Ep 194 ｜ A Failing Impeachment Strategy ｜ Guest： Andrew Klavan
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Summary
Andrew Klavan is a screenwriter, novelist, and commentator at The Daily Wire and host of The Andrew Klavan Show on The FiveThirtyEight. Andrew joins me to talk impeachment, the election, and how to talk to family and friends who don t agree with us.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Friday. Today we are talking to my friend Andrew Klavan
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from the Daily Wire. I'm so excited for you to hear this conversation. He's brilliant.
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He gives us so much insight about the election and about the impeachment hearings, the craziness
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that's going on there. Also, he's going to give us some advice for how we talk to relate to
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our relatives and friends who do not agree with us. Okay, without further ado, here is Andrew
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Klavan. Andrew, thanks so much for joining me. It's great to see you. Okay, so I think everyone
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listening probably knows exactly who you are and many, I am guessing, listen to your podcast. But
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just in case there are one or two people out there who don't know, will you tell everyone who you are
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and what you do? Well, I'm a screenwriter and a novelist and a commentator. And I'm now at the
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Daily Wire doing the Andrew Klavan show. And is it every day? Is it an everyday show that people can
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catch it? It's Monday through Thursday. Yeah, it's four days a week. And then there's a long
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Klavan-less weekend, which most people don't survive. So I lose my audience.
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Oh, completely. You have to start back over. New people come in.
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And that's why you're on this podcast, to make sure that you can have a new audience on Monday.
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Okay, perfect. Well, I want to ask you about some of the craziness that's going on in the impeachment
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saga right now. It's very hard for me to keep up with it. It was the same thing with the whole
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Russian thing. I felt like there was something new every week and none of it mattered. And I just
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kind of wanted to see how it all hashed out. That turned out to be a really good strategy for me.
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The same thing happening in the impeachment stuff. And I would say most of my audience feels the same
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way. We don't know what's going on because we're not sure what's relevant and what's not.
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Can you kind of give us just a little concise update or recap on what is currently going on in
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this impeachment drama? Well, the House Intelligence Committee, the
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fakely named House Intelligence Committee, went through this big show. It was basically a show.
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I mean, look, this story is a nonsense to begin with. The minute this thing arose, I thought,
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man, they've been trying to impeach this guy literally since before he got elected, before he took
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office, Molly Hemingway overheard Jerry Nadler, the head of the House Judiciary Committee, saying,
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we are going to try and impeach this guy on this Russian thing. And so we know they've been after
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him forever. So the Russian thing didn't work. None of the other, the obstruction of justice didn't
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work. So now they're on this Ukraine phone call where Trump and some of his other operatives were
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basically badgering the president of Ukraine saying, we want an investigation into corruption
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that might include Joe Biden's son, Hunter, who had this kind of job that he knew nothing about and
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he was making a bundle while Biden was vice president. So they have the investigation in
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the House Intelligence Committee. Then yesterday they issued a report saying, oh, the crimes that
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were committed, the horrifying crimes that were committed because nobody believes them. So they have
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to keep telling us there were these crimes. And now it's in the House Judiciary Committee where they
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have had basically leftist law professors lecturing us about how horrible and horrifying these crimes
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are. And so nothing really happened. I mean, there was no, you know, Trump wanted an investigation
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into corruption in Ukraine that might have included the Bidens. None of that took place. He was said to
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have held up aid. He always holds up aid. He hates giving foreign aid, but the aid was eventually released.
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So nothing is, literally nothing was done. And I don't know how they're going to sell this,
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but now they're on this impeachment train and I'm not sure they can get off.
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All the experts keep saying they won't get off. I wonder if Nancy Pelosi is just going to say,
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you know what, this is making us look terrible because it really is.
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Well, that's what I was going to ask you. What's your prediction for how this ends up?
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Every day you go on Twitter, you got one side who says, oh, this is it. This is the end. Trump is
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done. You've got the other side, of course, our side who would say, no, there's absolutely nothing to
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this. Are we just going to go back and forth until he's reelected or someone else is elected?
