TRIGGERnometry - Candace Owens Vs The Daily Wire - Andrew Klavan

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Andrew Klavan is the host of 'The Andrew Klavan Show' podcast on The Daily Wire. He is a writer of crime and suspense novels, several of which have been adapted into Hollywood movies including 'True Crime' starring Clint Eastwood, and 'Don’t Say a Word' starring Michael Douglas. He has also written screenplays for several films. His latest novel, The House of Love and Death, is available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1613164467/ With his son Spencer, Andrew writes a blog about faith called The New Jerusalem, available here: https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com/ SPONSORS: Watch the Munk Debate: Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitism? Live June 17th. Join today to live stream. Click here: https://bit.ly/munk_debate Buy gold and earn interest on it! https://monetary-metals.com/triggernometry/ Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc  Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https:/ /www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There were things going out over our air that she was saying that we're being at least received, I have to say, as being deeply anti-Semitic. The phrase Christ is king is being used as an anti-Semitic trope. We believe this. We believe that Christ is king. I also believe in the cross of Christ, but if you burn the cross on somebody's lawn, it's no longer the cross of Christ. It's just a vehicle symbol of your toxic hatred. Just a clarification on this Christ is king. How is that used in an anti-Semitic way? Well, I've gotten tweets that say Christ is King Jew.

That's kind of a giveaway for me. Andrew Claven, welcome back to Trigonometry. You're one of our favorite ever guests. We love having you on the show over and over. So welcome. Thank you. It's great to see you guys. It's great to see you.

We've got lots to talk to you about, as always, movies and culture and politics and stuff. I have to ask you, though, about the Daily Wire, Candice Owens thing. You're the only one of the Daily One. why I host as far as I'm aware who said anything about it. What happened? Well, that's a good question. I mean, I just naturally thought it was going to be a big news story. It had to be addressed.

So it became, I knew it had happened, but it became public about an hour before I went on the air. So I went on the air and addressed it, which is what I do with everything. And at the end of what turned out to be like a 40-minute segment, usually in your ear, you hear the producer say, good job, or let's move on or let's do this, whatever. I hear just dead air, nothing. And then I hear, you know, no one else talked about this. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. You know, what, how would, what does it mean to not say something about it?

And ever since I've been the target of what they call the Groyper's, I just call them Nazis because that's what they are. And, you know, it was kind of a, it was kind of a painful thing because my, my interactions with Candace were all in the makeup room and were always incredibly friendly. I spotted her as a huge talent years before she took off. I mean, I saw her on YouTube when she had no followers virtually. She had a small following. I just thought that's one of the most talented broadcasters I've ever seen. I had her on my show. I told the Daily Wire to hire her, which they didn't, which cost them a lot of money when they hired her later. So I don't

have any, you know, feelings about her whatsoever. And it's not a personal thing. And it's also not even, I don't even know her heart or what's what's in her mind. So I'm not attacking her at all. But there were things going out over our air that she was saying that we're being at least received, I have to say, as being deeply anti-Semitic. So that Nick Fuentes, who is a virtual Nazi, I mean, there's no space between him and what a Nazi would be saying was praising her to the skies. If Nick Fuentes praises me to the skies, I go out and say, no, I'm not on your side.

I don't know. I don't know what you mistook that. But there was nothing coming back. And so it was becoming uncomfortable to be on the same, you know, station, the same venue where that stuff was coming out. And so without ever having any kind of personal animus toward Candace or even knowing what it was she intended. You know, I'm not even saying that that was, you know, how she intended it to be received. It simply became impossible to have a good feeling about this place that I, helped build and that I love very much and that I'm very proud of, you know, as an entity. And

it was very painful to have that kind of stuff coming out over the air. And I did not want Nick Fuentes' praise. I don't want Nick Fuentes' praise. I don't even want, you know, I don't want him to have a happy day because of anything that I said. And so that was my basic reaction. And in that was involved the fact that some of this was being phrased in religious terms. And And one of the ways this was happening was the phrase, Christ is king, was being used as an anti-Semitic trope. Now, as I said repeatedly on the show, as Jeremy Boring, who runs the Daily Wire said repeatedly, we believe this.

We believe that Christ is king. I also believe in the cross of Christ, but if you burn the cross on somebody's lawn, it's no longer the cross of Christ. It's just a vehicle, a symbol of your toxic hatred. And so the way it was being used online as an attack or something. on Jews, you know, was simply worth refuting. And that got me some heat from people who felt like, what are you, what are you talking about? There's a totally innocent phrase. So there was a lot of blowback from it. And I don't know why no one else addressed it. I thought it was important to

address it. I'd do it again. No one asked me to address it. You know, I mean. Well, we're asking you now. And there's something I wanted to ask you about, Andrew, which is there is a kind of alternative theory that I've heard from various people, which is that anti-Semitism aside, really, Candace, as you say, is a very talented broadcaster. She looks fantastic on screen. She's very charismatic. She's great at communicating. And when the Daily Wire hired her, it was the right moment in which she was able to communicate,

you know, let's be honest, the ideas of people like Thomas Sol and Larry Elder to a younger, different audience. And that was great. But then other issues started to come along and became the current thing, as they say, on the internet, whether that was the war in Ukraine, then Israel, Palestine. And then it was kind of the case that she didn't really know what she was talking about. You know, she wasn't covering those issues in a way that is serious, you know, speaking plainly.

That's what some people have said to me. And then it descended into, you know, Bridget Macron as a man. And before you know it, you know, Israel is a discriminatory because there's a Muslim court in Jerusalem. them and you just go, is this person really qualified to be commenting on these issues? Was it that or was it specifically the anti-Semitism? No, it was for me it was the stuff that was being taken as anti-Semitic. I mean, she had been saying stuff that I had, I've said on the air, I don't think is true, like the moon landing was fake and what was the other one? I can't remember with the Macron one as a perfect example of things that I just thought, oh, 9-11, she was hinting

was kind of an inside job. And these things don't make sense. I've actually researched the ones about the moon and 9-11 only because they were so prevalent. And they don't make sense to me. But at the same time, I don't feel uncomfortable that someone that I'm not connected to is saying those things on the air. But when you start saying things that, you know, they're on the borderline. There was always a way, there's always a way of dodging out of these things, you know.

