TRIGGERnometry - Candace Owens Vs The Daily Wire

00:00:00.960 There were things going out over our air that she was saying that were being at least received,

00:00:05.840 I have to say, as being deeply anti-Semitic. The phrase Christ is King was being used as an

00:00:13.040 anti-Semitic trope. We believe this. We believe that Christ is King. I also believe in the cross

00:00:18.160 of Christ, but if you burn the cross on somebody's lawn, it's no longer the cross of Christ. It's just

00:00:22.720 a vehicle, a symbol of your toxic hatred. Just a clarification on this Christ is King. How is that

00:00:29.440 used in an anti-Semitic way? Well, I've gotten tweets that say, Christ is King Jew.

00:00:36.640 That's kind of a giveaway for me. Andrew Clavin, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:00:42.160 You're one of our favorite ever guests. We love having you on the show over and over.

00:00:46.160 So welcome. Thank you. It's great to see you guys. It's great to see you. We've got lots to talk to

00:00:50.560 you about, as always, movies and culture and politics and stuff. I have to ask you, though,

00:00:54.640 about the Daily Wire, Candace Owens thing. You're the only one of the Daily Wire hosts as far as

00:00:59.360 I'm aware who said anything about it. What happened? Well, that's a good question.

00:01:03.840 I mean, I just naturally thought it was going to be a big news story. It had to be addressed.

00:01:08.480 So I it became I knew it had happened, but it became public about an hour before I went on the air.

00:01:14.080 So I went on the air and addressed it, which is what I do with everything. And at the end

00:01:18.400 of what turned out to be like a 40 minute segment, usually in your ear, you hear the producer say,

00:01:23.680 good job or let's move on or let's do this, whatever. I hear just dead air, nothing.

00:01:29.440 And then I hear, you know, no one else talked about this. And I was like, you've got to be kidding

00:01:34.480 me. You know what? How would what does it mean to not say something about it? And ever since I've

00:01:40.080 been the target of what they call the Groypers, I just call them Nazis because that's what they are.

00:01:44.640 And, you know, it was kind of a it was kind of a painful thing because

00:01:50.160 my my interactions with Candace were all in the makeup room and were always incredibly friendly.

00:01:56.560 I spotted her as a huge talent years before she took off. I mean, I saw her on YouTube when

00:02:05.280 she had no followers virtually. She had a small following. I just thought that's one of the most

00:02:09.040 talented broadcasters I've ever seen. I had her on my show. I told the Daily Wire to hire her,

00:02:14.240 which they didn't, which cost them a lot of money when they hired her later. So I don't have any,

00:02:19.920 you know, feelings about her whatsoever. And it's not a personal thing. And it's also not even

00:02:24.880 I don't even know her heart or what she's what's in her mind. So I'm not attacking her at all.

00:02:30.160 But there were things going out over our air that she was saying that we're being at least received,

00:02:35.200 I have to say, as being deeply anti-Semitic. So that Nick Fuentes, who is a virtual Nazi, I mean,

00:02:41.760 there's no space between him and what a Nazi would be saying, was praising her to the skies.

00:02:47.600 If Nick Fuentes praises me to the skies, I go out and say, no, I'm not on your side. I don't know.

00:02:52.800 I don't know what you mistook, but there was nothing coming back. And so it was becoming uncomfortable to

00:02:58.800 be on the same, you know, station, the same venue where that stuff was coming out. And so without

00:03:09.200 ever having any kind of personal animus toward Candace or even knowing what it was she intended,

00:03:15.120 you know, I'm not even saying that that was, you know, how she intended it to be received.

00:03:19.920 It simply became impossible to have a good feeling about this place that I helped build and that I

00:03:25.360 love very much and that I'm very proud of, you know, as an entity. And it was very painful to

00:03:31.840 have that kind of stuff coming out over the air. And I did not want Nick Fuentes. I don't want Nick

00:03:36.880 Fuentes' praise. I don't even want, you know, I don't want him to have a happy day because of

00:03:41.760 anything that I said. And so that was my basic reaction. And in that was involved the fact that

00:03:50.400 some of this was being phrased in religious terms. And one of the ways this was happening was the

00:03:55.600 phrase, Christ is King, was being used as an anti-Semitic trope. Now, as I said repeatedly on

00:04:03.200 the show, as Jeremy Boring who runs the Daily Wire said repeatedly, we believe this. We believe that Christ

00:04:08.720 is King. I also believe in the cross of Christ. But if you burn the cross on somebody's lawn,

00:04:13.760 it's no longer the cross of Christ. It's just a vehicle, a symbol of your toxic hatred. And so the

00:04:19.520 way it was being used online as an attack on Jews, you know, was simply worth refuting. And that got me

00:04:29.040 some heat from people who felt like, what are you talking about? This is a totally innocent phrase.

00:04:35.520 So there was a lot of blowback from it. And I don't know why no one else addressed it. I thought it was

00:04:40.880 important to address it. I'd do it again. No one asked me to address it. You know, I mean.

00:04:46.880 Well, we're asking you now. And there's something I wanted to ask you about, Andrew, which is

00:04:51.520 there is a kind of alternative theory that I've heard from various people, which is

00:04:56.400 that anti-Semitism aside, really, Candace, as you say, is a very talented broadcaster. She looks

00:05:02.160 fantastic on screen. She's very charismatic. She's great at communicating. And when the

00:05:06.880 Daily Wire hired her, it was the right moment in which she was able to communicate, you know,

00:05:11.040 let's be honest, the ideas of people like Thomas Sowell and Larry Elder to a younger,

00:05:14.880 different audience. And that was great. But then other issues started to come along and became

00:05:19.280 the current thing, as they say on the internet, whether that was the war in Ukraine, then Israel,

00:05:23.600 Palestine. And then it was kind of the case that she didn't really know what she was talking about.

00:05:30.400 You know, she wasn't covering those issues in a way that is serious, you know, speaking plainly.

00:05:37.680 That's what some people have said to me. And then it descended into, you know,

00:05:43.120 Bridget Macron as a man. And before you know it, you know, the Israel is a discriminatory because

00:05:48.880 there's a Muslim quarter in Jerusalem. And you just go, is this person really qualified to be

00:05:53.840 commenting on these issues? Was it that or was it specifically the anti-Semitism?

00:05:57.840 No, it was, for me, it was the stuff, it was the stuff that was being taken as anti-Semitic. I mean,

00:06:02.960 she had been saying stuff that I had, I've said on the air, I don't think is true, like the moon

00:06:07.680 landing was fake. And what was the other one? I can't remember what the Macron one is a perfect

00:06:13.920 example of things that I just thought, oh, 9-11, she was hinting was kind of an inside job. And

00:06:21.040 these things don't make sense. I've actually researched the ones about the moon and 9-11,

00:06:26.720 only because they were so prevalent. And they don't make sense to me. But at the same time,

00:06:30.320 I don't feel uncomfortable that someone that I'm not connected to is saying those things on the air.

00:06:35.280 But when you start saying things that, you know, they're on the borderline, there was always a way,

00:06:40.400 there's always a way of dodging out of these things, you know, oh, I was just asking questions,

00:06:44.800 or I was just saying, I was just expressing the fact, my feeling that Christ is king.

00:06:49.840 Even if you're dodging them, it seems to me that you would want to make sure that people don't mistake

00:06:54.640 what you're saying for this hatred that has certainly done, in my opinion, just about enough

00:07:01.120 damage. I think we've had just about enough anti-Semitism as we need. I think anti-Semitism

00:07:07.440 is just about topped off, you know?

00:07:09.440 Well, there's plenty of people who disagree with you, Andrew. I'm going to be honest with you.

00:07:12.240 Apparently so. To me, my supply of anti-Semitism is just well overdone, you know? And I think that,

00:07:18.560 I'm ready to move on to some like obscure group that we can hate without meaning anything. But

00:07:25.360 that was the thing that just made me uncomfortable. That's when it, for me, it became a moral problem.

