 p.m. Eastern Time.
It's a half hour earlier, but he beat Colbert, Fallon, and Kimmel now consistently in the ratings.
I don't think it's a fair comparison.
I don't know one comment going, I hope I get on Guttfeld.
You know, comics want to get on Fallon.
They want to get on Letterman in the past.
Like, who dreams of Fox News after Tom Shalou?
Who Tom gets on that?
Like, there's a few right-wing comments.
So, Liz, look, you created the daily show.
Is Greg Guttfeld's bullshit considered late night comedy show?
Look, here's what I always say: he ain't funny to me, but we see that there's an audience out there for like that.
There's an audience out there for shit like Joe Rogan.
There's an audience out there of shitty people.
That's what they think.
That's what the creator of the Daily Show thinks of you, folks.
You're an effing round of awful people.
The thing I love about this, I just love the fact that it kills them that Greg, first of all, that Greg's doing better than they are because the Daily Show is gone.
Nobody pays attention to him anymore.
But not just that.
It's that they don't know we're here.
And this is what I love because we outnumber them.
And I'm not talking about conservatives.
I'm talking about sane people.
I'm talking about people willing to listen to other points of view.
I'm talking about people willing to make jokes about Joe Biden and not just about Donald Trump.
You know, you watch Stephen Colbert.
It's embarrassing.
I'm embarrassed for him.
I actually am embarrassed for him that he's such a toady.
He's such a creeping, crawling little toady.
Greg's not.
Greg will make fun of anybody.
And Greg is funny.
So it's wonderful that they don't know we're here and they don't know we outnumber them and their world is getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
This is why sometimes I get so frustrated with the right not paying attention to culture in all kinds of different ways, not just supporting the arts, not just making sure there is an infrastructure for artists like me who are basically, I'm basically living off your kindness, the fact that you buy my books and love my books, and I'm so grateful for that.
But nobody's going to give me an award.
Nobody's going to write a good review of me in a mainstream paper because we don't build those things.
We don't build mainstream outlets that care about the arts enough to welcome people like me who are working, I would say, at the top of my profession and the top of my field.
But there's nobody there to give me a rave.
There's nobody there to do this.
And I'm not complaining about it because God love you.
You've made my books bestsellers.
But I'm just saying the guy who's coming up, the guy who just wants to get started, is not going to have those things.
They're losing.
Jordan's Vision for Wins00:04:12
This is the thing.
I know they look like they have all the power now, you know, but that's what happens right before a revolution, right before they show up at the Tuileries and carry the king out to the guillotine.
They think they're the king.
You know, they think everything is great.
They are losing.
This is it.
You know, the fact that you can put Jesus commercials on the Super Bowl, the fact that this star, DeMar Hamelin, who's become the biggest story in football, shows up with a Jesus jacket.
These are wins.
These are wins.
The fact that people are crying because the guy sings the national anthem so beautifully at the biggest football game in the biggest media arena in the world.
These are wins.
Take the wins.
We don't have to be perfect.
We don't have to love everything the NFL does.
We can understand that the NFL will go anywhere the wind blows, anywhere the money is.
They'll go to China.
They'll do anything.
They're disgraceful.
You're absolutely right.
But football is the greatest game in the world.
And in that moment, we are getting some great messages coming out and great things.
Take the win.
If you're constantly disgruntled, if you're constantly angry, if you're constantly sour, it's because you don't have a tragic sense of life.
You don't realize this is a beautiful thing.
Every win is a win.
And if you're like that, of course, you're so unappealing and people just turn away from you and won't follow.
This is the moment.
This is the moment.
They have the high ground, but they're making fools of themselves.
They're talking crap.
They're forcing people to say things they don't believe.
This is the moment.
This is a great moment to take it all back.
It starts with you.
It starts with me.
It starts with each one of us.
Learn how to take the win.
Learn how to celebrate the victories.
Learn how to win what you can win in that day.
And the Renaissance will come.
This guy, Jordan Peterson, never stops making content.
We have a new five-part series with Jordan.
It's available now at Daily Wire Plus.
Here's a first look at the trailer.
What you already know is not sufficient to guide you into the future.