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Yes. I mean, if they impeach, which they may because they've got themselves back into this
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corner, it will go to the Senate. Not one Republican has deserted Trump. So you can
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imagine Mitt Romney maybe being pompous enough to have some vote, but no, but you have to be
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convicted by two thirds of the Senate. It's just not going to happen. I think they'd be crazy because
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once it's in the Senate and the Republicans can call witnesses they want to call, then they can call
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Biden and they can call Hunter Biden and they can call Adam Schiff and they're going to have to show
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up and testify. This whole thing has been programmed by Adam Schiff, has been run like a
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television show. He does it in the basement of the Capitol building. He releases the information
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in leaks to the Democrat press like the New York Times. And then the New York Times reliably says,
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oh, my gosh, it's a bombshell. And then we read it and think it's nothing. But once they're in
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the Senate, a lot of witnesses can be called. They may not want to have called. So will it go forward?
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All the experts keep telling me, yes, it will, that they will impeach. Remember, impeachment is
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like an indictment. It's just a charge. The trial takes place in the Senate. Then if it goes to the
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Senate, he will be tried. He will not be convicted, just like Clinton wasn't convicted. And then we'll go
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back and we'll see what effect it has on the 2020 election. It is really hard for me to believe
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that it will have any positive effect on the Democrats, except in their most rabid base.
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I think this is to me, this has been like watching the Wile E. Coyote cartoons where, you know,
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Wile E. Coyote gets the new Acme impeachment machine and keeps trying to drop it on roadrunner
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Trump and keeps blowing himself up. And I just think that's going to continue.
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So Democrats have to know that the trial would not end up how they wanted to end up. So what's behind
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it? Is it just a PR campaign? They think that the longer they drag this out or if they actually
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file the articles of impeachment, they can use that as a talking point going into 2020. Hey,
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this guy was impeached. You're really going to reelect him? You know, he's such a terrible
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president that we actually had to file articles of impeachment. Is it just to be able to spin a new
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narrative and put a new label on Trump going into the election? I think it's to service the left
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wing base. I think that the base of the Democrat party is lost in a narrative that is so ridiculous,
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but they are completely caught up in it. You see them on TV saying Donald Trump is Hitler.
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They actually say that. I mean, I'm not, I'm not making that up. I'm not, I'm not exaggerating.
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They say Donald Trump is Hitler. You think about that for a minute. If Donald Trump was Hitler and
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you went on TV and call them Hitler, two guys would come in, pick you up under the arms,
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carry you away, and you'd never be seen again. But in fact, you can go on TV and call Donald Trump
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Hitler without, with impunity because Donald Trump is not Hitler, right? And they keep using these
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overblown phrases, oh, he's destroying the constitution. He's doing this. But when you say
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to them, well, how exactly? Give me an example. Give me, they just have verbiage. They just have
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words come out that have no meaning, no facts whatsoever. I think the base of the left got so
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excited, got so enraged that they basically kept pushing their people, the Adam Schiff's of the world
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and the Jerry Nadlers of the world kept pushing them saying, you have got to get this guy out of
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office before our country collapses. And the storm troopers show up at my house and carry me away.
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And all those bad dreams that I have, the scary bad dreams that I have are going to come true.
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And I think they had to service that. And Nancy Pelosi, who was a smart politician,
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resisted and resisted and resisted. And finally they got this Ukraine story. And who told them
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that this was going to fly? I don't know. But from the very beginning, the first day it came out,
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and listen, I'm not like just Trumpy to the extreme. I won't follow Trump anywhere. I've
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criticized him. I'm not, you know, somebody who thinks that he's a gift from God or anything like
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that. But the minute I heard this, I just thought you have got to be kidding me. You have got to be
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kidding me. You lied about Russia. That blew up in your face. You lied about obstruction of justice.
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That blew up your face. And now we're supposed to take this stupid phone call seriously. And Trump
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has outsmarted them at every turn. He released the phone call. He released the transcript. So we know what he
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said. And no matter how many people who weren't there tell us it was evil, it wasn't, you know.