Oh, I was just asking questions or I was just saying, I was just expressing the fact, my feeling that Christ is king. even if you're dodging them, it seems to me that you would want to make sure that people don't mistake what you're saying for this hatred that has certainly done, in my opinion, just about enough damage, I think. We've had just about enough anti-Semitism as we need. I think anti-Semitism is just about topped off, you know. Well, there's plenty of people disagree with you, Andrew. I'm going to be honest with you. So to me, my supply of anti-Semitism is just well overdone, you know.

And I think that I'm ready to move on to some like obscure group that we can hate without me anything. But that was the thing that just made me uncomfortable. That's when for me it became a moral problem. I don't have any problem with entertaining people. I don't have any problem actually with people who say things that I consider outlandish to please their audience. It's like that's part of show business. It's not my part of show business, but I understand what that is. But, yeah, anti-Semitism is bad stuff, as we now see on our campuses.

And it's kind of a joke to me that Hamas, who oppresses women and would kill gays and gays and leftists who say they support women and gays. And Nick Fuente is a guy who just hates Jews, that they're all the same side. And it makes me feel like the anti-Semitism is, as I do believe, I believe it's the sign of something. much deeper in society. Yeah, I find it very interesting how we've kind of seen a resurgence of it. I always compare anti-Semitism to herpes. It's always there. And then a particular moment, especially when society is going through a turbulent period,

you then see it come to the fore. I guess the question that I really want to ask, Andrew, is just a clarification on this Christ is King. How is that used in an anti-Semitic way? Well, I've gotten tweets that say, Christ is King Jew. you know so that's kind of a giveaway for me you know and the same person who says christ's king also sends me a picture of hitler so to me that's a giveaway but but for instance if if you're in an argument with ben Shapiro and you're in a political argument with ben Shapiro and your answer is

christ is king what does that even mean what does that mean and it it means exactly what it seems to mean is that you are outside you're rejected uh you know you are not the people of god any longer, which, by the way, theologically, I disagree with on top of everything else. And for me, this is a theological issue. I have to say I have studied anti-Semitism a lot.

I mean, I've looked into it very deeply because when I realized that I was a Christian and I'm a Jew, I'm raised a Jew, I'm a Jew by race, and when I realized I was a Christian, one of my biggest resistances was that 2,000 years of Christian anti-Semitism, which has been a real part of

the religion and a really sad part. of it and the thing that I believe sort of blew up in Europe's face when it came, when Europe came. And so I wanted to, I needed to, before I could move on, I needed to separate Christian anti-Semitism from Christian love, which I thought was what I was actually, had come to believe in. And there is simply no question that by the time Germany was formed, say, in the late 1800s, hatred of Jews and hatred of Christ were the same thing, that people were saying, guys like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, were saying, you know, we've all been turned around by this Christianity because now

we're favoring weak people instead of strong people. Obviously, morality should be for the strong, and this has all been turned around. And the people who did that were the Jews, and the way it got into our society was through Jesus Christ. And so it was actually, it sounds contradictory, paradoxical, But it's not that the hatred, my joke is that the hatred of Jews is always really the hatred of the big Jew, you know. And I think that, you know, Christianity, which is an extension of Judaism, you know, Christians believe it's the completion of Judaism, is not a natural thing. It's a thing that says take care of the weak, you know, that women have equal rights. Now, they're not there for your use. They're there for your partnership, you know.

These are things that were not natural to the people who became Christian. And I think it became a battle inside their hearts. And I think the thing that kept anti-Semitism alive long after the historical reasons that came out of the split between Christianity and Judaism, which was just an historical fact, long after those things had been healed, it kept it alive because people did not want that big Jew in their heart telling them to be charitable, telling them, you know, no, you can't just march into other people's countries. No, you can't just carry women off and declare that they're theirs, all these things that had permeated European society against the will of the tribes who were converted, you know. And so I really do believe that to be a Christian

and an anti-Semite is a contradiction in terms. Oh, absolutely, because we're all made in God's image. Well, that too, yes, yeah. Has it surprised you seeing all these things, seeing a rise, in anti-Semitism, the thing that I've found shocking, Andrew, and I've always somebody who's got my fair share of anti-Semitism, particularly when I'm the fact that I'm not Jewish,

but everyone thinks I am. That's the worst combination. We're looking Jewish and not being Jewish. There's any consolation that happened to Charlie Chaplin. Yeah. I get called secret Jew, sneaky Jew, fat Jew. That was out of order, all right? You've lost way, Mason.

You've stepped over the line with Fat Jew. Yeah, that's when you really pushed it. But, you know, there are people. who I used to, you know, enjoy what they did on Twitter and be like, oh, you know, that's, you know, that particular take. I mean, that's a little bit out there, but, you know, it's quite interesting. Yeah. And then you go on their Twitter nowadays.

You're like, holy what? The Jews did 9-11? Yeah, yeah, you know, and just going, and just not even that, just being like, yes, what do you expect from Jews? I'm going, what the hell is happening? Yep, yep. And I, well, I really believe, in a larger context, putting this in a larger context, We have been taught to look at the history of the West.

