On Wednesday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Andrew discussed why exactly he and fellow Daily Wire podcast host Ben Shapiro see President Trump and his impact a little differently, a perfect example of which was Trump’s summit with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
“One of the things about Ben and me — I talked about this on ‘The Conversation‘ — is we almost always see the same facts,” said Klavan. “We almost always see the situation exactly the same and then have different opinions about it, which is different than two people who can’t even agree on what’s going on.”
But while they agree on the situation, when it comes to Trump’s impact on the conservative movement, Klavan said he simply doesn’t put the same stock in the movement as Shapiro. “Ben doesn’t like to see his fellow conservatives just follow [Trump] down that hole. Conservatives are supposed to be attached to principle, not to persons. We’re not supposed to look for our salvation in princes — look not to prince’s for your salvation. So that really concerns Ben,” Klavan explained.
“Why doesn’t that concern me?” he said. “The difference with me is, to be honest with you, I never expected much of any conservative movement.” People are people, and there are good and bad people on the left and right, he said. “The difference is the ideas,” he said, and whether you “follow that idea with integrity.” The ideas of the right, if followed with integrity, “make you a better person.”
“I don’t expect much from the conservative movement, I just expect much from me,” he said. “I expect me to come here and tell you the truth as I see it, the facts as I know them, and that’s what I expect. If some other guy is going off in this reactionary way, I can’t do anything about it, it’s kind of what I expect. There are crazies on our side just like their are crazies on the other, and there are dishonest people on our side just like there are dishonest people on the other.”
Video and transcript below:
One of the things about Ben and me — I talked about this on “The Conversation” — is we almost always see the same facts. We almost always see the situation exactly the same and then have different opinions about it, which is different than two people who can’t even agree on what’s going on. Ben is concerned about the conservative movement, and he is concerned about the fact that it has hooked its wagon to Trump’s star to the degree that when Trump does make a mistake, or when he does one of his kind of off, you know, he talks like a carnival barker sometimes and just says something with no relationship to the truth. Ben doesn’t like to see his fellow conservatives just follow him down that hole. Conservatives are supposed to be attached to principle, not to persons. We’re not supposed to look for our salvation in princes — look not to prince’s for your salvation. So that really concerns Ben.
Why doesn’t that concern me? Because it’s definitely happening, there’s no question that it’s happening right now after Trump’s fairly…”disastrous” is too strong a word, but his gaffe at the Helsinki press conference. With the left just going hysterical, there are people on the right who say, “No no no, it was the greatest moment of his career. It was absolutely brilliant, he was playing seven dimensional chess and he said this, and he really made Putin look bad.” It’s just not true, and it’s bothersome because Ben cares about the conservative movement and he doesn’t want to see people on his own side just going down that primrose path.
The difference with me is, to be honest with you, I never expected much of any conservative movement. Back in the day when it was Obama selling us out to Medvedev, where he said, “I’m gonna get rid of our missiles after the next election.” On the right people were screaming the way they’re screaming now on the Left, I remember this vividly. There were people just saying “this is treason, this is treason,” and even then I was saying, you know what, that’s not treason — it’s just a guy who’s a clown and doesn’t really know what he’s doing.
The thing is, I don’t feel that conservatives are better people than leftists. There are plenty of faithful husband’s on the left, good fathers and mothers on the left, good people who do their jobs honestly. Plenty of people who you could trust with your life on the left, plenty of people in the military serving their country on the left. The difference is the ideas. Now I do believe that the worse an idea is, the more it degrades you if you have a really bad idea, it will degrade you personally ultimately if you follow that idea with integrity. But the funny thing about the people on the left is that — the ones who are successful — the rich ones, the rich lefties in places like LA and Brooklyn and things like that, they live conservative lives. They live lives just like the right would want people to live, they just have this kind of line of patter that they put out, so you lose your integrity because you’re not following your ideas.
I just think right-wing ideas are better and that ultimately, I think ,if you follow them that makes you a better person. I think freedom is better than slavery, I think socialism is a soft form of slavery — no matter how you do it, whether it’s democratic or not, it’s a soft form of slavery. It’s taking your work for somebody else’s purposes, it is taking the sweat of your brow for somebody else’s purposes. That’s just another difference, I don’t expect much from the conservative movement, I just expect much from me. I expect me to come here and tell you the truth as I see it, the facts as I know them, and that’s what I expect. If some other guy is going off in this reactionary way, you know, I can’t do anything about it, it’s kind of what I expect. There are crazies on our side just like their are crazies on the other, and there are dishonest people on our side just like there are dishonest people on the other.
The big difference here is not between me and Ben, it’s the difference between the reaction to Trump and the reaction to Obama. It’s not even the difference between Obama and Trump – Obama, Trump and George W. Bush all made the same mistake with Putin. They all just didn’t think that he was the scorpion, we all know the story of the frog and the scorpion. The frog carries the scorpion over, and that frog says, “Well wait, aren’t you gonna sting me?” and the scorpion says, “Well why would I sting you? Then you die and we both sink.” They get halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog, and the frog says “Why’d you do that?” And the scorpion says, “That’s my nature — I’m a scorpion.” Vladimir Putin is a scorpion.