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So anyway, I think they were serving the I think they were serving the left wing base. I think that
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some of them are smart enough to have used it as a way to take our tax dollars and spend it on oppo
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research. Yeah. So maybe they got something out of it like that. But again, if this blows up in
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their face, as it must in the Senate, I can't see that how that helps. How many Democrats do you
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think actually believe that he has done something impeachable in this Ukraine story? I know there
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are people on the left who really believe that. But how many Democrats in Congress do you think,
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OK, you know what, we've really got something here? Or do you think they all know it's a charade?
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Well, I think most of them know it's a charade. I think that the problem that the left has,
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and this really is a problem, is they've been so successful in taking over our culture.
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They've been so successful in taking over the means of communication. They own Hollywood.
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They own the academy. They own the news media. The news media is just a left wing, you know,
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talk fest, basically. So they keep having their stories, their narratives played back to them.
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You know, they turn on the TV and there's Chuck Todd telling them, oh, my God, this is explosive.
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This is devastating. This is terrible. And I think they start to think, oh, yeah, that's the real
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world. And it's not until they get home and people show up and say, hey, why aren't you solving any
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problems? Why aren't you doing anything about the border? Why aren't you doing anything about
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drug prices, about infrastructure? It's only then that they start to think, oh, maybe maybe the TV
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isn't reality. So maybe there are some people who believe their own press. You know, who knows what
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Maxine Waters believes? I can't tell even what she's saying from time to time. But I think guys like
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Adam Schiff are just pure McCarthyite liars. I think he's a guy who thinks that this is his ticket
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to the big time. It has been his ticket to the big time. And I think he spins this tale and hopes
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he can sell it. But at this point, he looks to me like Wile E. Coyote just at that moment when he
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looks down and realizes he's run off the edge of the cliff. So whether any of them really believe
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it or not, how can I how can I say? I think some of them have been have talked themselves into it.
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But most of them have got to know it's a bad it's a bad deal. I think there are probably people like
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AOC who said quite a while ago, it might have even been last year, who said she was on a radio show
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and said, oh, yeah, well, you know, he's done a ton of impeachable things. She didn't actually list.
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But yes, he's done a ton of impeachable things. So it's almost like they're kind of being honest.
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Like, look, we know this guy is impeachable because we don't like him because he's done X,
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Y, Z that we can't really name. We just need to find the one thing that we can actually pin on him
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to make this strategy effective. I think maybe it would be more effective for them to just come
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out and say that, to be like, look, guys, we are looking for something. We're looking for it.
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We know that you don't like the guy. We're looking for it. But well, Ilhan Omar said that she said
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essentially that this is like impeaching. This is like arresting Al Capone for tax evasion,
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which is how they got Capone. They got him on tax evasion. And she's saying he's such an evil criminal.
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But the only thing we can get him on is this stupid Ukraine story. Even she is saying it's a stupid
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story. But the problem they have is when you get to the criminality of Donald Trump,
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all you really have is that he's rude. He doesn't he's you know, he doesn't sound like other
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politicians. He says things even I don't like it when he tweets crazy stuff. You know,
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most of his supporters, I mean, go out in the middle of the country and talk to people and they
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all say he's doing a good job. I just wish you would shut up. Yeah. And the thing is, and I've heard
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people on TV say, well, yes, he is doing wonderful things for black Americans. You know,
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their jobs are great. Their wages are going up. But listen to how he talks. Yeah. So and so they're
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just convinced that the way he talks is a crime in and of itself. Yes, definitely. Okay. I want to
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talk to you about the election, maybe get some of your analysis and your in your prediction. So
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Kamala Harris, she's out. I want to ask first, did you see that coming? Because I'm not sure I
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did. Yeah, I did see it coming. I mean, I think she was another another way in which the left has
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been fooled by their own media. When she announced she's a dark skinned woman. And they thought, wow,
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that's it. That's the thing we're trying to plug in. And so they said that CNN, they said this is
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she is the number one candidate. And then you look at her and you think, well, wait a minute. You know,
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this is a woman who slept her way into politics. First of all, I mean, she's not a very reputable
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person. She was a hard driving, ambitious prosecutor, which is not a good look for
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Democrats. Democrats at this point, they're so left wing, especially the people voting in the
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primaries that they think criminals are the good guys. They think the criminals have been persecuted
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by evil America. So when she came on and say, said, well, I put over a thousand people in prison
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for marijuana smoking when she said, oh, I threatened parents if their kids were truant,
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I threatened them with jail time. You know, she wanted to ban health to private health insurance.