The future is indeterminate.
You cannot compute your way through the present into the future.
You need to use your vision to weave your way through life.
You're going to face tyrants and you're going to face mobs.
Is there a vision that can sustain you in the face of that?
You should accept yourself just the way you are.
What does that say about who I should become?
Is that just now off the table because I'm already good enough in every way?
So am I done or something?
Get the hell up.
Get your act together.
Adopt some responsibility.
Put your life together.
Develop a vision.
Unfold all those manifold possibilities that lurk within.
Be a force for good in the world.
and that'll be the adventure of your life.
Get the hell up.
I love Jordan.
If you actually become a subscriber, he will come to your house and slap you.
He doesn't get the hell up.
He's got some great advice in this series that can really help you improve your life.
Episode one is available now and new episodes are coming online every week, but it's all exclusive for Daily Wire Plus members.
If you are not a member, now is a great time to join because you get 40% off on an annual membership and you'll unlock over 50 hours of exclusive Jordan Peterson content along with our entire library of movies, doc specials and kids content coming this spring and our first major scripted series coming later this year.
We've also got some exciting new exclusive content in the works for this year that we can't tell you about yet, but you won't want to miss it.
If you need some inspiration and help building a compelling vision for your life, join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe to watch Vision and Destiny.
All right, we're talking about the fact that we are the cultural revolution because our institutions have already been taken over.
And I wanted to bring on author Kent Hecken lively because he's quickly gaining a reputation as one of the country's leading voices about speaking about corrupt institutions.
And speaking of corrupt institutions, he's got a new book out, his 12th book, called This Was CNN, How Sex, Lies, and Spies Undid the World's Worst News Network.
Ken, thank you so much for coming on.
How CNN Lost Trust00:14:48
Thanks for having me, Andrew.
And I'd like to say in deference to Don Lemon, I am a man in my prime.
Okay.
All right.
I'm not on the decline.
I'm in my prime, Andrew.
Don has got your back, Kent.
Just need to say that.
No, you know, we were going to have a woman on, but they just, they just burn out too quickly.
Exactly.
You know, I'm built a little more sturdy.
So I can remember CNN when it was a decent spot news network.
You turned it on when something was going on, some big event was going on.
They covered it.
How did we get here?
You know, let's start with your co-author.
The co-author of this book is Carrie Porch.
He actually worked there, right?
And he saw it from the inside.
Yeah, he worked there for two years and he started working there as a big supporter of Bernie Sanders.
The previous year, he'd worked 10 hours a week volunteering for Bernie Sanders.
So he did not go in there as a conservative into CNN.
But from what he saw, he had a sense of fairness to people.
He always has.
He's got that good southern background where even if you disagree, you're polite and you listen to people.
And what he saw at CNN just turned his stomach and eventually led him to Project Veritas and recording for about six months and going after the bias there.
Wow.
So what did he see?
I mean, what was he looking at?
Just the same things that we see as we watch it?
Yeah, a lot of behind the scenes information.
There was a lot of dissatisfaction among the rank and file about what Jeffrey Zucker was doing and the focus on anti-Trump, anti-Trump.
And what really turned Kerry Porch was he was a satellite uplink technician, which means he's the guy who is responsible for getting the news van ready, breaking story, racing to the scene, setting up all the technology, and then going having coffee for five or six hours while the reporters or anchors take over.
And the first big story was Charlottesville.
And so he races down there.
He's on site as all of that craziness is going on.
He's in the CNN news truck.
He's hearing what Trump is saying in real time, in response to it.
And he's just sickened by it because here he is not a Trump fan.
He's a Bernie guy.
And he's saying, well, the president said everything that a president should say in a time of crisis.
And, you know, what was really dramatic was to look at the timeline of what was on CNN prior to that nutcase driving into that crowd of protesters.
And literally a half an hour before that nutcase drove into the crowd of protesters, CNN had David Duke on, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
So if there's anybody heightening things, it was CNN.
And, you know, you talked a little bit about what CNN used to be.
And the book really opens up as something of a love letter to Ted Turner, who was a definite lefty.