00:07:29.920 I don't have any problem with entertaining people. I don't have any problem actually with people who

00:07:34.560 say things that I consider outlandish, you know, to please their audience. It's like, that's part of

00:07:40.720 show business. It's not my part of show business, but I understand what, what that is. But yeah,

00:07:47.040 anti-Semitism is bad stuff as we now see on our campuses. And it's, it's, it's kind of a joke to me

00:07:54.640 that Hamas who, uh, you know, oppresses women and would kill gays and gays and leftists who say they

00:08:03.520 support women and gays. And Nick Fuente is a guy who just hates Jews, that they're all on the same

00:08:08.800 side, you know? And it makes me feel like the anti-Semitism is I, as I do believe, I believe

00:08:14.480 it's the sign of something much, much deeper in society.

00:08:18.320 I find it very interesting how we've kind of seen a resurgence of it. I always compare anti-Semitism

00:08:22.720 to herpes. It's always there. And then at a particular moment, especially when society is

00:08:28.240 going through a turbulent period, you then see it come to the fore. I guess the question that I

00:08:33.680 really want to ask Andrew is just a clarification on this Christ is King. How is that used in an

00:08:39.760 anti-Semitic way? Well, well, I've gotten tweets that say Christ is King Jew, you know, so that's

00:08:46.240 kind of a giveaway for me, you know? And the same person who says Christ is King also sends me a

00:08:51.520 picture of Hitler. So to me, that's a giveaway. But, but for instance, if, if you're in an argument

00:08:55.760 with Ben Shapiro and you're in a political argument with Ben Shapiro and your answer is Christ is King,

00:09:00.880 what does that even mean? What does that mean? And it, it, it means exactly what it seems to mean is that

00:09:05.840 you are outside, you're rejected. Uh, you know, you are not the people of God any longer, which,

00:09:12.480 which by the way, theologically, I disagree with on top of everything else. And for me,

00:09:17.680 this is a theological issue. I have to say, I, I, I have studied anti-Semitism a lot. I mean,

00:09:23.680 I've looked into it very deeply because when I realized that I was a Christian and I'm a Jew,

00:09:28.240 I'm raised a Jew, I'm a Jew by race. And when I realized I was a Christian, one of my biggest

00:09:33.680 resistances was 2,000 years of Christian anti-Semitism, which has been a real part of

00:09:39.360 the religion and a really sad part of it. And the, the thing that I believe sort of blew up in

00:09:44.800 Europe's face when it came, when Europe, the end of Europe came. And so I wanted to, I needed to,

00:09:51.200 before I could move on, I needed to separate Christian anti-Semitism from Christian love,

00:09:56.880 which I thought was what I was actually, uh, had come to believe in. And there is simply no question

00:10:03.680 that by the time Germany was formed, say in the late 1800s, hatred of Jews and hatred of Christ

00:10:13.280 were the same thing. That people were saying, guys like, uh, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche were saying,

00:10:19.600 you know, we've all been turned around by this Christianity because now we're favoring weak

00:10:24.560 people instead of strong people. You know, obviously morality should be for the strong

00:10:28.400 and this has all been turned around. And the people who did that were the Jews and the way

00:10:32.400 it got into our society was through Jesus Christ. And so it was actually that it's, it sounds

00:10:38.480 contradictory, paradoxical, but it's not that the hatred, my joke is that the hatred of Jews is

00:10:44.320 always really the hatred of the big Jew, you know, I think, and I think that, you know, Christianity,

00:10:50.960 which is an extension of Judaism that, you know, Christians believe it's the completion of Judaism

00:10:56.400 is not a natural thing. It's a thing that says, take care of the weak, you know, that women have

00:11:02.320 equal rights. Now they're not there for your use. They're there for your partnership. You know,

00:11:06.720 these are things that were not natural to the people who became Christians. And I think it became

00:11:10.960 a battle inside their hearts. And I think the thing that kept anti-Semitism alive long after the

00:11:16.560 historical reasons that came out of the split between Christianity and Judaism, which was just

00:11:22.320 an historical fact, long after those things had been healed, it kept it alive because people did

00:11:28.400 not want that big Jew in their heart telling them to be charitable, telling them, you know, no,

00:11:34.240 you can't just march into other people's countries. No, you can't just carry women off and, you know,

00:11:39.600 declare that they're theirs. All these things that had permeated European society against the will of the

00:11:45.920 tribes who were converted, you know. And so I really do believe that to be a Christian and an

00:11:53.040 anti-Semite is a contradiction in terms. Oh, absolutely. Because we're all made in God's image.

00:11:58.640 Well, that too. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Has it surprised you seeing all these things,

00:12:05.360 seeing a rise in anti-Semitism? The thing that I've found shocking, Andrew, and I've always somebody

00:12:10.640 who's got my fair share of anti-Semitism, particularly when I'm the fact that I'm not Jewish,

00:12:15.200 but everyone thinks I am. That's the worst combination of looking Jewish and not being

00:12:20.240 Jewish. If there's any consolation that happened to Charlie Chaplin. Yeah. I get called secret

00:12:24.800 Jew, sneaky Jew, fat Jew. That was out of order. All right. You've lost weight, Mason. You stepped

00:12:31.520 over the line. Yeah. That's when you really pushed it. But, you know, there are people who I used to,

00:12:37.120 you know, enjoy what they did on Twitter and be like, oh, you know, that's, you know,

00:12:41.120 that particular take. I mean, that's a little bit out there, but, you know, it's quite interesting.

00:12:45.040 Yeah. And then you go on their Twitter nowadays, you're like, holy, what?

00:12:48.720 The Jews did 9-11, what? Yeah. Yeah. You know, and just going and just not even that,

00:12:54.080 just being like, yes, what do you expect from Jews? I'm going, what the hell is happening?

00:12:59.200 Yep. Yep. And I, well, I really believe in a larger context, putting this in a larger context,

00:13:04.800 we have been taught to look at the history of the West, just take the West alone, without the concept

00:13:13.920 of God in it, to talk about literature without talking about God. Even if you don't believe in

00:13:20.560 God, this has nothing to do with faith. I mean, even if you don't understand that the concept of

00:13:25.040 God has shaped the West entirely, the Christian concept, which is ultimately, you know, rooted in

00:13:30.240 Judaism has shaped the great, the great, to me, the greatest culture that ever existed. The history,

00:13:35.840 the culture of Europe from 1500 to 1914 was, I think, the greatest human culture that has ever

00:13:41.360 existed on earth, entirely interwoven with this philosophy and this religion. And we've been taught

00:13:49.520 to understand things without it. So you can't really, you don't really know where you are at any

00:13:55.440 given moment. And then these things, listen, a long, long time ago, in the 1970s, I published a novel

00:14:05.760 in which I referred to my generation of Jews as holiday Jews. And what I meant by that was the

00:14:11.280 Holocaust that so shamed the anti-Semites that decent people just didn't do it, but that would

00:14:17.840 pass. That's what I meant. It's a holiday, hooray, but it'll come back. And it comes back because it is

00:14:23.600 interwoven, it is the shadow side of faith in the real Christ, the Christ of love, the Christ of unity,

00:14:31.440 the Christ that says you are born in God's image and therefore we are, you know, connected in some

00:14:36.400 essential way. And it's the dark shadow of that idea is get out of my house, Jew, which is how it got into

00:14:45.920 the house in the first place, you know. And so it never, it will never go away as long as the West remains

00:14:52.640 the West. And I think that all you can do is stand up to it and call it what it is. It is a hatred of

00:15:01.440 God, you know. I mean, I love the story I love is John Wayne on his deathbed. He was always being

00:15:07.360 accused of being a bigot and a friend of his came over who was Jewish and his son joked with the guy

00:15:12.240 and said, you know, he didn't want to see you because you're a Jew, just kidding around with him.