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Those aren't things that the left, even the left is really all that excited about. So she came across
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as mean. She came across as nasty. She mistreated her staff. She had that horrible cackling laugh.
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She never got over 15 percent in the polls, which is pretty high. I mean, most of them are polling
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around two and three percent, but that's that's pretty high. But she was never that high. And her
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biggest moment was attacking Joe Biden for something that happened in the 1970s, which is a
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long time ago. And so she she never really had the love of the people, even in California, where she's
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from. They didn't support her. So I did see it coming. I didn't think she was going to be. I thought
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when she first started, when she first came out, I was taken by that narrative, too. When she first came
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out, I thought, oh, she's scary. She's smart. She's clever. But she turned out
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not to be that smart, not that clever and really unappealing as a human being. And I think all
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those things sank her pretty quickly. Yeah, I predicted that she was going to be a top contender
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for sure because of what she said about the intersectional point of it. I mean, that is
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the cry of the left constantly is the importance of intersectionality, the importance of superficial,
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you know, skin based diversity. And so I thought, well, surely this is the candidate that they're going
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to go for. If they think intersection intersectionality is their power, then this is going to be
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who they put up against Trump. But as Cory Booker said this week, he said, look, we're we're going
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down to we're going down this spiral really fast of having no diverse candidates whatsoever,
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having an all white Democratic Democratic debate stage. So I want to hear what you think about that.
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What do you think about the lack of racial diversity now that seems to be characterizing
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the Democratic field? Does it show that Democrats really don't care about intersectionality and
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diversity as much as they say they do? Well, look, the big thing to remember about the left is
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because they own the media, because their their spokespeople are making movies and teaching classes
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and giving us the news. You forget that most people on the left vote Democrat because their parents
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voted Democrat. The same reason most people vote for whatever they vote for. They've been they were
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raised to think that Republicans are evil or whatever. When you talk to Democrats and listen,
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I live in Hollywood. I live in the heart of darkness. Right. Even here, when I talk to Democrats
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and you say, well, what about all this intersectionality stuff? They say, oh, well,
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that's crap. You know, that's garbage. But that's not the point. The point is, we have to have health
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care. You know, they don't really care about these things that are being sold. It is a very,
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very small number of elite white people, mostly white people who buy into this and the black
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students that they convince are oppressed and can't get ahead in the world. And so once you get rid of
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that, you know, little the edges of that party, you're really voting for people who think the
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government should take care of things, who think the government should pay for things, who hear,
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yeah, well, college, people ought to go to college. Maybe the government ought to pay for that.
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Hadn't really thought these things through all that much. And so, you know, did they love Barack Obama
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because he was a, what did Joe Biden call him? A clean Negro or whatever he called it. I can't
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remember the horrible words he used to describe Barack Obama, but they may have loved that about
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Obama, but Obama was a good politician. He was a good speaker when he had a teleprompter in front
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of him. He was attractive. He was not money corrupt the way Hillary Clinton is. He was, you know,
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he may have been corrupt and otherwise, but he wasn't money corrupt. So they may like it when,
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when that virtue, when they can show virtue by voting for Barack Obama, but they would have voted for
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Barack Obama had even white as well. You know, and I think that that, that, uh, intersectional
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plug in the right color, plug in the right gender. I don't think that gets a lot of votes. And I think
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it's ridiculous when people reject somebody, as they were saying on MSNBC in a couple of places
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were saying that they rejected Kamala Harris because she was a black woman. Just no way,
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no way. That's not what happened. They rejected her because she was a lousy candidate.
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Do you think Democrats are overplaying their hand in the intersectional gender racial stuff
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all of the democratic candidates putting their pronouns and their profiles? Elizabeth Warren
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has talked about racial reparations. I mean, they've all talked about very extreme things
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when it comes to abortion, whatever it is. Uh, do you think that they are going to lose those
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voters who, like you said, are just like, you know what, I just want, you know, free healthcare
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and affordable college. I, you know, I think so. I think one of the, look, the two polls came out
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saying that, uh, president Trump has 33 to 34%, uh, support among black voters. Wow. That's true.