But he had this idea that when there was a controversial issue, you'd have the smartest person on the left debate the smartest person on the right, let him go at it for 15, 20 minutes, then let the public make up their own mind.
And that definitely changed.
I mean, Turner was pushed out in 2003 by Time Warner.
And they had told him that he would have influence, control, that sort of thing.
But it was a lie.
They basically kicked him to the curb and he got a big chunk of money, but he really lost all of his influence.
And that's where I really think CNN started changing.
So that's before, well before Donald Trump.
So it's not all just Trump derangement syndrome.
What's the motivation for taking what was, I think, a successful cable news network, the leading cable news network then?
What's the motivation for changing it?
Well, there were a lot of changes in the media landscape.
I mean, you had newspapers going out of business because newspapers used to make a lot of their money from the classified ads.
And then Craigslist came along and took that money away.
And what happened in the news media is that CNN, it's reliable, but it struck a lot of people kind of boring as there was more confrontation going on in the media.
And the networks were able with technology to see which stories were hitting emotional buttons with people.
And, you know, I put part of this on the public.
I mean, we love controversy.
Show us a fight.
And, you know, we're hooked.
And so maybe part of the problem is with us.
But what happened was they were able to figure out that outrage gets you eyeballs.
And, you know, I think it's like, you know, hey, you have a Snickers bar.
You get a burst of energy.
Okay.
But we don't want to have Snickers bars all day.
So maybe part of the story of this book is that it's we, the public, who need to change.
When we see unfairness, whether it's on the right or left, maybe we just need to turn it off.
But why did they go so far to the left?
I mean, they lost.
By the time they were finished, they had like six guys were watching them.
Most of them were in airports.
Why did they choose to go so far left?
You know, I think it's the kid having a Snickers bar and then having another one.
And eventually there's this crash and, you know, it's eight o'clock at night and they're crashed on the couch.
So I think that, you know, it's like getting hooked on heroin.
You go for the high.
I mean, in January of 2021, CNN had really high ratings.
It's almost like the Roman Empire always needed an enemy.
And once the fact that they finally destroyed the last remaining Germanic tribes, that's when the Roman Republic falls and dissolves into civil war.
So I think that what sounded like a good idea at the time, with the longer perspective, it's been a disaster.
So, you know, you say how sex lies and spies under the world's worst news network.
And it's called This Was CNN is the name of the book.
Let's talk about sex for a minute because, you know, there was obviously some sexual malfeasance over at Fox.
And there's already been a television show and a movie made about it and an endless documentary.
I mean, it's just like an endless chain, but there was a lot of incredible amount of sexual shenanigans going over at CNN.
What was that about?
Okay.
And, you know, there's, I make the point in the book.
I think the sex part is the least interesting part of the story because who knows what is going on in any large group of people, but it seemed like there was sort of the arrogance of power.
Almost, you know, I recently watched the special on Roger Ailes and it seemed like you had a similar sort of thing with an alpha male thinking he can get away with things.
And, you know, if you're a good-looking alpha male, it seems like you can get away with a lot more than if you're a bad looking alpha male.
But there was also a number of things more disturbing were senior producers who were caught with child pornography trying to entice young minors.
I think there was a new story that just came out.
So I do question what is going on and sort of the arrogance of power and, you know, the Chris and Andrew Cuomo situation we cover.
And it's kind of like an entitlement mentality.
And, you know, I make the point that even though the book is about CNN, I think that any group of powerful people, you're going to have some of the same problems.
So, you know, yes, this went on at Fox, but it also went on at CNN.
And, you know, we as the public should talk about it because, you know, we want, I think one of the most disturbing things to me was the story about a 26-year-old woman working for Andrew Cuomo and, you know, being felt up by the governor.
And Chris Cuomo comes out and says, what, you know, a 26-year-old can't take an older guy hitting on her.
I'm just like, God, haven't we gone past that?
I mean, you're a goddamn Democrat.
This is supposed to be your deal, which is, you know, let's be welcoming to women in the workplace.
Let's let them think they're not going to be subjected to that.
And so I found a lot of hypocrisy.
