Peter Schweitzer on Weaponized Immigration

Hey everybody. it's Andrew Claver with this week's interview with Clifon Duncan. We had Clifton Duncan on a while back. It seems like a long time now. He is a tremendously talented, classically trained actor and singer. He was on his way to a real broadway career and I wish I had clips that I can play, but you can see some of them online. The guy has a genuine talent when he was hit by the cancel train I was about his not wanting to into his body that he didn't want, namely the vaccine, the COVID vaccine, which we now know is not very good for young men. He bravely stood up for it. but you know, something that is very hard to get, which is a showbiz career, especially a stage career was stolen from him and he is now doing things that you have to do, which is to build your own career break the stranglehold that we have. He's a really brave guy. He is now building a following outside the system, his newest project Which I think is a great idea is a crowdfunded one man show inspired by the life and work of doctor Thomas Sol. I can't think of anything better. Clt, it's been a long time since I've seen you. How you doing? mrter Claavon, wonderful to see you again. I didn't quite catch that compound you mentioned in you're angry. Do you mind puting that by me? No, I can't pronounce it anymore. If it's not if the words aren't actually in front of me And that's so I can read it. What is it glutothion? I don't know, but it's great it's great. L liip lipathionazenopope. I don't know I don't know what it was. I have no clue. So that's why you get paid the the big bu That's it. That's why I get the big buck. So So tell the people what happened to you. Tell the people what happened where you were in your career and what happened. Well, you know, I was one of I was in the position where I was, you know, one hit away. So, you know,' in my Conception of myself oftentimes, you know, My military brat who found himself working with Tony Aard winning actors. and then in twenty twenty, everything shut down And it's funny because at the beginning of the process, I was very much on the COvidian train. But then around April or so of twenty twenty, I really began to say, well, what's going on here? These things don't really make sense. In some ways, I was thinking like an economist and saying, you know, what are the costs and benefits? What are the trade offffs that we're allowing to have happen? What are the precedents that are being set by having all of these rules imposed upon us. And on top of that, you know twenty twenty, the middle of that year was also the year where we had the George Floyd riots. And sa I began to see these sweeping changes and hysteria upon hysteria, upon hysteria, right?cause first there was Trump And then there was the virus. And then there was what's some called the virus of racism which spread like wildfire throughout the nation. And I don't know why, but I just I could not stand by and I just couldn't be silent for some reason. And there are nights where I kick myself and say, why couldn't I just shut up? And you know I was on track to live a really good life and to, you know, do what I've been doing for, you know, twenty years of my life And you know, if I could spend the next, you, fifteen or twenty years doing Shakespeare and musicals, that's what I'd be doing. But for whatever reason I decided to open my big fat mouth and you know, I suffered the consequences of that. Yeah. I know the feeling and the only thing that has kept me from kicking myself as any harder is the look in the people's eyes who don't speak up. that dead look that they've been that they're their motivation and their self will has been taken away from them. You know, I admire what you do, but I know but I know what you lost. I know what you lost. So let me ask you that Hysteria disappeared? I mean, is that something couldould you return now to the stage and start again? or is that not a thing You know, I'm just I'm not sure now, you know, a few I don't know how long ago it was. Maybe it was last year, perhaps two years ago. I had a very good friend, a very fancy friend whose musical theater royalty, Tony Award winning lyricist and composer who called me about eight o'clock at night and He said, you know, It was a long phone call But he said, basically you're on a blacklist of the, you know, of the top T casting agency in the one in the industry, but especially in New York. And this is an agency where I had a good relationship. and you know, as I'm sure you know, Claven part of your job as an actor is trying to find work. and when you get to a good point in your career, you literally have casting people trying to get you into shows because they believe in you. And you know I had one of these people sit me down and they say, whyy aren't you a star yet? How can we change that and make that happen And so but now I'm told that if I'm in a room, it would quote unquote cause tension. That's the word they use now because they can't quite say directly um that u that I've been blacklisted Dumn You know, that's just sort of how it goes the territory. And you know, I've tried to get a new agent to no avail. Part of that is because the industry has contracted so much partly because of their own decisions, which which I began to speak out about back in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. Also Um you know, it's just, u from what I've learned, my name has just become one of those things where, you know we don't talk about this person anymore. And it's really a shame. You know, you mentioned people who don't speak up. I know some of these people. Some of them are very well established actors and these people are liberals, you know. And even they, I call them Marian liberals after our friend Bill E they are afraid to say anything now because the atmosphere has become so toxic and so ridiculous that you can't they feel unable to speak their minds freely. So that gives you a sense of what's going on. And my friends