Just take the West alone without the concept of God in it. To talk about literature without talking about God, even if you don't believe in God, this has nothing to do with faith. I mean, even if you don't understand that the concept of God has shaped the West entirely, the Christian concept, which is ultimately rooted in Judaism, has shaped the great, to me, the greatest culture that ever again. existed. The culture of Europe from 1500 to 1914 was, I think, the greatest human culture that has ever existed on Earth, entirely interwoven with this philosophy and this religion. And we've been taught to understand things without it. So you can't really, you don't really know where you are at any given moment. And then these things, listen, a long, long time ago,

in the 1970s, I published a number of. novel in which I referred to my generation of Jews as holiday Jews. And what I meant by that was the Holocaust that so shamed the anti-Semites that decent people just didn't do it, but that would pass. That's what I meant. It's a holiday, hooray, but it'll come back. And it comes back because it is interwoven. It is the shadow side of faith in the real Christ, the Christ of love, the Christ of unity, the Christ that says you are born in God's image, and therefore we are you know, connected in some essential way. And it's the, the dark shadow of that idea is get out of my house, Jew, you know, which is how it got into the house in the first place,

you know. And so it never, it will never go away as long as the West remains the West. And and I think that all you can do is stand up to it and call it what it is. It is a hatred of God, you know. I mean, I love the, the story I love. is John Wayne on his deathbed. He was always being accused of being a bigot, and a friend of his came over who was Jewish, and his son joked with the guy and said, you know, he didn't want to see you because you're a Jew, just kidding around with him. And John Wayne said, the only Jew I don't want to see is the other Jews. And I think that's who they hate. They hate the other Jew. And you can't understand. They keep trying to say, well, it's because Jews are successful. But the Jews of Russia

weren't successful. They were in these little stettles and they killed them anyway. They say, well, it's because the Jews want to be off on their own, but the Jews of Germany didn't want to be off on their own. They wanted to assimilate. They thought of themselves as German. All those other explanations simply do not explain why this thing is deathless. And it's deathless because, I believe, because Christ is king, because Christ actually is king. And I think that they hate that. They hate the fact that we are called upon to do something that is unnatural to our flesh, which is love one another, and try to kill each other all the time, you know, and, and give, you know, leeway to women to become themselves and, and, and remember that even though it's,

it's a wonderful thing that we live in a society where the lucky and the, and the successful can be so lucky and so successful, more successful than ever before, not to forget that, you know, some people fall behind. And sometimes it's their own fault. Sometimes, you know, They're there because they haven't done the right things. And somehow we have to care about them as well. And that's a big pain in the neck and not something that was true of every culture before us. Andrew, this is why you're one of our favorite guests because of the depth of analysis and knowledge.

And because of that, I hate to drag you back into the tabloid stuff. But the one thing that I will be honest is someone who's an admirer of everything you guys have built at the Daily Wire that did trouble me a little bit is this gagging order thing. and, you know, people not being allowed to say what they think and all of this other stuff. And I think, you know, if there is a fair critique, it's that perhaps, you know, new media, which is what we all do, the promise of it was it's the place where everyone can be free and say what they think. And now people are coming together to collaborate under an umbrella. And eventually you get a company policy essentially on what people are not allowed to say.

So can you shed any light on that side of things? you know, why is there a gagging order? And is there a kind of like, you know, these are the, the Overton window is now enforced at a company level, again, some people might say. So I actually, I know this sounds terrible. It sounds like I'm making this up. I actually don't know anything about the gag order except what I've seen on Twitter. You know, I don't talk to them about those things because I wouldn't be allowed to talk

about them on air and I don't want to lie to my own. So I just don't ask them. You know, as I understand it, there is a lot of mediation going on in the background. that I'm just not privy to, and I don't even know if the story is true. I mean, I'm not saying it's not. I just don't know whether it's true or not. But on the larger issue of the Daily Wire, the Daily Wire is not social media. It is essentially an on-air magazine.

And while you can invite anyone on, you know, I could invite Nick Fuentes on and say, okay, say your peace, pal and let him talk. We don't have to hire him. And we don't have to pay him to say those things. And when people are saying things that we can no longer support, I mean, the example I gave on the air is if I woke up one morning and said, you know, this abortion idea, I love this abortion idea. You know, I think you should be able to abort your child until he's five, you know. Listen, I was a teacher. There's some kids who should have been aborted at the age of even older.

There's no question. There's temptation there. But I would have to resign. I could not go on the air as an employee of the Daily Wire and say that. As an honorable person, I would just have to say, guys, we're no longer on the same page. It is not, the Daily Wire is not required to let every person, to pay every person who wants to say what they have to say it. We're not social media. I believe the social media should be far more open.

I mean, YouTube, for instance, I think should legally be required as a common carrier, just like the telephone company, to let every single person speak. But we're not them. We're not a social media company. We're like a magazine. We have an opinion. We have a point of view. And we don't pay leftists to come on and do a show. And we're not going to pay pro-abortion people to do a show.

We're not going to pay anti-Semites or anti-B blacks or any other kind of bigotry to do a show. Even if that's not what's in their heart and it just sounds that way, I don't think we would pay them to do it. Again, I cannot address what's happening behind the scenes. Sure. And it's just that I just don't know. I guess the low resolution critique that people might have is, what if Fox News had fired one of their hosts or presenters for saying something that wasn't company policy at Fox News? I imagine, some people might say, at the Daily Wire, there would be a lot of criticism of that.

People would say this is cancel culture on the ride and all the rest of it. That's kind of where I think there's a fair discussion to be had. I think the thing about cancel culture, and, you know, it is a new. interesting thing because I believe that there are things that you should be roundly, you know, attacked for saying, right? I mean, I don't think we have to let everybody just scream slurs at one another. But the thing about cancel culture was that it continually defined, redefined, common speech as bigoted and then killed people's careers for it. So if somebody said, for instance, I, you know, I think homosexuality is a sin,

And suddenly you were hateful or phobic instead of communicating thousands of years of traditional theology. So it was that the Overton window was being closed like a little slit, you know, that you had to be this leftist to get through. And that's how I would define cancel culture. The Daily Wire has never been like that. I mean, Jeremy, you know, I know that some of the things that people say make his head explode. He has never, ever come in and said, you can't say that on the end. air to me. And he's never said, you have to say this.

That's just never happened. And so I feel like at some point, you know, a good example of this is Megan Kelly, who was basically forced off the air for saying that wearing blackface isn't always bigoted, which is obviously true. You know, I mean, it's an obvious, true thing because all of the left's comedians have done it. Nobody ever said a word about it. But because it was Megan Kelly, because she's a little bit right of center.