So James Clapper, the former head of national security, who lied about the Hunter Biden laptop and is now going around saying, well, it's not our fault we lied.
It's the media, you know, he's still lying.
He still has a gig at CNN.
Are they changing at all?
I mean, I know they fired, you know, Brian Stelter, which was a good choice, but still, I mean, are they going to change it all?
Well, there's a couple of things going on.
So CNN's got some new owners.
Chris Licht is in charge of programming and John Malone is basically the owner.
And I have to tell your audience, I've sent a copy of my book with my telephone number to both gentlemen because they have said a lot of things which are very consistent with what we argue in this book, which is CNN needs to be more objective.
Now, the problem is, when you watch a news organization, you develop the trust.
There's an intimacy that you have with them.
And when that trust is violated, just like it's violated in a marriage or a relationship, it's really tough to go back to that, to trust.
So I think CNN has a real problem on their hand because I think the new owners are trying to push it more back to the center.
They're getting a lot of resistance from their hosts.
I mean, Don Lemon is a perfect example.
I think, you know, they're demoting him and demoting him, and he just keeps doing stupider and he's doing stupider and stupider things, you know, like saying, you know, Nikki Haley is pastor prime.
Now, I'm not a Nikki Haley fan, but oh my God, that sounds about the most sexist thing you could ever say.
And, you know, so what's going on?
So, but also the kind of thing that interests me, like with the Clapper situation, is, you know, Clapper is sort of the spook that you know about.
And what we found that was really interesting, this is not going to be, you know, part of my book, but I hired some of the world's best researchers to do a deep dive.
And they came back to me kind of sheepishly and said, wow, you found this really interesting pattern, which is that senior journalists and executives there are leaving CNN for a period of a year or two, going to work for our government in an intelligence capacity and then returning to CNN.
Wow.
Probably the most prominent is Jim Sukudo, their national security correspondent.
From December 2011 to May of 2013, he was chief of staff at our U.S. embassy in Beijing, China.
Now, you can't tell me that he didn't have to sign the most ironclad security oaths, secrecy oaths.
And then we're supposed to believe that he goes back to CNN and he's giving us the truth about our own government or foreign governments.
Doesn't it seem like he's been influenced or corrupted?
I mean, these people are supposed to speak truth to power, not go to work for power, sign secrecy oaths with power, and then go back to objective journalism.
Now, if you're going to be a diplomat or in the intelligence agencies, God love you.
Thank you for your service.
But don't tell me you can come back and be an objective journalist, because I remember a time when journalists wouldn't even go to dinner with a politician because they were worried about it influencing their objectivity.
So I wonder how.
I've only got one minute left.
I just want to ask you, you said, was that a pattern?
They did this again and again.
Yeah.
So we uncovered 21 individuals, like Bob Ortega is one of them.
He's a senior writer on the border.
He went and was a vice consul at our U.S. Consulate in Ecuador, many others.
And, you know, it sounds like what used to be called Operation Mockingbird, where we had 400 members of the journalism community who were on the payroll of the CIA.
This used to be something that people like Woodward and Bernstein would talk about.
But suddenly it's not a left-wing question.
It's a right-wing question.
And I'm a right-winger because I'm asking it.
The book is This Was CNN, How Sex, Lies, and Spies Undid the World's Worst News Network.
The author is Kent Heckenlively, writing with Carrie Porch.
Kent, thank you very much for coming on.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks very much for having me, Andrew.
If you are not a subscriber, you know, you want to subscribe because we're going to do some really good anti-feminist content coming up.
I want to talk to Media Matters.
If you guys aren't all, you know, don't have a subscription, you should get a subscription to the Daily Wire because I'm going to give you some good stuff you can complain about later on.
But for the rest of you who are about to be plunged into the Clavenless weekend where there is great wailing and gnashing of teeth, fire, eternal flames, it's terrible.
But before you go forever into eternal darkness, we will solve your problems with the mailbag.
I'm going to assume that that was the Biden, this is a train development.
I was close.
I was going to say it was the Biden administration collapsing.
All right.
Hello, Mr. Clavin.
First off, thank you for the unique content you bring to the Daily Wire.
I always look forward to Friday.