on the inside, they're still on the inside report just as much, you know, it's just it's the same sort of thing and it's trrump this and it's trrump that and u u, you know, I don't I don't know how how that changes anytime soon because, you know we might get into this later, but you know, it really is It goes deeper than politics for these people. It's really grafted onto their conception of who they are Um, And so you can't, you know, I got really frustrated In the wake of the twenty twenty four election, where I saw all these influencers saying, o, ding Dg, the woke is dead. Like, no, you don't understand what's going on here. It's not about politics, it's not about policy It's about something more cosmic than that. So You know, it's just it's It's a shame, but it is what it is. You know, there is a syndrome that I believe and I've seen it in action actually, that you know, people in a lynch mob actually feel closer together after they've done it. They actually feel bonded together. And when you blacklist people and I've been blacklisted and I've been thrown out of my poker game and thrown out of all the people feel really good about themselves afterwards, I think it is a form of denial basically. And of course they don't want you in the room because you're the clue that you're the accusatory fact, you're the thing that says, you know, no, you did a bad thing to a perfectly good person who has all the talent in the world. It's just you're absolutely right. It's more cosmic than they talk about. So your response was The response, I think, which was you started to build He won't world You started a podcast and then you started this project to do a one man show about Thomas Soul, which I think is a great idea. I mean, if you can do it, how is that how is that proceeded? Well, you know, first off, you know, I call myself an accidental influencer. You know, I never set out to be tweeting and podcasting. And you know, I ended up making connections with people and getting on some big shows. And you know I happen to be someone who is capable of snark as well as condensing Uh you know, thoughts into into tiny spaces, which is a really good quality to have on a platform like X slash Twitter And so I just found myself with a large following. and then eventually I started a podcast. and I've pulled it now because, you know, I want to move in a new direction. But you know, that wasn't really the goal before But what it did allow me was to build up enough relationships and a big enough profile where you know, I had this idea where which really I've had on my mind for years, where, you know, I've seen other solo shows about Paul Robeson and not about I hadn't seen it, I've read it, but you know about Thurgood Marshall or about Louis Armstrong, the jazz trumpeter. You know, I just a flash. againgain, this was years ago. I said, Well, what if someone did a one person show about Thomas Soul And so I had the liibertarian podcaster, Tom Woods, you know help me figure out how to make an ad campaign. And I went to Indieogo, and we ended up raising fifteen times the amount of money we asked for. So what it's allowed me to do is to it's afforded me the time to just really sink in and soak up his work And um It took a long time because I mean, the man has written forty five, maybe forty six books at this point. He is still writing, by the way, at the age of ninety six years old. U And it took a long time to figure out, you, how do you dramatize this material? How do you synthesize this person's work? And so finally this year, The beginning of this year, late last year is when I began to sit down and really say, okay, I think I've got a strong idea. So right now I'm in the process of writing. fininally, the research phase is over And the goal right now is just production, production, production. We need to get it into production and on its feet. And ultimately the goal is to have a nicely filmed production of it to upload online. But right now It's just a matter of getting the script done. It's going to be a bad first draft. I know that. If anyone wants to follow along, they can go to becomingsole. substack. com where I'm documenting my progress and process. in creating it Right now it's just a matter of you know I have so much more respect for writers now, notot that I didn't have it before, but the process of doing it and about a true person is also difficult. So it's interesting, but right now the goal is to get on its feet and to get it working and to find venues and producers who will st stage the play Hey everyone, it's Andrew Claan with this week's interview, and I'm thrilled to welcome back one of my favorite topics, my favorite interviewees, I guess, Meghgan Basham. She is a culture reporter for The Daily Wire and the author of the excellent bestseller Shepherds For Sale, how Eangelical leaders traded the truth for a leftist agenda And as that title suggests, she is a fearless fighter for doctrinal clarity among fundamentalist chur and that's part of what what we are going to talk about. Meghgan, it's wonderful to see you. How you doing? I'm doing well. Thankks for having me. In fact, I'm coming to you, Andrew from the Arc Encounter and Creation Museum in Kentucky, which if you look behind me, you can see that I'm here on Mount Arorat A actuallyually I shouldn' have said Kentucky. That was a mistake. I'm on Mount Arorat. You can see the arc behind me. It's right there. That is the arrk. Yeah, that is the ark. So that is a literal recreation you know, the cubits that are mentioned in Genesis and they did, you know, as you go through it, they say, here are the things that obviously we took some creative license But they also built it to scale. So that is a scale, what they think of the qubits, the way it was described in Genesis, what it would have looked like right behind me And when you go through it, it's really fascinating because You know, you will hear from non believers in particular about the flood story. Well, how could an arc have been