I mean, she's not that far right of center, but she's a little right of center. It was reason to silence her. That sort of thing has never happened at the Daily Wire. And we have had real arguments both on air and behind the scenes, always friendly arguments, but intense arguments, about where we stand on things. And I think as a conservative website, which is what we are, conservative on-air magazine, we have a pretty wide range of opinions. I mean, I think, you know, we have said a lot of things and disagreed about a lot of things. Nobody has said a word about it. So, again, I don't think we're, I don't think we are required to say everything.

I don't think we're required to pay people to have every point of view. But it's a pretty wide-ranging right-wing site. So moving on, Andrew, to talk about culture and movies, are we starting to see the pendulum returning to the center? Both Constantine and I watched a movie called American Fiction. I don't know if you've seen it. I did. I liked it.

I thought it was great. It was magnificent. It was everything that satire should be. Right. You know, it was absolutely on the knuckle. There was some jokes there that I was like, ooh, I haven't felt that in a long while. Are we starting to see a return to the good old days? Well, what I feel is happening is that they have lost, but we haven't won.

And I feel like we're Hannibal. outside the gates of Rome and not going, moving in, if we had a billionaire, two billionaires, willing to invest in culture, and if we had people willing to start thinking about culture, because I don't believe culture should be right wing. I believe culture should be free. You know, culture expresses the soul of a nation,

a soul of the moment. Sometimes you have culture that I think stinks, but it, like abstract art, but it does express the lost soul of the nation. in that moment. So we just don't have anybody who knows enough or cares enough to start to say, we are going to get in your face, except the Daily Wire is trying. I mean, they are. Glenn Beck, I think, is trying. Angel Studios have done an enormously good job. They're the religious studio that has that aptly chosen, which was a smash success. And they move from that to doing a film called

the sound of freedom, which is a good solid thriller about saving children from trafficking and has a kind of Christian undertone to it, which is good. But we haven't made the aggressive move that we should, which is like, screw you guys, you're wrong about everything. Now we're going to have an open, free culture where we say whatever we want to say. And we just haven't been able to build yet the Netflix, the Disney, that is, doing the wicked stuff, in terms of Disney, they're doing the actual evil stuff that they're doing. So it's a good moment.

It is a good moment. It is the first buds of spring. Whether it will continue and get better, I don't know. Because it is, the right has a harder job than the left. The left wants to sell leftism. I want for the right to sell just reality, you know, what life is really like. It's a good point because you go to Austin and you go to Joe Rogan's conference. comedy club, the comedy mothership. And what it essentially is, is it's not political. It's just

the comedians make the jokes they want to make and the jokes they believe in. And then the audience laughs or they don't. And that's really what we need is we're going to make movies. It's not about left. It's not about right. We're just going to get back to doing what we used to do, the thing that everybody loves, which is great stories. That's all that we want. I don't I don't want a right wing movie. I don't want a left wing movie, if I'm honest. I just want a great story. Yeah.

I mean, I think that this is, you know, I recently was watching, I was talking about this on my show, this show, baby reindeer. Yes. And it's not a great show, but it's a really interesting show. And it's funny because it's about a bisexual being stalked by a fat psychopath woman. and he's upset by that because he wants to date a transsexual. And I go, well, that's good conservative stuff for you. But the obvious despair of all the characters, the obvious fact that they were trapped in this philosophy

that says your sexual desires are your identity, which is actually the opposite of the truth. It's actually not the truth, you know. It was so obvious that the writer, Richard Gad. We know him, actually. He was honest enough to portray that. And I thought, well, to me, that's what an artist does. And he may not be a great artist, but I think it was a good show that actually portrayed that. And I think a little bit more of that is just a good thing.

Like the New York Times every day, every other day, runs a story about sex in which every form of sex, except maybe married sex, is great. it's great. What could be wrong? What could be wrong? You know, you want to put cigarettes out on your girlfriend, great. You know, that's, as long as she's consent, the two things that they worry about is consent and harm. You know, if the person agrees, it's okay. And if you don't hurt them, seriously, it's okay. And I think, yeah, is there nothing you could do by consent that doesn't hurt something that degrades them, that degrades yourself? You know, is there, is sex the only willed human action that exists outside a moral context, you know? And I think that, like, when you tell true stories about people, true things happen. When you tell stories that are actually true, you know, the truth

comes out. And I think that that was true in Gads show. And I appreciated that, even though I found it uncomfortable to watch. I don't actually want to watch a guy romancing a trans woman. But I thought, like, well, this is this guy's honest life and he's being honest about it. And I'm always willing to show up for that. And this is a great point, actually, because when people were like, oh, it's, you know, it's about, you know, the trans and whatever else, I was like, no, that's actually who Richard is. And I think if you care about art, you care about truth. Right. And if somebody's here and he's like, I'm going to tell you a story about my life.

And maybe it isn't for you, but I'm going to be honest with you about my story. Right. It's always going to be compelling, like you said. That's right. And the problem has been not that we need more honest stories like that. But the fact is there are not a lot of honest. of stories about other people who aren't those things. And people who think, you know, for instance, there's no story about a guy who's an oilman who's in the right, a businessman who's in the

right, a guy who says, you know, listen, I don't hate gay people, but I think it's immoral for these, the following reasons. And I, you know, I can be loving about this, but this is what I think. You don't have these stories about religious people that have the depth that I would like to see in those stories. of religious people who actually see the world more honestly than people who aren't religious, which I think in some cases is actually true. And one of the things I've changed my mind about is I hate these Christian movies that are just happy. You know, everything's happy. You find Jesus and everything's solved. All your problems are solved. But those are very popular. And when you

create a popular art form, it attracts talent. And ultimately, I think that will be transformed into things more like The Sound of Freedom, which is a very difficult movie to watch. It's about child trafficking. I mean, it was very hard to look at, but it had great moments, and it was a big, it was a huge hit, you know. And so, and so I just want a thousand flowers.