00:15:16.480 And John Wayne said, the only Jew I don't want to see is the other Jews.

00:15:21.920 And I think that's who they hate. They hate the other Jew. And you can't understand,

00:15:26.080 they keep trying to say, well, it's because Jews are successful. But the Jews of Russia

00:15:29.840 weren't successful. They were in these little shtetls and they killed them anyway, you know.

00:15:33.680 They say, well, it's because the Jews want to be off on their own. But the Jews of Germany didn't want

00:15:38.240 to be off on their own. They wanted to assimilate. They thought of themselves as German.

00:15:41.600 And all those other explanations simply do not explain why this thing is deathless. And it's

00:15:49.200 deathless because I believe because Christ is king, because Christ actually is king.

00:15:54.800 And I think that they hate that. They hate the fact that we are called upon to do something that

00:16:00.000 is unnatural to our flesh, which is love one another and try to kill each other all the time,

00:16:06.400 you know. And give, you know, leeway to women to become themselves and remember that even though

00:16:16.400 it's a wonderful thing that we live in a society where the lucky and the successful can be so lucky

00:16:24.000 and so successful, more successful than ever before, not to forget that, you know, some people fall

00:16:28.800 behind. And sometimes it's their own fault. Sometimes, you know, they're there because they

00:16:33.680 haven't done the right things and somehow we have to care about them as well. And that's a big pain

00:16:38.560 in the neck and not something that was true of every culture before us, you know.

00:16:42.320 Andrew, this is why you're one of our favorite guests because of the depth of analysis and knowledge.

00:16:47.680 And because of that, I hate to drag you back into the tabloidy stuff.

00:16:52.080 But the one thing that I will be honest as someone who's an admirer of everything you guys have built at

00:16:57.440 The Daily Wire that did trouble me a little bit is this gagging order thing. And,

00:17:01.760 you know, people not being allowed to say what they think and all of this other stuff.

00:17:05.760 And I think, you know, if there is a fair critique, it's that perhaps, you know, new media, which is

00:17:12.960 what we all do, the promise of it was it's the place where everyone can be free and say what they

00:17:18.240 think. And now people are coming together to collaborate under an umbrella and eventually

00:17:23.200 you get a company policy essentially on what people are not allowed to say. So can you shed

00:17:28.240 any light on that side of things? You know, why is there a gagging order? And is there a kind of like,

00:17:33.360 you know, these are the the Overton window is now enforced at a company level again, some people might say.

00:17:39.600 So I actually I know this sounds terrible. It sounds like I'm making this up. I actually don't know

00:17:44.400 anything about the gag order except what I've seen on Twitter. You know, I don't talk to them about

00:17:48.240 those things because I wouldn't be allowed to talk about them on air and I don't want to lie to my

00:17:53.120 audience. So I just don't ask them, you know, as I understand it, there is a lot of mediation going

00:17:59.120 on in the background that I'm just not privy to. And I don't even know if the story is true. I mean,

00:18:05.440 I'm not saying it's not. I just don't know whether it's true or not. But on the larger issue of

00:18:10.960 the Daily Wire, the Daily Wire is not social media. It is essentially an on air magazine.

00:18:16.640 And while you can invite anyone on, you know, I could invite Nick Fuentes on and say,

00:18:24.320 OK, say your piece, pal, and let him talk. We don't have to hire him and we don't have to pay him

00:18:30.560 to say those things. And when people are saying things that we can no longer support. I mean,

00:18:34.080 the example I gave on the air is if I woke up one morning and said, you know, this abortion idea,

00:18:38.480 I love this abortion idea. You know, I think you should be able to abort your child until he's five.

00:18:43.600 Listen, I was a teacher. There's some kids who should have been aborted at the age of even

00:18:48.160 older. No question. There's temptation there. But I would have to resign. I could not go on the air

00:18:55.280 as an employee of the Daily Wire and say that as an honorable person, I would just have to say, guys,

00:18:59.840 we're no longer on the same page. It is not the Daily Wire is not required to let every

00:19:06.400 person to pay every person who wants to say what they have to say to say it. We're not social media.

00:19:12.880 I believe the social media should be far more open. I mean, YouTube, for instance, I think should

00:19:18.080 legally be required as a common carrier, just like the telephone company to let every single person

00:19:23.440 speak. But we're not them. We're not a social media company. We're like a magazine. We have an

00:19:29.600 opinion. We have a point of view. And we don't pay leftists to come on and do a show. And we're

00:19:34.560 not going to pay pro-abortion people to do a show. We're not going to pay anti-Semites or anti-Blacks

00:19:39.200 or any other kind of bigotry to do a show, even if that's not what's in their heart. And it just

00:19:44.800 sounds that way. I don't think we would pay them to do it. Again, I cannot address what's happening

00:19:50.560 behind the scenes. And it's just that I just don't know. I guess the low resolution critique

00:19:57.040 that people might have is, what if Fox News had fired one of their hosts or presenters

00:20:04.640 for saying something that wasn't company policy at Fox News? I imagine some people might say,

00:20:10.400 at the Daily Wire, there would be a lot of criticism of that. People would say this is cancel culture on

00:20:14.800 the right and all the rest of it. That's kind of where I think that there's a fair discussion to be had.

00:20:19.840 I think the thing about cancel culture, and it is an interesting thing because I believe that

00:20:24.720 there are things that you should be roundly attacked for saying, right? I don't think we

00:20:30.000 have to let everybody just scream slurs at one another. But the thing about cancel culture was

00:20:36.640 that it continually defined, redefined common speech as bigoted and then killed people's careers for it.

00:20:44.960 So if somebody said, for instance, you know, I think homosexuality is a sin,

00:20:48.800 suddenly you were hateful or phobic instead of communicating thousands of years of traditional

00:20:55.600 theology. So it was that the Overton window was being closed like a little slit, you know,

00:21:01.200 that you had to be this leftist to get through. And that's how I would define cancel culture.

00:21:06.560 The Daily Wire has never been like that. I mean, Jeremy, you know, I know that some of the things

00:21:11.760 that people say make his head explode. He has never, ever come in and said, you can't say that

00:21:18.240 on the air to me. And he's never said, you have to say this. That's just never happened. And so

00:21:26.000 I feel like at some point, you know, a good example of this is Megyn Kelly, who was basically

00:21:34.080 forced off the air for saying that wearing blackface isn't always bigoted, which is obviously

00:21:41.040 true. You know, I mean, it's an obvious true thing because all of the left's comedians have done it.

00:21:46.040 Nobody ever said a word about it. But because it was Megyn Kelly, because she's a little bit right of

00:21:50.640 center. I mean, she's not that far right of center, but she's a little right of center. It was reason to

00:21:54.960 silencer. That sort of thing has never happened at the Daily Wire. And we have had real arguments,

00:22:01.240 both on air and behind the scenes, always friendly arguments, but intense arguments about where we

00:22:06.560 stand on things. And I think as a conservative website, which is what we are, conservative on

00:22:12.440 air magazine, we have a pretty wide range of opinions. I mean, I think, you know, we have said a

00:22:19.020 lot of things and disagreed about a lot of things. Nobody has said a word about it. So again,

00:22:24.280 I don't think we're, I don't think we were required to say everything. I don't think we're

00:22:28.540 required to pay people to have every point of view, but it's a pretty wide ranging right wing site.

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00:23:05.520 So moving on, Andrew, to talk about culture and movies. Are we starting to see the pendulum

00:23:13.760 returning to the centre? Both Constantine and I watched a movie called American Fiction. I don't

00:23:19.400 know if you've seen it. I did. I liked it. I thought it was great. It was magnificent. It

00:23:23.540 was everything that satire should be. Right. You know, it was, it was absolutely on the knuckle.

00:23:30.040 There was some jokes there that I was like, Ooh, I haven't felt that in a long while. Yep.