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And I predicted, by the way, I predicted that pretty early on. I thought that, you know what,
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he's doing a great job for black Americans. Why shouldn't they support him? You know,
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if that is true, that really explains the left's panic to have immigrants flooding into the country
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who they can con again. You know, I think that they overplay their hand and they make people's
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lives worse. I mean, this is the thing I go and, I go and talk at colleges and sometimes like,
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like a black, a young black man will stand up and talk to me about microaggressions and I'll say,
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like, are you kidding? Like, you know, you're, I'm talking to you man to man. You're a man,
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you're a young man, a powerful, strong guy. You could pick me up and throw me across and you're
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worried about microaggressions. Who taught you, who taught you to be afraid of an aggression. So
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small micro means it's so small. You can't see it. Who taught you to be afraid? They make people's
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lives worse. And the only thing that has to happen is for people to have the courage to say the
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emperor isn't wearing any clothes. And once that happens, I think everything falls apart. So yeah,
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listen, I think that there are things that they can sell. Like they sold abortion safe, legal and
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rare. But now we find out, oh yeah, not safe, legal and real shout your abortion. Abortion is a
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wonderful, wonderful thing. And then people who have had abortions are kind of like, I didn't,
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I did that and it wasn't so wonderful. And it, I really still feel bad about it.
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And once the truth starts to seep out, yeah, I think people do react to it. Listen, you know,
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Donald Trump, a flaw, he's a great big character with great big flaws, right? He's a great big
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American character. Like really only America could have produced him. He's done a terrific job. He's
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done a really good job as president. I was, I was so opposed to him coming in. I had to admit that I
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was wrong about him. I made video, one of my most popular videos. It got like 17 million hits
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attacking Donald Trump during the primaries. The guy has done a terrific job. And I don't say that
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out of love for him. I say it because the economy is doing great. You know, he has appointed terrific
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judges. He has restored the military. He is in fact building his wall. It's, it's an amazing,
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he has done an amazingly good job. I have complaints. There are things he hasn't done,
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the debt and all those things that I think are really important, but he has done a great job
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fulfilling his promises. At some point that kicks in. Reality has a voice and you can tell all the
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stories you want. You can tell all the narratives you want. You can own all the means of communication.
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And eventually people say, you know, it's kind of fun having food on my table. It's kind of fun having
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a job that I go to. So my family respects me. It's kind of fun being able to pay my mortgage.
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Maybe I'll elect this guy again and he'll, that'll keep happening. That wasn't happening under Obama.
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It is happening under Trump. I think that that, that narrative is going to counter the narrative
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of the left. Yes. Right. I I've said this in regards to abortion. I think it's true in regards
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to how Trump has done our job on this side of the aisle is really easy because all we have to do
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when we're arguing, uh, you know, pro-life versus pro-choice is to say what an abortion is. We don't
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have to use euphemisms. We don't have to cover it up with this crazy philosophy, uh, philosophy about
00:20:51.340
if life begins some point after conception, all we have to do is talk about fetal development
00:20:55.420
and abortion. All we have to do is talk about reality. It's so much easier to tell the truth.
00:20:59.160
It's the same thing when it comes to Donald Trump and really any conservative issue.
00:21:03.040
We don't have to bend over backwards to try to manipulate all of these narratives to make it
00:21:06.800
sound like America is this dangerous place when it's really not. We're in a wonderful time,
00:21:12.000
a wonderful time of American history. So I think our job going into the election is really easy
00:21:16.800
because all we have to do is point to reality. Whereas Democrats are falling over themselves
00:21:21.700
to come up with some other reason why you should feel miserable when you're really not.