I'm like Mao. I want a thousand flowers. Except without the killing part afterwards. Andrew, I wanted to ask you about this thing about morality in art, because it's, there's something that happened, and it happened quite a few years ago now, when things like House of Car, and Game of Thrones and other series and movies of that kind started to come out,

which were extraordinarily well made. But the one thing that really distinguished them from anything that I had seen previously was the fact that they were explicitly amoral. They showed a protagonist who was, he wasn't trying to get to some good place or solve some kind of problem or overcome his. you know, flawed nature or have some kind of hero's journey. He was just an evil bastard and that's what you saw. What happened there?

Because to me that seems like that's something, that's not accident, right? It's not. I would leave out Game of Thrones for a minute because I think Game of Thrones is actually on its own from those other stories. What you saw right around 2000 when there was this wonderful moment of a golden age of television that was caused by the sudden spread, it was an accident. It was caused by the sudden spread of the number of channels they needed product. And so they were allowing people to do things that they wouldn't have allowed

them to do had there still just been three network. So you got the Sopranos, you got the shield, you've got the wire, you've got Breaking Bad and the one used house of cars. And what those were stories, I feel, that all had the same idea behind them, that in a world where masculinity is outlawed, only outlaws will be masculine. And so you had people who were men who were being men, but they had to be men in opposition to society. And sometimes that meant being evil. And Breaking Bad, if you go back and watch the first episode of Breaking Bad because in Hollywood, all I ever heard about Breaking Bad was, well, it's really about the fact that he does this for his family. It's not. It's about the fact that he's unmanned when you meet him. His wife gives him a

hand job for his birthday. That's how, you know, that's the kind of relationship he's in. And it's like And she's reading while she does it, you know. And so, and at the end, he looks at her and says, I'm the one who knocks. I'm the one people are afraid of. He's become a man because that is part of a man. You have to be a little bit willing to do harm where harm is needed. But the only way these guys could express it was as rebels against society. Because if you notice before that time, for instance, the private eye had completely disappeared from the American scene.

And all shows were about policing. agencies and government, you know, the FBI or something like that. And they still are. You don't see the lone guy who just goes out and kicks people around to get justice done, which was Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer, Raymond Chandler, all those guys. So that was a moment, I think, of these men, these frustrated men writing these stories that we all want to see about guys being guys and winning through and doing what they want to do. You know, if you have cowboy movies, then they're the good guys. If you have knights in armor, they're the good guys, but gangsters are the sort of urban expression of that where they're the bad guys, but they're fighting a corrupt society.

They're living in a corrupt society. And so that was a really interesting moment, and it led to this flourishing of television, which is now just about over, unfortunately. Game of Thrones was different because Game of Thrones had the interesting, first of all, as long as it was based on the book, on the books, it was great. Yeah, they ruined it. They ruined it. Well, they were listening to the New York Times, and the New York Times were saying, women are being mistreated and it's like, you know, this is the story. But the thesis behind Game of Thrones is if you don't play the game of power, you die. And so it had good people and it had bad people, but if they didn't play the game of power,

they died. And so, and that was shocking, right? It was, I thought it was spectacular. I mean, in the middle of that show, there were times when I cared more about who won the Iron throne than who won the White House. You know, I was just sitting there on the edge of my seat trying to figure it out because it was such a shocking. depiction of a Machiavellian world, and he was honest to that.

What was dishonest about Game of Thrones is that it had an entire religious patina without God in it, which was ridiculous. So it had people who were resurrected, and they would say, well, where were you? And I was nowhere. You think, well, how did you come back? You know, from whence did you come back? People would perform magic, but anyone who believed in God would just be instantly wiped out, you know, or would be ineffectual. You know, there was no such thing as a Christian knight, for instance, in the show. But that's all right. That was his vision, and I was willing to go along with it.

And I loved the fact that he was true to, that he was honest, like you were talking about before, he was honest to his vision. And then the minute they lost control of the books, the minute the original writer was not speaking into the plot, they caved to the New York Times, you know, who was saying, be nice, be nicer, show us to equal people, bring us this thing and that to me is the death of art it's just the death of art it's just serving you know art has got to have a little bit you have to have a little bit of religious fervor to do what i do for a living which is tell the truth no matter what you know you have to think

some books are going to sell some books aren't going to sell but i'm going to do i'm going to show up and do what has to be done sometimes the new york times is going to call me names they have called me names you know it's like so what you know that's that's what you have to do and those guys apart after they lost their bases. It's interesting that we use the word nice, because to me, nice isn't a compliment. Nice means something else. Nice means to be weak. Nice means to not confront the things that need to be confronted.

Nice means that you take the pass of least resistance. Well, in the words of the greatest movie ever made, Roadhouse, he says, be nice until it's time to not be nice. And I think that that is kind of the Christian night. That's the Christian night. That'd be nice until it's time to not be nice. You know, and I think that that's what makes that movie so terrific. I can't stop watching that film. It's just like an addiction.

I love that movie. But, but yeah. Andrew, coming back to something you said earlier about needing a billionaire or two. And I have, I observe this too, which is I think people, particularly who are, you know, waking up to the reality of what the left is become or people who are just on the right, more generally who do have those resources, they're quite often not aware of how important culture is. And they're often business guys, they're often people who see things in terms of P&I, profit,

loss, return, et cetera. Why does, if it's true, why does the right have a culture problem if we might frame it that way? I think there are a couple of reasons. I've thought about this. You know, the only reason I started talking about politics at all was because I felt that that the culture had become toxic. While I was living in England for seven years,

I came back and thought like, what the hell? What are we talking about? Especially after 9-11, when people were saying, you know, like, oh, we kind of deserved it, and why do they hate us and all this kind of crazy stuff, you know? I think that part of the conservative mindset is to understand that we live in a social fabric. And every part of that fabric is connected

so that if you pull one string, it's entirely possible that the entire suit will fall apart. And I don't have, I'm actually a liberal, you know, I'm a liberal. I'm only a conservative because the conservatives are the liberals now. You know, if you want to say what you mean, if you want to speak plainly, if you want to be an honest guy and be a guy, you have to be a conservative. That's why I'm a conservative. But I don't have that mindset that things can fall apart. I think of looking into the future, like looking at constellations.