00:23:35.180 You know, are we starting to see a return to the good old days?

00:23:38.820 Well, what I feel is happening is that they have lost, but we haven't won. And I feel like we're

00:23:45.580 Hannibal outside the gates of Rome and not going, moving in. If we had a billionaire, two billionaires

00:23:51.980 willing to invest in culture. And if we had people willing to start thinking about culture,

00:23:58.400 because I don't believe culture should be right wing. I believe culture should be free. You know,

00:24:02.260 culture expresses the soul of a nation, the soul of the moment. Sometimes you have culture that I

00:24:09.400 think stinks, but it like, like abstract art, but it does express the lost soul of the nation in that

00:24:16.460 moment. So we just don't have anybody who knows enough or cares enough to start to say we are going

00:24:26.020 to get in your face, except the Daily Wire is trying. I mean, they are. Glenn Beck, I think,

00:24:31.200 is trying. Angel Studios have done an enormously good job. They're the religious studio that has

00:24:37.240 that app, The Chosen, which was a smash success. And they moved from that to doing a film called

00:24:43.220 The Sound of Freedom, which is a good, solid thriller about, you know, saving children from

00:24:51.020 trafficking. It has a kind of Christian undertone to it, which is good. But we haven't made the

00:24:57.620 aggressive move that we should, which is like, screw you guys. You're wrong about everything.

00:25:02.660 Now we're going to have an open, free culture where we say whatever we want to say. And we just

00:25:06.940 haven't been able to build yet the Netflix, the Disney that, that, uh, is doing the wicked stuff

00:25:15.000 in terms of Disney. They're doing the actual evil stuff that they're doing. So it's a, it's a good

00:25:19.500 moment. It is a good moment. It is, uh, the first buds of spring, whether it will continue and get

00:25:26.080 better. I don't know, because it is, the right has a harder job than the left. The left wants to sell

00:25:30.420 leftism. I want for the right to sell just reality. You know, what, what life is really like.

00:25:38.100 It's a good point because you go to Austin and you go to Joe Rogan's comedy club, the comedy

00:25:44.000 mothership. And what it essentially is, is it's not political. It's just the comedians make the jokes

00:25:51.860 they want to make and the jokes they believe in. And then the audience laughs or they don't.

00:25:57.900 And that's really what we need is we're going to make movies. It's not about left. It's not about

00:26:03.620 right. We're just going to get back to doing what we used to do. The thing that everybody loves,

00:26:09.200 which is great stories. Right. That's all that we want. I don't want a right wing movie. I don't

00:26:17.360 want a left wing movie. If I'm honest, I just want a great story. Yeah. I mean, I think that this is,

00:26:21.700 you know, I recently was watching, I was talking about this on my show, this show, Baby Reindeer.

00:26:29.020 Yes. And it's, it's, it's not a great show, but it's a really interesting show. And it's funny

00:26:35.840 because it's about a bisexual being stalked by a fat psychopath woman. And he's, he's upset by that

00:26:45.660 because he wants to date a transsexual. And I go, well, that's good conservative stuff for you.

00:26:51.240 But, but the obvious despair of the, of all the characters, their obvious, the obvious fact that

00:26:57.760 they were trapped in this, in this philosophy that says your sexual desires are your identity,

00:27:05.120 which is actually the opposite of the truth. It's actually not the truth. You know,

00:27:08.700 it was so obvious that the writer, um, Richard Gad, we know him actually. He was honest enough

00:27:17.820 to portray that. And I thought, well, to me, that's what an artist does. And he may not be a

00:27:23.140 great artist, but I think that was a, it was a good show that actually portrayed that. And I think

00:27:28.120 a little bit more of that, uh, is, is just a good thing. Like the, the New York times every day,

00:27:35.900 every other day runs a story about sex in which every form of sex, except maybe married sex is,

00:27:42.220 is great. It's great. What could be wrong? What could be wrong? You know, you want to put cigarettes

00:27:46.820 out on your girlfriend. Great. You know, that's as long as she's consent, the two things that they

00:27:50.680 worry about is consent and harm. You know, if the person agrees, it's okay. And if you don't hurt them

00:27:55.920 seriously, it's okay. And I think, yeah, is there nothing you could do by consent that doesn't hurt

00:28:01.060 to me that degrades them, that degrades yourself? You know, is there, is sex the only willed human

00:28:06.240 action that exists outside of moral context, you know? And I think that like, when you tell true

00:28:12.520 stories about people, true things happen. When you tell stories that are actually true, you know,

00:28:19.200 the truth comes out. And I think that that was true in, in Gad's show. And I, and I appreciated that,

00:28:24.460 even though I found it uncomfortable to watch. I don't actually want to watch a guy romancing a trans

00:28:29.440 woman. But, but I thought like, well, I'm, I'm, you know, this is this guy's honest life and he's

00:28:34.560 being honest about it. And I'm always willing to show up for that. And this is a great point actually,

00:28:39.420 because when people were like, oh, it's, you know, it's about, you know, the trans and whatever else

00:28:45.060 I was like, no, that's actually who Richard is. And I think if you care about art, you care about

00:28:52.620 truth. Right. And if somebody is here and is like, I'm going to tell you a story about my life and

00:28:57.680 maybe it isn't for you, but I'm going to be honest with you about my story. Right.

00:29:02.740 It's always going to be compelling. Like you said, that's right. And the problem has been

00:29:06.220 not that there, that we need more honest stories like that. But the fact is there are not a lot

00:29:12.380 of honest stories about other people who aren't those things. And, and people who think, you know,

00:29:18.500 for instance, there's no story about a guy who's an oil man, who's in the right,

00:29:22.840 a businessman who's in the right, a guy who says, you know, listen, I don't hate gay people,

00:29:28.020 but I think it's immoral for these, the following reasons. And I, you know, I, I can be loving about

00:29:33.880 this, but this is what I think. You don't have these stories about religious people that have the

00:29:38.560 depth that I would like to see in, in those stories, the stories of religious people who actually

00:29:44.360 see the world more honestly than people who aren't religious, which I think in, in some cases is

00:29:49.580 actually true. And one of the things I've changed my mind about is I, I hate these Christian movies

00:29:56.960 that are just happy. You know, everything's happy. You find Jesus and everything's solved.

00:30:00.380 You're all your problems are solved, but those are very popular. And when you create a popular art

00:30:05.380 form, it attracts talent. And ultimately I think that'll be transformed into things more like the

00:30:09.860 Sound of Freedom, which is a very difficult movie to watch because it's about child trafficking. I mean,

00:30:14.180 it was very hard to look at, but it had great moments and it was a big, it was a huge hit,

00:30:20.640 you know? And so, and so I just want a thousand flowers. I'm like Mao. I want a thousand flowers

00:30:26.700 except without the killing part afterwards, you know?

00:30:30.400 Andrew, I wanted to ask you about this thing about morality in art, because it's, there's something

00:30:36.700 that happened and it happened quite a few years ago now when things like House of Cards

00:30:42.860 and Game of Thrones and other series and movies of that kind started to come out, which were

00:30:49.180 extraordinarily well made. But the one thing that really distinguished them from anything that I'd

00:30:55.520 seen previously was the fact that they were explicitly amoral. They showed a protagonist who was,

00:31:03.640 he, he, he, he wasn't trying to get to some good place or solve some kind of problem or overcome his,

00:31:12.860 you know, flawed nature or have some kind of hero's journey. He was just an evil bastard

00:31:19.540 and that's what you saw. What happened there? Because to me that seems like that's, that's

00:31:25.520 something, that's not accident, right? It's not. I would leave out Game of Thrones for a minute

00:31:29.360 because I think Game of Thrones is actually on its own from those other stories. What you saw right

00:31:35.360 around 2000 when there was this wonderful moment of a golden age of television that was caused by the

00:31:42.200 sudden spread, it was an accident. It was caused by the sudden spread of the number of channels they

00:31:47.440 needed product. And so they were allowing people to do things that they wouldn't have allowed them

00:31:51.320 to do had there still just been three networks. So you've got The Sopranos, you've got The Shield,

00:31:55.880 you've got The Wire, you've got Breaking Bad and the one used House of Cards. And what those were

00:32:04.880 were stories I feel that all had the same idea behind them, that in a world where masculinity

00:32:10.780 is outlawed, only outlaws will be masculine. And so you had people who were men who were being men,

00:32:18.100 but they had to be men in opposition to society. And sometimes that meant being evil and Breaking Bad.