Husband as Peter Pan00:09:15
I have a question regarding your response to a lady asking about her husband.
This was, I had a lot of reaction to this.
This is the lady saying her husband wouldn't do his chores.
And I said to tell him he's the king of the castle and let him make the rules and that that would be the best thing she could do, even though it might not work.
If it didn't work, it was because he was not going to grow up and leave the household.
But this lady says, this is a concern brought up.
The concern brought up by this woman is one I've heard echoed by many of my friends in their marriages.
If both the man and woman work, the woman is still usually expected to cook, clean up after the cooking, clean the house, do the laundry, and do the lion's share of the child rearing.
The men, on the other hand, think it is sufficient to just go to work and their duty is done.
If the man works and the woman stays at home, as was my circumstance, my former husband refused to help out with the simplest of tasks, didn't think that I deserved some time off without the children, and I was still supposed to expect to want to have sex with them, even when the husband's behavior doesn't change.
The Bible does say wives are to submit to their husbands, but the second and equally important part of that scripture, and I really agree with this, by the way, verse is usually forgotten that husbands are supposed to love their wives as Christ has loved the church.
It doesn't work if that part is not in play.
You're absolutely right about that.
And many men seem to have forgotten that part.
Absolutely true.
She says, I'm a Christian, an ardent listener of yours.
I'm not trying to be some crazy purple-haired feminist when I bring up these concerns.
I think it is honestly a big problem in the relationship and marriages of today's generation.
I don't think it's also fair to always assume that the man is acting this way.
It must be something the woman is doing.
Again, thank you for all you do.
Curious to hear your thoughts on this discourage woman's perspective.
Warm regards.
All right, let me answer this because I think it's really, I agree with almost everything you're saying.
First of all, I hope it was clear that I was teasing this woman a little bit.
I mean, I felt that her letter where she talked about her husband wasn't doing his assigned chores.
I thought it sounded a little bit overbearing.
And so I was trolling her a little bit, saying, you know, you should go call your husband your liege lord and all that stuff.
And obviously, I was teasing her a little bit.
I thought it was obvious.
But, you know, on the show, I think it's fair to say I tell a lot of men that they have to man up.
When I get these letters, I tell a lot of men that they have to fulfill their duties and loving your wife and putting her happiness as part of your leadership is very important.
But I thought sometimes women need to be told that they need to woman up a little bit, that they have a different role to play and different things that they have to do.
If you listen carefully, if you go back and listen carefully to what I said, I said to try my way first.
If you give your husband a chance to lead and he doesn't fulfill the second half of that Bible portion, and he doesn't lead in a loving and just way, then you have a different problem that is not your fault, which is that you married Peter Pan.
Maybe it's your fault you married Peter Pan, but it's his fault for being Peter Pan.
And that's what you're describing.
So I completely agree.
I mean, I said it, I was saying it in a kind of teasing way, but I agree that this is a social problem.
We have a stupid idea of gender.
We think gender is a choice, that it's an accident, that it is mutable in some way.
I'm not talking about just transgender people.
I'm talking about feminists too.
I think gender is a privilege and a responsibility.
I think it is assigned to you, not by your doctor.
It's assigned to you by your God.
And we should treat each other as if we were responsible to our genders.
You know, I love to tell this Ukraine story, true story of a woman who wanted to be a man in Ukraine.
So she became a man.
She was transgender.
She became a man.
And then the war started, and they wouldn't let the men leave because they needed them as fighters, but they would let the women leave.
So she was a woman who was calling herself a man who dressed up as a woman to escape the country.
And I thought, no, that's not how it works.
If you're a man, it's not that you get to walk around in pants and wear a hat and a mustache.
You actually have responsibilities as a man.
You may fail in those responsibilities, but you have them.
That is a responsibility.
And I think this is true of women too.
I think nurturing and homemaking and creating a world is part of a woman's responsibility.
Not everybody can fulfill it.
Not everybody wants to fulfill it.
But still, if you find out that you're married to Peter Pan and he's not going to lead in a just and loving way, I think that then you have to take all of the tricks you can think of to adjust that.
Tell your husband you're unhappy.