There are a million stars. You're picking out the shapes. You're picking out the bright stars and making shapes out of them. It doesn't have to be a disaster. If you talk to conservatives, it's always a disaster. It's always an emergency. And the culture doesn't work like that. It's not like somebody's going to make a movie and everybody's going to go, oh, yes, I should be faithful to my wife.

That's not what happens. You know, you create an atmosphere with the culture creates an atmosphere and we breathe in that atmosphere. And the left works very, very, very hard at creating an atmosphere in which a religious family-oriented, freedom-oriented, oriented society is bad. They work at it every day, every single day. They are telling you if you're white, if you're a male, if you're masculine, if you are faithful to your wife. If you're a woman, then you're a homemaker. The New York Times, the only time they ever talk about not having sex is in the context of marriage. You can be happy in a marriage without sex. They'll never say that you could be happy anywhere else without having sex, even while you're reading the article, you should be

having sex unless you're married, right? They work very, very hard to create this. atmosphere because they understand what it is. They have time. They have patience. They started doing this 65 years ago, and it only has come to fruition now. We are always in a hurry conservators because we always see everything's falling apart. And, you know, I'm a Burkeian in this regard. I believe the change is going to come. And what I want is for change to come in keeping with our traditions. It doesn't mean some traditions are going to fall by the wayside, some things get out of date, but you change in keeping with your principles, right? But there are a lot of conservatives whose conservatism consists of trying to bring back

their childhood. You know, I know conservatives who think the great days of America were in 1990s, and I go, really? You know, really? But they just, that's when they grew up. So that's what they want to bring back. And that is a mindset that's always in a panic because things are always changing, you know. I'm living in a world so different.

from the world 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 changes have been great and have been positive. And it's only in recent years that some things that have risen that I think are genuinely destructive and genuinely prone to destruction. So we're always panicking and culture is a slow game. Culture is the long game. That point you made about the atmosphere, I think, is really interesting because we had a

media called Steve Hughes, who I doubt you would have heard of, on the show a long time ago. And he said something that really stuck with me about how, you know, we in the UK, we watch American movies and we have this idea of people in the deep south as these rednecks and whatever. And how do you know that? What if they're yes, sir, no sir, very polite, etc. And having the opportunity to travel around the United States, as we now do, and I had the chance to be in a lot places that most people wouldn't go in Oklahoma and places like that. You see that what he said is exactly true. But if your idea of what America is comes from Hollywood, which for most people, especially around the world, it absolutely does, and people in America, by the way, who may

not have traveled very much, then it starts to make sense why we see everything the way that we do from that cultural lens, because it's very disfigure. to reality that lens. This is one of the formative experiences of my life. When I was a boy, I wanted to be a drifter. That was actually my ambition. I loved stories like, you know, about wanderers, Shane, and you know, then King Bronson was a television show on the air.

Any story that had a wanderer in it, I would watch the TV show, I would read the book. I just loved that. And I suffer from wanderlust. I still do. I still move around more than most people do. And I just started traveling around the country. And I slept in hobo camps and I slept in cheap hotels and I slept in my car and I just went everywhere. I went to every state

except for some reason South Dakota, which I've never, is the only state I've never been to. And I was a New York guy. I lived 20 minutes outside of, in a suburb, 20 minutes outside of New York. What I knew was what you're talking about. I knew that the southern sheriffs would arrest you if you were black and they were bigots and we were the good guys and we were sophisticated and it was all the lie. And I saw it. I saw it was all a lie. I talked to people from every level of society all around the country. Sometimes I was with bums and hobos and hobo camps, but I could also sometimes amass enough money to stay at nicer places. I met all kinds of people, and I realized it's all untrue. It's just all, like every word of it is untrue. And of course,

you can do that to anybody, right? You can always show the bad guys in any society and then the good guys in another society without lying, right? You don't have to lie because, sure, there's a bigoted sheriff in the south somewhere. You can tell that story. But, It's kind of like they did during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They would tell a story about an American soldier raping a woman and say, well, this really happened. And you're like, okay, it really happened. But there were 250,000 troops over there. That's a city full of people.

They're going to be bad guys. Are those the only people you're going to show us? And yes, that's the answer. Yes, those are the only people they're going to show us if they're doing the South, if they're doing the country. They still talk like this. I talk to liberals. I, you know, because of my upbringing, I still know a lot of liberals who are a love. Lovely people, absolutely lovely people, but when you talk to them about the Trump supporters,

the people who show up in there are hundreds of thousands to see this guy, they think every single one of them is a, you know, shotgun packing bigot who doesn't, can't put a sentence together. And I keep saying, I've had dinner with them. I sit, I know them. I talk to them. That's not who they are. You know, but are there those guys in there?

Sure. But, you know, there's always bad guys in every cohort. So it's appalling. And the fact that the news media, if you just watch them demographically, they now almost entirely live on the coasts. Hollywood is in Hollywood. All of these, you know, government is in Washington. They do not know what they do not know. I mean, Nancy Pelosi was at Oxford the other day and was talking about these people just don't understand what's good for them.

You know, she's in San Francisco. Her city is falling apart. Her city is an absolute crime. rap show and she doesn't even walk outside her door and think maybe there shouldn't be as many people living on the streets, you know, but she knows that in Oklahoma, in Arkansas, she knows what the problem is there, you know? And that's what culture does. And that is the problem, that's why what you said before is exactly where I stand is the problem is not that the left makes movies. It's that they blacklist the right. And we've let them do it. It's not,

it's not their fault. They're small-minded, horrible people. They should, they are following their nature. But we have not built the machinery to fight back. I mean, we have no awards. We don't give people awards. We have no reviews. We have no bookstores. We have no, we don't even build social media. Everybody who's built social media is on the left as well.