00:32:23.780 If you go back and watch the first episode of Breaking Bad, because in Hollywood, all I ever heard

00:32:27.680 about Breaking Bad was, well, it's really about the fact that he does this for his family.

00:32:31.280 It's not. It's about the fact that he's unmanned. When you meet him, his wife gives him a handjob

00:32:36.000 for his birthday. That's how, you know, that's the kind of relationship he's in. And it's like she,

00:32:40.140 and she's, she's reading while she does it, you know? And so, and, and at the end, he looks at her

00:32:45.260 and says, I'm the one who knocks. I'm the one people are afraid of. He's become a man because that

00:32:50.260 is part of a man. You have to be a little bit willing to do harm where harm is needed. But the only way

00:32:56.620 these guys could express it was as rebels against society. Because if you notice before that time,

00:33:03.900 for instance, the private eye had completely disappeared from the American scene and all

00:33:08.860 shows were about police agencies and government, you know, the FBI or something like that. And

00:33:13.960 they still are. You don't see the, the lone guy who just goes out and kicks people around to get

00:33:19.220 justice done, which was Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer, Raymond Chandler, all those guys.

00:33:23.500 So that was a moment, I think, of the, these men, these frustrated men writing these stories that

00:33:30.840 we all want to see about guys being guys and winning through and doing what they want to do.

00:33:36.820 You know, in, if you have cowboy movies, then they're the good guys. If you have knights in

00:33:40.940 armor, they're the good guys. But gangsters are the sort of urban expression of that where they're

00:33:45.560 the bad guys, but they're fighting a corrupt society. They're living in a corrupt society.

00:33:48.880 And, and, and so that was a really interesting moment. And it led to this flourishing of

00:33:54.860 television, which is now just about over, unfortunately. Game of Thrones was different

00:33:59.580 because Game of Thrones had the interesting, first of all, as long as it was based on the book,

00:34:04.560 on the books, it was great. Yeah, they ruined it. Yeah. They ruined it. Well,

00:34:07.740 they were listening to the New York Times and the New York Times were saying women are being

00:34:10.360 mistreated. And it's like, you know, this is a story. But the thesis behind Game of Thrones is if you

00:34:16.700 don't play the game of power, you die. And so it had good people and it had bad people,

00:34:21.620 but if they didn't play the game of power, they died. And so, and that was shocking, right? It was,

00:34:25.440 it was, I thought it was spectacular. I mean, in the middle of that show, there were times when I

00:34:30.840 cared more about who won the Iron Throne than who won the White House. You know, I was just sitting

00:34:35.240 there on the edge of my seat trying to figure it out because it was such a shocking depiction of a

00:34:40.940 Machiavellian world. And he was honest to that. What was dishonest about Game of Thrones is that

00:34:46.820 it had an entire religious patina without God in it, which was ridiculous. So it had people who

00:34:53.120 were resurrected and they would say, well, where were you? And I was nowhere. You think, well,

00:34:56.560 how did you come back? You know, like from, from whence did you come back? You know, people would

00:35:01.340 perform magic, but anyone who believed in God would just be instantly wiped out, you know,

00:35:06.040 and, or would be ineffectual. You know, there were no, there was no such thing as a Christian knight,

00:35:11.240 for instance, which in, in the show, but that's all right. That was his vision. And I was willing

00:35:15.860 to go along with it. And I love the fact that he was true to it, that he was honest. It was like you

00:35:19.720 were talking about before. He was honest to his vision. And then the minute they lost control of

00:35:25.540 the books, the minute the original writer was not speaking into the plot, they caved to the New York

00:35:32.160 Times, you know, who was saying, be nice, be nicer, show us the equal people, bring us this

00:35:36.300 thing. And that to me is the death of art. It's just the death of art. It's just serving,

00:35:40.740 you know, art has got to have a little bit, you have to have a little bit of religious fervor

00:35:44.580 to do what I do for a living, which is tell the truth no matter what. You know, you have to think

00:35:49.960 some books are going to sell, some books aren't going to sell, but I'm going to do,

00:35:53.360 I'm going to show up and do what has to be done. Sometimes the New York Times is going to call me

00:35:56.340 names. They have called me names, you know, it's like, so what, you know, that's, that's what you have to do.

00:36:00.980 And those guys, you know, basically fell apart after they lost their, their bases.

00:36:08.620 It's interesting that we use the word nice because to me, nice isn't a compliment. Nice means

00:36:15.300 something else. Nice means to be weak. Nice means to not confront the things that need to be confronted.

00:36:22.400 Nice means that you take the pass of least resistance.

00:36:25.840 Well, in the words of the greatest movie ever made, Roadhouse.

00:36:30.980 You know, he says, you'd be nice until it's time to not be nice. And I think that that is kind of

00:36:35.500 the Christian night. That is, that's the Christian night. I'd be nice until it's time to not be nice.

00:36:39.420 You know, and I think that, um, that's what makes that movie so terrific. I can't stop watching that

00:36:44.340 film. I just like an addiction. I love that movie, but, but yeah.

00:36:47.600 Andrew, coming back to something you said earlier about, uh, needing a billionaire or two,

00:36:52.160 it's, and I have, I observe this too, which is, I think people particularly who are, uh, you know,

00:36:59.820 waking up to the reality of what the left has become or people who are just on the right, uh,

00:37:04.660 more generally who do have those resources, they're quite often, uh, not aware of how important culture is.

00:37:10.240 Uh, and they, they often, they're often business guys. They're often people who see things in terms

00:37:16.500 of P and I profit loss, uh, return, et cetera. Uh, why does, if, if it's true, you know, why does the

00:37:24.360 right have a culture problem if we might frame it that way?

00:37:26.800 I think, I think it's, there are a couple of reasons I've thought about this for, you know,

00:37:29.820 the only reason I started talking about politics at all was because I felt that the culture was,

00:37:34.640 had become toxic while I was living in England for seven years. I came back and thought like,

00:37:38.220 what, what the hell, what are we talking about? Especially after nine 11, when people were saying,

00:37:42.320 you know, like, Oh, we kind of deserved it. And why do they hate us? And all this kind of crazy

00:37:45.960 stuff, you know, I, I think that part of the conservative mindset is to understand that we live

00:37:54.360 in a social fabric and every part of that fabric is connected so that if you pull one string,

00:38:01.000 it's entirely possible that the entire suit will fall apart. And I don't have, I'm, I'm actually a

00:38:06.920 liberal, you know, I'm, I'm a liberal, I'm only a conservative because the conservatives are the

00:38:10.140 liberals now. You know, if you want to, if you want to say what you mean, if you want to speak

00:38:13.360 plainly, if you want to be an honest guy and be a guy, you know, you have to be a conservative.

00:38:17.460 That's what, that's why I'm a conservative. But I don't have that mindset that things can fall

00:38:22.260 apart. I think of looking into the future, like looking at constellations, there are a million stars,

00:38:27.700 you're picking out the shapes, you're picking out the bright stars and making shapes out of them.