00:21:29.380
You know, you're absolutely, I mean, somebody, I can't remember who said, tell the truth. It's
00:21:32.780
easier to remember. You know, I think, you know, this is a genuine theory on the left of leftist
00:21:38.700
academics that, that there is no truth. There's only narrative. And so that that's a stupid theory,
00:21:44.260
but it has been a dominant theory on the left for maybe 50 years. And so that they think that
00:21:50.260
they can sell a narrative and it will change the truth. But the thing about the economy,
00:21:54.920
as I say, dinner on the table is that, you know, you can't tell a narrative about dinner on the
00:21:59.520
table, which is what they tried to do. You know, Donald Trump, when he was running and he had those,
00:22:03.320
remember those tremendous rallies that he still has where he'll fill up a stadium. And he said,
00:22:07.580
you know, they tell you that the unemployment rate is 5%. If it were 5%, this stadium wouldn't be
00:22:12.760
filled. And he was dead. Right. That is exactly right. You cannot fool people about dinner on the
00:22:17.460
table. You can't fool people about jobs in the community. You can't fool people about their
00:22:21.180
communities falling apart. All of those things he has helped reverse and that, you know, you got to
00:22:26.480
celebrate that. And I hope that that's true. I do worry about young people. I do worry about people
00:22:32.500
my age and younger who don't necessarily see those effects because they're in college. Maybe they
00:22:37.720
don't have families yet. And so really all they care about is that Donald Trump is supposedly this
00:22:45.540
white supremacist bigot who is going to take their right of abortion away or however they see the
00:22:51.700
world. They believe that they're oppressed and they don't really see the benefits of Trump's
00:22:56.260
presidency. I do worry about that generation kind of being fooled because the reality that you're
00:23:01.880
talking about doesn't necessarily apply to them. Do you think that there's any hope
00:23:06.600
for millennials and Generation Z? I always think there's hope for young people because they do
00:23:11.880
learn the truth when they have a job and when they look at their paycheck and they see
00:23:15.640
the money coming out. I worry right now with Donald Trump. I worry for him, for him and for the
00:23:22.100
country. I worry about women. They look at him and they don't like him. And I can understand why
00:23:28.460
they don't like him. They all know a guy like that and, you know, who's pawed them or abused them or
00:23:33.220
used language they don't like. And they just look at that and think, uh-uh, you know, because a lot of
00:23:37.420
people, you know, you and I pay attention to politics. A lot of people don't. And they just
00:23:41.640
think like, no, that's not the guy I want in office. And I understand that. When it comes to
00:23:46.900
young people, I think I'm very hopeful right at this minute. I know that they are liberalizing
00:23:54.500
in certain ways. And I think that those ways are going to continue. I don't think we're going to go
00:23:59.580
back to a time when gay people could be arrested for being gay. And to be honest with Yali, I think
00:24:04.220
that's a good thing. I think, uh, you know, you can, you can have whatever feelings you want and
00:24:08.360
whatever religious beliefs you want, but I think people should be left alone to have their private
00:24:12.300
lives. And, uh, I don't think the government certainly should, uh, be, have anything to do
00:24:16.700
with that. I think that that kind of liberalization is going to continue, but let's face it. When you look
00:24:23.000
at the economy, the economy works on certain principles. They keep telling you about Scandinavia.
00:24:27.980
Scandinavia tried, uh, socialism. It didn't work. They went back to free markets. They can be very
00:24:33.560
socialist, socialist in the distribution of wealth, but your government can't create wealth,
00:24:38.780
right? Even Soviet union collapsed because government can't create wealth. So I, I have a
00:24:43.240
lot of faith in young people. I think that certain things are going to come back because they have to
00:24:47.400
come back. One of them is religion. I think that, that the idea that there's no such thing as
00:24:52.060
God, there's no such thing as truth. Uh, there's no such thing as, uh, now it's all a narrative.
00:24:57.680
Those things are going to come a cropper because they just don't hold together and things that
00:25:01.640
don't make sense ultimately collapse. We've watched the collapse of Europe. We've watched the end of
00:25:06.280
Europe and we've seen that happen. And we're all afraid it's going to happen here. And it might,
00:25:10.740
but I also think that Europe was played out in many, many ways. It was played out and we're not
00:25:15.720
played out. We have, I think hundreds of years of good times ahead of us. When I worry about
00:25:20.620
America, what I worry about is the Republic. I don't worry about our power failing. I don't
00:25:25.540
worry about our prosperity failing. I worry about our system of government, uh, coming under attack.