You can't just sit around and whine, you know, about that. You have to build stuff. And these guys, the people on the right tend to complain. And their media is about complaining, about attacking. It's never about here, you know, yeah, maybe there is a problem with Jeff Bezos having a gazillion dollars and the guys who work for Jeff Bezos can't take a bathroom break. Maybe that is a problem. Maybe, you know, capitalism doesn't solve every problem. You know, I mean, like, I'm happy for Jeff Bezos to make a billion dollars, but the people who work for him should be treated like human beings.

You know, maybe capitalism doesn't handle that. And maybe we should sit down with people in the middle left and say, okay, we don't want to give government more power. but maybe, you know, this is something that actually needs to be rejiggered a little bit. We never do that. It's always just, you know, hold the line, keep the line, so nothing changes and everything changes. And so it's a losing battle, you know. Yeah, and it's also as well, I've come to this conclusion because through doing trigonometry,

I talk to a lot of people on the right. I don't think they get culture. I don't think they get it, really, that they don't. In the same way, there's, you know, there's people on the right who've got a great sense of human. But there's a lot of people on the right who are so earnest, you make a joke and it, well, you know, going back to that baby reindeer thing, because he was honest about that, I ended up watching the show having a heart for him.

When the show started, I almost turned it off because when I thought, ah, he's going out with a trans guy, and this guy, he's basically enticing this person to stalk him, you know, as he's bar. And then I thought, no, but he's telling the truth about his experience. Now I have a heart for the guy. And you have to have a, to me, it's not, it doesn't cost you anything to see another person's point of view if the person's not trying to kill you, you know. I mean, that's where, I mean, that's why, that's why I go after YouTube so hard. They're, they're really doing something wrong.

They're taking a common carrier and censoring 50% of the country. But I don't go after the guy who's on YouTube saying something I disagree with. I'll go after his ideas, but it's not him that I hate. And culture is always. You know, art is always culture critical. It's always pointing out things that are a tension between culture and the human spirit. So it's always going to have some kind of criticism to put forward. And it's always going to give you a heart for people that you don't like and know.

That's the whole point of it. The point about art is it gives you a million lives. You know, you read a hundred books. You've got 100 new consciousnesses inside you. And, yeah, there are conservatives who are conservative in the sense that they don't want let that in, and that's unfortunate. The left handles that by simply silencing everybody they don't want to hear, which is in a way more dangerous. So you have, you know, we're talking about specific people on the right and specific people on the left. The left wants to silence the right,

the right wants to close their eyes to the left. And that's a bad combination for the right, because it means the left will make art and the right won't. That was the objection I was actually going to make to your point, Francis, because we were talking about this other night. There's actually quite a lot of conservative actors or centrist actors in Hollywood who have like secret gatherings, like they're the Freemasons or something. Yes. I was in those, yeah. What were they like tell, is there a secret handshake? No, they were like going to an alcoholic synonymous meeting. I used to complain about them. I was in them because I thought it was the beginning of something good. You know, the famous one was Friends of Abe, which was kind of formed in part by Gary Sinise.

And I used to say to him, you know, if we're in secret, we're sort of saying that we're wrong. And Gary, who's one of the nicest human beings, one of the best human beings in Hollywood, bar none. I mean, that's not so much, though, is he? Okay, that's damning with me, great. But he's actually also a very nice human being. But he was worried about the guys who didn't have a platform. So he was worried about the grip. He was worried about the guy who was behind the camera who, if he got fired, had nowhere to go.

So he didn't want to expose those people. But the problem is you were literally going to meetings and going, name is Andrew and I'm a conservative. Hi Andrew, like an alcoholic's and honors meeting, whereas the left was getting up at the Oscars and saying, screw Donald Trump. Then it was George W. Bush. Screw George W. Bush. And that is a problem. But I did see the problem. I understood that these people were getting fired. Black conservatives in Hollywood are treated like dirt. I mean, they would tell stories that your eyes would fill up listening to the things that had happened to them because they had committed the double sin of being black while conservative, you know.

And what would happen to them? I haven't heard the story. They would either have to keep their mouth shut or they would be abused beyond. I mean, well, look at the way they're treating Clarence Thomas. That's happening out in the open without having to expose anybody. You know, Clarence Thomas is one of the best Supreme Court judges as we've ever had, an honest guy with an open point of view, you know, exactly what Thomas thinks. They treat him like he's a criminal, you know. And they do that because He is, you know, I can't decide whether it's being conservative while black or being black while conservative, but it's one of those two that they just can't stand because their entire idea

of themselves is that they love the little guy. But if you're black and conservative, if you're gay and conservative, if you're women and conservative, they treat you like dirt, you know. And again, this is talking about a group of these people. In the middle, most people don't know that much about politics. and they just want to be nice, you know, they want everything to go well. And so when somebody says, well, we're going to give money to these people, they think, oh, that's nice, you know, and you don't think, well, you know, where's that money coming

from? Where did you get the right to take that money from somebody else and give it to this person, you know? And those are debates we never have because the left has taken over the communications industry. And that's why Ricky Jervais's speech at the Golden Globes was so powerful and it resonated. And it got, however, hundreds of millions of years. and went super viral. And it continues to go viral because he hit the nail on their head.

I mean, these are people who have been married four times. Their kids are in rehab. They're in rehab. And they're going to get up and tell me that I'm a bad person for thinking, you know what? I think Donald Trump is better than Hillary Clinton. I mean, it's Hillary Clinton for crying out loud. A plant would have been better than Hillary.

You know, so why are they preaching to me when they're really, their talent is to entertain me? You know, it's not that they don't have a right, it's not that they don't have a right to their ideas. It's not that they don't have a right to express their ideas. But the fact that they have this vast platform on which they express their ideas and that we take them seriously, you know, you just think shut up and dance, you know, I mean. Yeah. But it's also as well, you look at films like American fiction, for instance, or the Joker. The Joker isn't left wing.

I mean, it's actually what it's taught. about is something else entirely. And that really struck a chord with people. And it made a huge amount of money. Right. So you're going, you've seen the potential. Surely capitalism is going to kick in at some point. And one of these studio heads is going to go, you know what? I just want to make money. Yeah, you'd think. But the reason it doesn't, though, is there's a whole other force And people never, you know, I was one sitting at a table with Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz. And he said, he started asking people, what do you know that other people don't know? And he came to me and I said, what I know that other people don't know is that it's not about the money.