00:38:31.440 It doesn't have to be a disaster. If you talk to conservatives, it's always a disaster. It's always an

00:38:35.740 emergency. And the culture doesn't work like that. It's not going to like somebody is going to make

00:38:40.160 a movie and everybody's going to go, Oh yes, I should be faithful to my wife. That's not what

00:38:44.640 happens. You know, you create an atmosphere with the culture creates an atmosphere and we breathe

00:38:50.520 in that atmosphere. And the left works very, very, very hard at creating an atmosphere in which a

00:38:57.600 religious family oriented, freedom oriented society is bad. They work at it every day,

00:39:05.940 every single day. You know, they are telling you if you're white, if you're a male, if you're

00:39:11.100 masculine, if you are faithful to your wife, if you're a woman, then you're a homemaker.

00:39:16.020 The New York Times, the only time they ever talk about not having sex is in the context of marriage.

00:39:20.660 You can be happy in a marriage without sex. They'll never say that you could be happy anywhere else

00:39:24.360 without having sex. Even while you're reading the article, you should be having sex unless you're

00:39:28.820 married, right? They work very, very hard to create this atmosphere because they understand what it is.

00:39:33.980 They have time, they have patience. They started doing this 65 years ago and it only has come to

00:39:41.300 fruition now. We are always in a hurry, conservatives, because we always see everything's falling apart.

00:39:47.500 And, you know, I'm a, I'm a Burkean in this regard. I believe the change is going to come.

00:39:52.660 And what I want is for change to come in keeping with our traditions. It doesn't mean some traditions

00:39:58.220 are going to fall by the wayside. Some things get out of date, but, but you change in keeping with

00:40:03.680 your principles, right? But there are a lot of conservatives whose conservatism consists of

00:40:08.420 trying to bring back their childhood. Now, I know conservatives who think the great days of

00:40:11.900 America were the 1990s. And I go, eh, you know, really? And, but they just, that's when they grew up.

00:40:19.140 So that's what they want to bring back. And, and that is a, a mindset that's always in a panic

00:40:24.180 because things are always changing. You know, I'm living in a world so different from the world

00:40:30.360 I grew up in. It's almost like I come from another planet, but a lot of it has been good. A lot of the

00:40:36.760 changes have been great and have been positive. And it's only in, in recent years that some things

00:40:43.360 have risen that I think are, are genuinely destructive and genuinely prone to destruction.

00:40:49.080 So we're always panicking and culture is a slow game. Culture is the long game.

00:40:54.460 That point you made about the atmosphere, I think is, is really interesting because, uh,

00:40:59.260 we had a comedian called Steve Hughes, who I doubt you would have heard of on the show a long time

00:41:03.520 ago. And, uh, he said something that really stuck with me about how, you know, we in the UK,

00:41:08.680 we watch American movies and we have this idea of people in, in the deep South as these rednecks

00:41:14.000 and whatever. And how do you know that? What if they're yes, sir, no, sir, very polite, et cetera.

00:41:18.920 And the, having the opportunity to travel around the United States as we now do. And, uh, I had the

00:41:24.800 chance to be in a lot of places that most people wouldn't go in, you know, Oklahoma and places like

00:41:29.500 that. Um, you see that what he said is exactly true, but if your idea of what America is comes from

00:41:37.440 Hollywood, which for most people, especially around the world, it absolutely does. And people

00:41:43.900 in America, by the way, who may not have traveled very much, then it starts to make sense why we see

00:41:50.540 everything the way that we do from, from that cultural lens, because it's very disfiguring to

00:41:56.420 reality. That lens. This is one of the formative experiences of my life. When I was a boy, I wanted

00:42:01.360 to be a drifter. That was actually my ambition. I loved stories like, you know, about wanderers,

00:42:07.740 Shane, and you know, then came Bronson was a television show on the air that any story that

00:42:11.900 had a wanderer in it, I would watch the TV show. I would read the book. I just love that. And I, I,

00:42:16.300 I, I suffer from wanderlust. I still do. I still move around more than most people do.

00:42:21.820 And I just started traveling around the country and I slept in hobo camps and I slept in cheap hotels

00:42:27.100 and I slept in my car and I just went everywhere. I went to every state, except for some reason,

00:42:32.080 South Dakota, which I've never, is the only state I've never been to. And I was a New York guy. I

00:42:38.460 lived 20 minutes outside of, in a suburb, 20 minutes outside of New York. What I knew was what

00:42:43.000 you're talking about. I knew that this Southern sheriffs would arrest you if you were black and

00:42:47.440 they were bigots and we were the good guys and we were sophisticated. And it was all a lie. And I saw it.

00:42:53.460 I saw it was all a lie. I talked to people from every level of society all around the country.

00:42:57.900 Sometimes I was with bums and hobos and hobo camps, but I could also sometimes amass enough

00:43:03.780 money to stay at nicer places. I met all kinds of people and I realized it's all untrue. It's just

00:43:09.380 all like every word of it is untrue. And of course you can do that to anybody, right? You can always

00:43:14.840 show the bad guys in any society and then the good guys in another society without lying, right? You don't

00:43:19.800 have to lie because sure, there's a bigoted sheriff in the South somewhere. You can tell

00:43:24.340 that story, but it's kind of like they did during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They would tell

00:43:30.160 a story about an American soldier raping a woman and say, well, this really happened. And you go like,

00:43:34.600 okay, it really happened. But there were 250,000 troops over there. That's a city full of people.

00:43:39.860 They're going to be bad guys. Are those the only people you're going to show us? And yes,

00:43:43.920 that's the answer. Yes. Those are the only people they're going to show us if they're doing the South,

00:43:47.880 if they're doing the country. They still talk like this. I talk to liberals. Because of my

00:43:53.680 upbringing, I still know a lot of liberals who are lovely people, absolutely lovely people. But

00:43:58.420 when you talk to them about the Trump supporters, the people who show up and there are hundreds of

00:44:03.380 thousands to see this guy, they think every single one of them is a shotgun packing bigot who

00:44:11.580 can't put a sentence together. And I keep saying, I've had dinner with them. I know them. I talk

00:44:17.860 them. That's not who they are. But are there those guys in there? Sure. But there's always bad

00:44:23.020 guys in every cohort. So it's appalling. And the fact that the news media, if you just watch them

00:44:31.180 demographically, they now almost entirely live on the coasts. Hollywood is in Hollywood. All of these,

00:44:38.020 government is in Washington. They do not know what they do not know. I mean, Nancy Pelosi was at Oxford

00:44:45.320 the other day and was talking about these people just don't understand what's good for them.

00:44:48.800 You know, she's in San Francisco. Her city is falling apart. Her city is an absolute

00:44:53.680 crap show. And she doesn't even walk outside her door and think maybe there shouldn't be this many

00:44:58.280 people living on the streets, you know. But she knows that in Oklahoma, in Arkansas, she knows what

00:45:03.140 the problem is there, you know. And that's what culture does. And that is the problem. That's why what

00:45:08.900 you said before is exactly where I stand, is the problem is not that the left makes movies. It's

00:45:14.580 that they blacklist the right. And we've let them do it. It's not their fault. They're small-minded,

00:45:20.460 horrible people. They are following their nature. But we have not built the machinery to fight back.

00:45:29.780 I mean, we have no awards. We don't give people awards. We have no reviews. We have no

00:45:33.900 bookstores. We don't even build social media. Everybody who's built social media is on the left

00:45:39.840 as well. You can't just sit around and whine, you know, about that. You have to build stuff. And

00:45:44.760 these guys, the people on the right, tend to complain. And their media is about complaining,

00:45:53.300 about attacking. It's never about, you know, yeah, maybe there is a problem with Jeff Bezos

00:45:59.620 having a gazillion dollars. And the guys who work for Jeff Bezos can't take a bathroom break.

00:46:05.120 Maybe that is a problem. Maybe, you know, capitalism doesn't solve every problem. You know,

00:46:09.040 I mean, like, I'm happy for Jeff Bezos to make a billion dollars, but the people who work for him

00:46:12.780 should be treated like human beings. You know, maybe capitalism doesn't handle that. And maybe we

00:46:17.920 should sit down with people in the middle left and say, okay, we don't want to give government more

00:46:21.960 power, but maybe, you know, this is something that actually needs to be rejiggered a little bit.