Get some therapy, some joint couples therapy and all those things that you do, because obviously the problem lies in who he is and who he's been taught to be.
And I think that, of course, that's a problem.
So I basically agree with your letter.
I was being a little bit sardonic, I guess, is the word with this lady because of the tone of her letter.
But obviously, as I did say, if your husband will not take the leadership role in a loving way, then you've got a different problem entirely.
From Karsten, let's see, do I have time for this?
It says, I've been a longtime listener.
Your amazing wisdom about the gospel and other critical cultural insights has brought me closer to God, and I thank you for that.
I'm 22 years old.
I'm preparing to propose and marry my 20-year-old girlfriend of one year.
We met through Christian ministry.
My girlfriend was molested repeatedly in her junior high days by one of her now 23-year-old stepbrothers.
She also explained experiences from a much younger age of inappropriate touching for her much older stepbrother, now 27 years old.
Nobody in her family is aware of the abuse except for older sister and her husband, who was raped by the older stepbrother in high school and molested by the younger stepbrother at the same time as my girlfriend.
There are potentially other people that the younger stepbrother is molested.
He was accused in church, but the church buried it.
The whole family has a very strong foundation in Christian values.
Both stepbrothers are now married with kids and street preachers in their free time.
There's been no expression of guilt, remorse, or even acknowledgement.
Both sisters have moved on internally and have a loving relationship with the brothers.
My girlfriend has expressed peace and forgiveness for what happened in the past.
As we move towards marriage, it's my wish that my girlfriend inform her father and stepmother of these truths prior to or shortly after the wedding.
I want nothing to do with these brothers, especially since there's been no remorse and I do not want the children we eventually create to have any relationship with them.
I'm also humbled by the fact that this kind of evil, any man is capable of this kind of evil.
Do I need, I believe the truth ought to be heard, or do I need to forgive, move on, and forget the past as she has successfully done.
I've only got a few minutes, but this is such a complicated issue.
There are three things that immediately spring to mind.
One, this is not, you know, children get up to all kinds of things and do things to each other they shouldn't do.
And that's sad and it's terrible and can be traumatic.
But this is repeated molestation and rape and not just to two people, but other people.
You have an obligation when you know about this to report this to child protective services.
Never mind the family.
Never mind the family.
These people have children.
They may go near other children.
You should report them to child protective services.
That's one thing.
This is really complicated.
So my advice is going to be kind of gray here.
But the second thing is this lady that you want to marry, she may be saying that she's past this, but she's not past that.
I mean, that's a serious trauma.
If she hasn't dealt with it, if her parents don't know about it, she's going to have issues.
They may come up later.
She may suppress them for a while, but that's a real thing, and she's going to need to get some help.
And third, I'm just getting this from my letter.
If I'm wrong, forgive me.
You're being very controlling.
You have to tell your father about this and you're kind of rescuing her.
She doesn't need you to rescue her.
You have to deal with whether you want to be married to her, but it's not your job to tell her how she should relate to her family.
That's not part of leadership.
That's something that she has to decide for herself.
You can discuss it with her, but that's something she has to decide for yourself.
So you're in a situation where, one, you really have a responsibility to make sure this doesn't happen again, which means reporting these guys to child protective services.
So that's going to cause an absolute crap storm.
You're going to have real problems after that.
Two, you better know that this girl is going to have problems, that you are marrying a lot of trouble because she's been molested.
That's a trauma.
It doesn't go away.
Jesus does not say, oh, you've forgiven, you know, you forgave them, so now you're going to be happy.
It's not the way that works.
And third, you ought to look at yourself a little bit because you seem to be kind of coming to the rescue and you're going to control all this.
So there's a lot of dynamics going on here.
The first thing is I think you have to report this to somebody because I think they're a danger to themselves and to others.
And the other is I think you have to take a good look at yourself and ask what you want out of this relationship, what you're getting out of it, and why you're being overbearing because it sounds to me like you are.
Complicated stuff, I'm sorry.
But if you would like to not be plunged into the Clavenless Week before the members block, you want to become a member today by going to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
Use code Claven to check out for two months free on all annual plans.