It's not about the money. The people in Hollywood, they want girls. You know, yeah, they want money, but they'll make money. They're going to make money because the way the system works no longer depends on box office. It depends on too many other myriad of things. They're going to make money for as long as they're in the game, and they care about prestige, they care about awards. This is when I say, the right has no awards.

You know, you stand up and win an Oscar. No one can take that away from you. You now are an Oscar-winning actor, right? So you get up and tell people, tell 50% of the country to buzz off, you know, doesn't mean a thing to you. Like, sure, your next movie is not going to make. Christian Bale made a movie about Moses. There's a whole huge hassle of people.

who would sweep into that movie. And he gets up and says, well, Moses was a terrorist and the movie dies. It's not about the money. It's about the sense that they have of being a virtuous person. Listen, if you have a life like mine where you have made a living, creating things, you are one of the luckiest bastards on the face of the earth. And if you have a problem with that, the fact that, you know, a guilt problem with that, expressing your virtue is a big deal.

It becomes very important. Fortunately for me, I think I am the exact right person to be lucky. I think, like, I'm not one of the nicest people I know. They should just shower me with gold. But, you know, if you have a problem with that and you don't feel important enough, I mean, this is a thing that affects comedians. Comedians get to be 50 and suddenly they want to send you a message. And I think, like, what happened to me laughing while you were talking?

You were talking and I was laughing and now suddenly you're telling me what I should be thinking, You know, it's like, where did that transition happen, you know? Because they feel unimportant. They just feel like they're entertainers. I have to tell you, John Irving, the guy wrote World According to Garp, said the stupidest thing I've ever heard an artist say. He said, I sometimes wish I were in the Soviet Union because they take art seriously, because they kill you if you say the wrong thing, you know.

And I thought, I'll be happy to come to your house and attach a wire to your testicles. And that'll make you feel more important. But, you know, when you're in America and when you can say, you used to within 20 years ago, you used to be able to say anything you want. And now it's getting to be so you can say anything you want again, really. You feel unimportant. And I think it makes them feel important and virtuous. And you cannot underestimate how much that drives Hollywood.

Wow. Well, Andrew, it's been an absolute pleasure having you back. We're going to go to locals where our audience get to ask you their questions. And the second, before we do, we always end with the same question. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Oh, wow. God. Same thing is always right.

But not religion. Not religion. I don't care about religion. I mean, I care about religion because religion is a vehicle by which we talk about God. But why? I just wrote this thing. I'm doing this wonderful substack. And if your audience can go with my son, Spencer, we are talking about, we're sending

emails back and forth, talking about religion, which we've been doing. since he was a little kid. We've been doing it in person. Now we're doing it in emails. And we are both amazed at this site. It's called the New Jerusalem. Thenewjuruselum.com. And the thing that I talked about today in my letter today was the way people refer to Nietzsche as if he had invented a new scientific idea which changed everything. Nietzsche had a brilliant insight, which is that the collapse of Christianity was going to cause a collapse of the moral order. Dostoevsky had the same insight. Dostoevsky was a Christian and he said, this is a disaster. Nietzsche, it's very hard to make out what he was saying, but he said, this is what is going to happen.

And people say, well, now that there's been Nietzsche, we can no longer establish right and wrong. Now that there's been Nietzsche, we can no longer talk about these things. And I think, like, he didn't discover that the earth goes around the sun. He had a philosophical point of view, you know. And from Nietzsche comes Foucault and comes woke and comes intersexualism and all the things, all the plagues that come out of that. And we need to be asking the question, well, was Nietzsche right that there was no God? You know, I mean, was his opinion, is his opinion not to be challenged? Is the only way we can challenge it by becoming small-minded, you know, fundamentalists who believe that every word in the Bible has to be interpreted only in one way?

You know, is that the only response we have? Do we not have a response of intellectuals? And I just want to finish this by just saying, for all. over 10 years, I have been predicting that there would be a revival of religion from the top, the intellectual top. And I know you guys have talked to Ian Herciel-Lee, you know, Russell Brand, all these people who were very staunch atheists are changing their tune. And I think that this is an important moment.

I think this is a real transition. And I do want to also yell at you about your interview with Richard Dawkins, but I'll save that for another time. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Actually, we can do that on locals. If you want to see Andrew yell at us about Richard, not Andrew Dawkins, I don't even. Who is Andrew Dawkins? He's the guys waiting on.

We're going to talk about him as well. If you want to watch Andrew yell at us about our interview with Richard Dawkins, go to locals. But before we go there, I will say, I actually think you make some interesting points about that. Not least, I just spent three weeks on tour with Jordan Peterson. And he brought me along specifically from an agnostic perspective to try and argue with him. And you can see that whether it's God exactly that people want from him. He's talking about God to some extent, but not only that. What people want most of all from him is the moral order.

Right. They want to know how to know what to do and how to avoid doing the things that they know not to do. That's really, I think that's a big inquiry of our time, frankly. And I will say that I know this because I was baptized at the age of 49, And I thought about this for a long time. There is no moral order without God. You can't do it. You can't get there.

I've been down every road trying to construct it. You can't do it. Jordan asked me, you know, I had an on his show, I had an interview with Jordan, and he said, can you build a moral order from evolution? And I said, no, because the moral order is about what you're willing to die for. And there is no evolutionary construct in which you're willing to die for transubstantiation. That's not good for evolution, but people are willing to do it. And sometimes they're right to do it.

I'm going to yell at you about that, but on locals. Head on over to locals right now. Where you see a slag off, Andrew Dawkins. Whoever that is. Yeah, he's getting it in the neck. I hate that. We all hate that guy. Acknowledging that Joe Biden is a disaster and Trump is likely the better choice of the two,

as a devout and highly moral Christian, Do you have any reservations about Trump's moral character or is Ponson for dishonesty on a variety of topic?