00:46:26.240 But we never do that. It's always just, you know, hold the line, keep the line. So nothing

00:46:31.940 changes and everything changes. And so it's a losing battle, you know?

00:46:35.520 Yeah. And it's also as well, I've come to this conclusion because through doing trigonometry,

00:46:41.240 I've talked to a lot of people on the right. I don't think they get culture. I don't think they

00:46:46.260 get it really that they don't. In the same way there's, you know, there's people on the right

00:46:50.060 have got a great sense of humor, but there's a lot of people on the right who are so earnest,

00:46:53.680 you make a joke and it... Well, you know, going back to that, to that baby reindeer thing,

00:46:59.860 because he was honest about that, I ended up watching the show having a heart for him.

00:47:05.660 When the show started, I almost turned it off because when I thought, ah, he's going out with

00:47:09.840 a trans guy and this guy, he's basically enticing this person to stalk him, you know, as he's

00:47:14.820 back. And then I thought, no, but he's telling the truth about his experience. Now I have a heart for

00:47:19.120 the guy. And, and you have to have a, to me, it's not, it doesn't cost you anything to see

00:47:24.740 another person's point of view if the person's not trying to kill you. You know, I mean, that's

00:47:28.400 where, I mean, that's why, that's why I go after YouTube so hard. They're, they're really doing

00:47:33.680 something wrong. They're taking a common carrier and censoring 50% of the country. But I don't go

00:47:40.120 after the guy who's on YouTube saying something I disagree with. I'll go after his ideas, but it's not

00:47:45.380 him that I hate. And culture is always, you know, art is always culture critical. It's

00:47:52.820 always pointing out things that are the attention between culture and the human spirit. So it's

00:47:58.240 always going to have some kind of criticism to put forward. And it's always going to give

00:48:02.640 you a heart for people that you don't like. And no, that's the whole point of it. The point

00:48:06.640 about art is it gives you a million lives. You know, you get, you read, you read a hundred

00:48:10.800 books, you've got a hundred new consciousness misses inside you. And yeah, there are conservatives

00:48:17.420 who are conservative in the sense that they don't want to let that in. And that's unfortunate.

00:48:22.200 The left handles that by simply silencing everybody they don't want to hear, which is in a way more

00:48:27.120 dangerous. So you have on the, you know, we're talking about specific people on the right and

00:48:31.420 specific people on the left. The left wants to silence the right. The right wants to close their

00:48:35.480 eyes to the left. And that's a bad combination for the right because it means the left will make

00:48:40.860 art and the right won't.

00:48:42.100 That was the objection I was actually going to make to your point, Francis, because we were

00:48:45.220 talking about this the other night. There's actually quite a lot of conservative actors

00:48:48.920 or centrist actors in Hollywood who have like secret gatherings, like they're the Freemasons

00:48:55.200 or something.

00:48:55.620 Yes. I was in those. Yeah.

00:48:58.360 What were they like? Is there a secret handshake?

00:49:00.640 No, they were, they were like going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I used to, I used

00:49:03.940 to complain about them. I was in them because I thought it was the beginning of something

00:49:08.320 good. Uh, you know, there was the famous one was, uh, Friends of Abe, uh, which was kind

00:49:13.460 of formed, uh, in part by Gary Sinise. And I used to say to him, you know, if we're in

00:49:17.880 secret, we're sort of saying that we're wrong. And Gary, who is, who's one of the nicest

00:49:23.080 human beings in one of the best human beings in Hollywood, bar none.

00:49:26.620 I mean, that's not saying much though, is it?

00:49:28.860 Okay. That's damning with pain, but he's actually also a very nice human being. But he, he was

00:49:34.120 worried about the guys who didn't have a platform. So he was worried about the grip. He was worried

00:49:37.760 about the guy who was behind the camera, who, if he got fired, had nowhere to go. So he didn't

00:49:41.800 want to expose those people. But the problem is you were literally going to meetings and going,

00:49:45.880 my name is Andrew and I'm a conservative. Hi Andrew. Like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

00:49:49.240 Whereas the left was getting up at the Oscars and saying, screw Donald Trump. Then it was George

00:49:55.980 W. Bush. Screw George W. Bush. And, and that is a problem. But I did see the problem. I understood

00:50:03.660 that these people were getting fired. Black conservatives in Hollywood are treated like

00:50:09.540 dirt. I mean, they would tell stories that your eyes would fill up listening to the things

00:50:14.420 that had happened to them because they had committed the double sin of being black while

00:50:19.100 conservative, you know. And what would happen to them? I, I haven't heard the story.

00:50:22.600 They would either have to keep their mouth shut or they would be abused beyond. I mean,

00:50:27.440 well, look at the way they're treating Clarence Thomas. That's happening out in the open without

00:50:30.360 having to expose anybody. You know, you know, Clarence Thomas is one of the best Supreme Court

00:50:33.760 justices we've ever had. An honest guy with an open point of view, you know, exactly what Thomas

00:50:39.720 thinks. They treat him like he's a criminal, you know, and they do that because he is, you know,

00:50:45.600 I can't decide whether it's being conservative while black or being black while conservative,

00:50:48.960 but it's one of the, those two that they just can't stand because their entire idea of themselves

00:50:55.340 is that they love the little guy. But if you're black and conservative, if you're gay and

00:51:00.560 conservative, if you're women and conservative, they treat you like dirt, you know. And, and again,

00:51:07.360 this is talking about a, a, a group of these people in the, in the middle. Most people don't

00:51:13.300 know that much about politics and they just want to be nice. You know, they want everything to go

00:51:18.220 well. And so when somebody says, well, we're going to give money to these people, they think,

00:51:21.800 oh, that's nice, you know, and you don't think, well, you know, where's that money coming from? Why did

00:51:25.720 you, where did you get the right to take that money from somebody else and give it to this person,

00:51:29.120 you know? Um, and those are debates we never have because the left has taken over the

00:51:34.480 communications industry. And that's why Ricky Gervais's speech at the Golden Globes was so

00:51:39.660 powerful and it resonated and it got, however, hundreds of millions of views and went super

00:51:45.220 viral and it continues to go viral because he hit the nail on the head. I mean, these are people

00:51:51.500 who have been married four times. Their kids are in rehab. They're in rehab and they're going to get

00:51:57.120 up and tell me that I'm a bad person for thinking, you know what? I think Donald Trump is better than

00:52:02.240 Hillary Clinton. I mean, it's Hillary Clinton for crying out loud. A plant would have been

00:52:06.780 Hillary Clinton. You know, so, so why are they preaching to me when they're really, their talent

00:52:11.860 is to entertain me? You know, it's not that they don't have a right. It's not that they don't have

00:52:17.920 a right to their ideas. It's not that they don't have a right to express their ideas, but the fact that

00:52:21.620 they have this vast platform on which they express their ideas and that we take them seriously,

00:52:27.320 you know, you just think, shut up and dance, you know? I mean, yeah.

00:52:31.960 But it's also as well, you look at films like American fiction, for instance, or the Joker,

00:52:38.060 the Joker isn't left wing. I mean, it's actually, what it's talking about is something else entirely.

00:52:45.600 And that really struck a chord with people and it made a huge amount of money. Right. So you're going,

00:52:52.360 you've seen the potential. Surely capitalism is going to kick in at some point. And one of these

00:52:58.520 studio heads is going to go, you know what? I just want to make money. Yeah, you'd think. But the

00:53:04.260 reason it doesn't, though, is there's a whole other force and people never, you know, I was once

00:53:09.720 sitting at a table with Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz, and he said, he started asking people,

00:53:15.900 what do you know that other people don't know? And he came to me and I said, what I know that

00:53:19.720 other people don't know is that it's not about the money. It's not about the money. The people in

00:53:24.860 Hollywood, they want girls. You know, yeah, they want money, but they'll make money. They're going

00:53:29.640 to make money because the way the system works no longer depends on box office. It depends on too

00:53:34.020 many other myriad of things. So they're going to make money for as long as they're in the game.