00:25:30.860
And that's the story that we have to go out and tell. We have to say, you know, that's what I try
00:25:35.340
to, when I talk to young people, what I say to them is look, the founders didn't make this government
00:25:41.280
by accident. Here are the things they were thinking about. And if you can reconstruct that,
00:25:45.600
uh, you can, you can sell it to them. You know, I see the dangers, Ali. I really do. I see that
00:25:52.560
young people are being taught by these leftists who hate this country. They hate this country and
00:25:56.280
they hate Western civilization and they're not very bright and they really are a lot less smart
00:26:01.020
than they think. And I see that, but I think we can reclaim them a by reality and B by starting to
00:26:07.460
move into the culture as the left did. Remember the left didn't always own the culture. They took it
00:26:12.740
over. We can take it back. I think you are absolutely right that the left hates Western
00:26:19.440
civilization hates America. And that we have a responsibility just to tell the truth, what we
00:26:24.480
were saying earlier and to move into the culture and not to isolate ourselves. I do think it's a
00:26:28.520
little bit, it's a, it's hard, especially for people like me who are a new mom. And I see the
00:26:32.220
things that are happening in public schools. And I just kind of want to be a recluse. I want to pull
00:26:37.120
my family out of reality and say, I don't want to deal with this craziness anymore. You're not going to
00:26:41.520
touch my kids. You're not going to teach my kids that stuff. Um, what do you think the balance is?
00:26:46.000
You are also a parent. Uh, the temptation for us as Christians, as conservatives is to kind of cut
00:26:51.420
ourselves off from the world. Cause we don't want to deal with the craziness. Uh, what do you think
00:26:55.540
the solution is though? Because we need light to infiltrate darkness. I, right. I don't think you
00:27:00.840
cut yourself off from the world. I think you start to build alternative institutions. We're not going to
00:27:05.520
get Yale back. We're not going to get the New York times back. I think we have to build those things for
00:27:09.300
ourselves. It always bothers me that conservatives spend a lot of time complaining about, uh,
00:27:13.640
Hollywood, but they don't make movies. They don't make TV shows. So, you know, what, why complain?
00:27:17.900
You can't just complain. You got to create, you got to make things. So when you say withdraw from the
00:27:21.800
world, cause you're a mom, you know, homeschooling is a genuine alternative that doesn't just, uh,
00:27:27.460
that doesn't just school the kids, but it also creates another community because you have to
00:27:31.040
homeschool in community. So that's an alternative. I see Hillsdale planting schools around the country
00:27:36.300
that teach what they call classical learning. I think that is a really hopeful sign. I think that
00:27:41.560
we have to start writing books. I, you know, I, I have my podcast, another kingdom that I'm doing
00:27:45.980
because I know that I can't get that out through the publishing world, but the podcast is doing
00:27:49.960
really well. It's reaching hundreds of thousands of people. We've got to tell stories like the left
00:27:54.480
tell stories. So it's not a question of withdrawing. It's a question of building alternative structures
00:27:59.840
because like I said, I don't think we're going to get Yale back, but I think we can build
00:28:05.180
universities that are just as good and more important than universities, I think is K through
00:28:09.780
12. I think if a kid shows up at Yale, understanding civics, I don't think he's going to be polluted by
00:28:16.900
their stupid, uh, intersectionality because it makes everybody, everything so much worse. So I think,
00:28:21.860
I think that's the answer. It's not withdrawing. It is withdrawing from their institutions in order
00:28:26.800
to build new institutions and new systems. Uh, homeschooling is, listen, I taught at Hills. I got a
00:28:33.800
fellowship to teach at Hillsdale for like two weeks this year. And I called my wife from the
00:28:39.420
nowhere, Michigan. And she said, what's it like? And I said, it's like going sane. I said, going from
00:28:45.040
Hollywood to Hillsdale is like, suddenly you're talking to kids who are sane. They're open-minded,
00:28:49.940
they're polite, they're nice, they're religious, but, but they're not like pinched and small minded.
00:28:55.540
In fact, we're willing to talk about anything. They were willing to debate and discuss anything.
00:28:59.580
And so I think if those new communities can be built, uh, they will take over. They will actually
00:29:06.620
replace the desiccated, uh, dead institutions that the left has slaughtered, uh, from within.
00:29:14.600
You know, I always compare the left to those, the alien in men in black who kills that guy and then
00:29:19.540
lives inside the guy. And he still looks like he's a person, but he actually he's an, there's an alien
00:29:23.780
inside. That's what Yale is now. That's what the New York times is. It looks like the New York times.
00:29:27.720
New York times used to be a great newspaper, but it's really just leftism, this alien leftism
00:29:32.060
inside the New York times body. Right. Well, I think that's a very positive
00:29:35.200
and encouraging message. What about, this is the last thing for people who have, uh, family members
00:29:42.400
who are on the left to, uh, disagree with them and they are coming into the holidays. They're coming
00:29:47.860
into Christmas time and they know they're going to have to talk to their confrontational uncle about
00:29:53.000
politics. What is the best way to handle that? You yourself are in a family of people that
00:29:57.500
disagree with you. Some of them, um, how do you handle it in, how can, uh, other people
00:30:03.220
handle it the same way you do? Well, well, first of all, put the love first. You know, I love my,
00:30:08.260
my family, uh, very much. And I try to stay in, into that, in that zone, uh, even when we disagree
00:30:14.680
ferociously when we do get into confrontations and listen, everybody fails at this. You know,
00:30:21.360
I fail at it. We don't always do it right. But the best advice I can give is don't talk about
00:30:26.400
personalities. Don't talk about Obama. Don't talk about Trump. Don't say this happened. You know,
00:30:32.200
that he did this while he did that. It's an endless, endless battle. Why? Because all these
00:30:36.440
guys are flawed instruments of principle. So talk about the principle when they say, when they come
00:30:41.140
after Trump, you know, you say, well, let's leave, let's leave Trump out of it. And I, you know,
00:30:45.600
I won't talk about Obama. I always tell people I didn't like Obama. You don't like Trump. I get it.
00:30:49.980
You know, I absolutely get it, but let's talk about what we're trying to achieve and why
00:30:54.360
we believe in the things that we believe in. Like, why don't I believe in free healthcare?
00:30:59.740
You know, and you know, I lived in England, so I can talk about how bad the healthcare was there.
00:31:04.560
And I can, but I can talk about the principle of freedom that when you work for, for money,
00:31:09.620
that money belongs to you. And when the government takes it away, they're taking away the time that
00:31:14.720
you put in to make that money. So they're taking away a piece of your life, you know? And, and I,
00:31:19.180
I always tell students, the definition of slavery is you do the work, but someone else spends the
00:31:25.160
money. That's also the definition of socialism. That's the same definition. Socialism and slavery
00:31:29.700
have the exact same definition. So if you talk about principles, if you talk about what you're
00:31:34.060
trying to achieve, what your goals are, you sometimes can find common ground. And, and, you
00:31:39.440
know, I'm not an absolutist about anything. I want people to be free. And I understand nobody,
00:31:44.540
we can't be entirely free because we're not angels, right? Men, if men were angels,
00:31:47.980
we wouldn't need a government. We do need a government. So I'm, I'm perfectly willing to
00:31:52.580
say, you know, like, okay, you know, we want some people coming in immigrants. We love our
00:31:57.080
immigrants when they come in, but shouldn't we obey the law? I mean, shouldn't, shouldn't we
00:32:01.080
obey the law? And, and people will always try to bring it back to personalities. Well, Donald Trump,
00:32:06.020
he hates Mexicans and he said this, and he said that just don't follow them there. Stick to the
00:32:10.460
principles. You can always find common ground when you talk about principles with fellow Americans.
00:32:14.640
Oh, I think that's great advice. Well, thank you so much. I really
00:32:17.700
appreciate you taking the time. Please tell everyone everywhere they can find you.
00:32:22.720
Well, please come to Deli Wire and listen to the podcast and listen to the Another Kingdom
00:32:26.480
podcast. And you can find me on Twitter at Andrew Klavan. It's K-L-A-V-A-N. There's no E in
00:32:32.500
Klavan. And, uh, and you can find me at andrewklavan.com if you want to see my books and movies and things
00:32:37.280
like that. Perfect. Well, thank you so much. Ali, it's so nice to see you.