00:53:40.200 And they care about prestige. They care about awards. This is when I say the right has no

00:53:44.500 awards. You know, you stand up and win an Oscar. No one can take that away from you. You now are an

00:53:49.100 Oscar winning actor, right? So you get up and tell people, tell 50% of the country to buzz off,

00:53:55.820 you know, doesn't mean a thing to you. Like, sure, your next movie is not going to make, you know,

00:54:00.500 Christian Bale made a movie about Moses. There's a whole huge parcel of people who would sweep into

00:54:07.820 that movie. And he gets up and says, well, Moses was a terrorist and the movie dies. You know,

00:54:12.640 it's not about the money. It's about the sense that they have of being a virtuous person. Listen,

00:54:18.340 if you have a life like mine where you have made a living creating things, you are one of the luckiest

00:54:27.160 bastards on the face of the earth. And if you have a problem with that, the fact that, you know,

00:54:31.660 a guilt problem with that, expressing your virtue is a big deal. It becomes very important.

00:54:38.080 Fortunately for me, I think I am the exact right person to be lucky. I think like I'm not one of

00:54:42.420 the nicest people I know. They should just shower me with gold. But, you know, if you have a problem

00:54:48.160 with that and you don't feel important enough, I mean, this is a thing that affects comedians.

00:54:55.320 Comedians get to be 50 and suddenly they want to send you a message. And I think like,

00:54:59.320 what happened to me laughing while you were talking? You were talking, I was laughing and

00:55:03.000 now suddenly you're telling me what I should be thinking. You know, it's like, where did that

00:55:07.160 transition happen? You know, because they feel unimportant. They just feel like they're

00:55:11.680 entertainers. I have to tell you, John Irving, the guy who wrote World According to Garp,

00:55:17.880 said the stupidest thing I've ever heard an artist say. He said, I wish I, I sometimes wish I were in

00:55:22.580 the Soviet Union because they take art seriously because they kill you if you say the wrong thing,

00:55:27.940 you know. And I thought, I'll be happy to come to your house and attach a wire to your testicles.

00:55:32.900 You know, that'll make you feel more important. But, you know, when you're in America and when you

00:55:39.120 can say, you used to, within 20 years ago, you used to be able to say anything you want. And now

00:55:44.920 it's getting to be so you can say anything you want again, really. You feel unimportant. And I think

00:55:49.640 it makes them feel important and virtuous. And you cannot underestimate how much that drives

00:55:55.000 Hollywood. Wow. Well, Andrew, it's been an absolute pleasure having you back. We're going

00:55:59.460 to go to locals where our audience get to ask you their questions in a second. Before we do,

00:56:04.460 we always end with the same question. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should

00:56:08.360 be? Oh, wow. God. Same thing as always. But not religion. Not religion. I don't care about religion.

00:56:16.960 I mean, I care about religion because religion is a vehicle by which we talk about God. But why?

00:56:22.060 I just wrote this thing. I'm doing this wonderful Substack. And if your audience can go with my son,

00:56:27.740 Spencer, we are talking about, we're sending emails back and forth, talking about religion,

00:56:32.260 which we've been doing since he was a little kid. We've been doing it in person. Now we're doing

00:56:37.120 it in emails. And we are both amazed at this site. It's called the New Jerusalem,

00:56:41.380 the newjerusalem.substack.com. And the thing that I talked about today in my letter today

00:56:46.720 was the way people refer to Nietzsche as if he had invented a new scientific idea which changed

00:56:53.480 everything. Nietzsche had a brilliant insight, which is that the collapse of Christianity was

00:56:57.900 going to cause a collapse of the moral order. Dostoevsky had the same insight. Dostoevsky

00:57:04.620 was a Christian and he said, this is a disaster. Nietzsche, it's very hard to make out what he was

00:57:09.320 saying, but he said, this is what is going to happen. And people say, well, now that Nietzsche,

00:57:12.980 now that there's been Nietzsche, we can no longer establish right and wrong. Now that there's been

00:57:16.880 Nietzsche, we can no longer talk about these things. And I think like, he didn't discover

00:57:20.380 that the earth goes around the sun. He had a philosophical point of view, you know, and from

00:57:25.080 Nietzsche comes Foucault and comes woke and comes intersexualism and all the things, all the plagues

00:57:29.700 that come out of that. And we need to be asking the question, well, was Nietzsche right that there was

00:57:35.260 no God? You know, I mean, was his opinion, is his opinion not to be challenged? Is the only way we can

00:57:42.020 challenge it by becoming small-minded, you know, fundamentalists who believe that every word in

00:57:51.120 the Bible has to be interpreted only in one way? You know, is that the only response we have? Do

00:57:55.200 we not have a response of intellectuals? And I just want to finish this by just saying, for over 10

00:58:01.160 years, I have been predicting that there would be a revival of religion from the top, the intellectual

00:58:06.860 top. And I know you guys have talked to Ian Hershey-Lee, you know, Russell Brand, all these

00:58:13.820 people who were very staunch atheists are changing their tune. And I think that this is an important

00:58:20.200 moment. I think this is a real transition. And I do want to also yell at you about your

00:58:25.900 interview with Richard Dawkins, but I'll save that for another time.

00:58:29.300 Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Actually, we can do that on Locals. If you

00:58:33.340 want to see Andrew yell at us about Andrew, Richard, not Andrew Dawkins, I don't even know.

00:58:37.120 Who is Andrew Dawkins?

00:58:38.220 Who is Andrew Dawkins?

00:58:38.320 He's the guy waiting.

00:58:39.340 Yeah, we're going to talk about him as well. If you want to watch Andrew yell at us about

00:58:44.060 our interview with Richard Dawkins, go to Locals. But before we go there, I will say, I actually

00:58:48.120 think you make some interesting points about that. Not least, I just spent three weeks on tour

00:58:52.300 with Jordan Peterson. And he brought me along specifically from an agnostic perspective to

00:58:57.840 try and argue with him. And you can see that whether it's God exactly that people want from

00:59:05.020 him. He's talking about God to some extent, but not only that. What people want most of

00:59:10.600 all from him is the moral order. They want to know how to know what to do and how to avoid

00:59:16.300 doing the things that they know not to do. That's really it. I think that's a big inquiry

00:59:20.540 of our time, frankly.

00:59:21.840 And I will say that I know this because I was baptized at the age of 49. And I thought

00:59:27.560 about this for a long time. There is no moral order without God. You can't do it. You can't

00:59:32.760 get there. I've been down every road trying to construct it. You can't do it. Jordan asked

00:59:36.640 me, you know, on his show, I had an interview with Jordan and he said, can you build a moral

00:59:44.340 order from evolution? And I said, no, because moral order is about what you're willing to die

00:59:48.980 for. And there is no evolutionary construct in which you're willing to die for transubstantiation.

00:59:56.240 That's not good for evolution, but people are willing to do it. And sometimes they're right

01:00:02.540 to do it.

01:00:03.280 Right. I'm going to yell at you about that, but on Locals. Head on over to Locals right

01:00:07.040 now.

01:00:07.280 Where you see a slag off Andrew Dawkins.

01:00:09.700 Whoever that is.

01:00:10.580 Yeah, he's getting it in the neck.

01:00:12.260 I hate that. We all hate that.

01:00:16.120 Acknowledging that Joe Biden is a disaster and Trump is likely the better choice of the

01:00:20.000 two. As a devout and highly moral Christian, do you have any reservations about Trump's

01:00:25.460 moral character or his penchant for dishonesty on a variety of topics?

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TRIGGERnometry - May 22, 2024

Candace Owens Vs The Daily Wire - Andrew Klavan

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