this big? How could the animals have held it? Where would they have gotten light? And as you watch, it's really fascinating because they show you, given the technology they might have had in that era, how it could work. So you know, they show you, you, little habitats for the The reptiles, how they could have just poured water through the top and soaked through cheesecloth and kept them moist and how there would have been a waste disposal system. it was really interesting. We're thoroughly enjoying it. That's interesting. It's huge. I mean, it does really how did they find out what a cubit was? I mean, does any Is there anybody alive? Okay, so there is a plaque in there that explained it. like, you know they went through and said, basic Biblical text and what we know from later historical records on what a cubit would have meant to the Israelites at that time. and that's how they sort of scaled it out. But I wish I had taken a picture of the little plaque that explained it because I would just read it to you. Yeah, who knows it's not going to come in handy that information. It's kind of like algebra probably Yeah. And I do, I describe it a little bit tongue in cheek this is Disneyland for us you fundamentalists who actually believe that there was a flood and there was a real Noah and there was a real ark. and there was a real, you creation story that the Lord created the heavens and the earth. the fish and the fowl and so here is where you come to get your scientific to get Armed to argue with atheists and skeptics those things could be. So I'm thoroughly enjoying it becausecause I'm a scientific person. I'm a pretty simple girl. I go, I just believe it because it says it. So I don't struggle with these doubts, but for those who do, it's actually been and even still, it's fascinating, but it' be especially fascinating if you were one of those types of people who struggle with those questions. So what is the conference about So the conference that I'm at is so you know the overall company is Answers in Genesis So they put on various conferences throughout the year And one of them is their women's conference. So I am at that, and I'm speaking on the subject of this year's topic, which is being faithful on matters of sex and sexuality. And in particular, with the talk that I gave focused on and you and I have talked about this before, the efforts from outside groups, from outside secular groups to try to move Evangelicals in particular, but I mean, they're certainly targeting all denominations and all faiths. But to come in and move them on what the Bible says about marriage and sex and gender. And so as I covered in my talk, there are groups like the Arcis Foundation, which was started by a man named John Stryker who inherited a one hundred billion dollars surgical supply company and he has used some of that money to try to move evangelicals, Christians, but also Muslims, Jews, I mean, really any religious faith that is standing in the way of total domination of all of the predilections represented in that Pide flag. So they train people. He gives money to groups like, for instance, the Reformation Project to try to change doctrine on what marriage is, because obviously, you know, I'm someone who believes that marriage is between a man and a woman And so what they do is they will train, particularly young people to challenge that theology and to quietly I mean, and they will literally, Andrew, they have programs called pastors in Pcess. and its purpose is to teach how to slowly and secretly take their Bible believing congregation and move them towards an affirming position over time, carefully so as not to spook any of the Bible believers. So this is what they're doing. And so that was what I covered for this audience of mostly women and my husband. This That may be the most sinister thing I've ever heard But it's funny, you know, I was just on the member block my last show, I was just talking about the fact One of the hardest things to do, especially in a country as free and as safe as America, free from consequences, is to train your imagination to see reality because your imagination is what you use to see the invisible world. It's about how we relate to God. That's the sense that's what I call it anyway, the sense the sixth sense that we use to see things that pare And if you get the imagination wrong, if you imagine the world wrongly, you are going to go down some dark paths and my entire member block was about basasically these sinister people, I wasn't talking about fundamentalist churches, I was just talking about our educational system sneaking into children's lives teach them falsehoods about the human body and especially I think about women's bodies because I believe that if you could take If you could chart How much time ople spent imagining women's bodies, whether they are men or women. I think it would be the most imagined thing, the thing that people imagine more than anything else. And I think if you pervert our idea of that, you pervert our imaginations completely, basically. Yeah, very much. And I think that that is what gets into this conversation within the church that we're having some, you know, very difficult debates on the impact that feminism has had because it has reimagined women's roles in various ways that have moved us away from the obvious implications of what our bodies can do, which is produce children and nurture children. And so that is part of what we're talking about, but you know, there's a connection to that to the transgender movement, because if you erase what male and female are meant to be, then it becomes much easier to say that one can become the other and that they're interchangeable Because if our bodies have no particular purpose, then it doesn't really matter what we do with them and what we choose to do with them. And so I would say there is a straight line between feminism and transgenderism, and it took us some time to get there, but it was kind of inevitably where we were going end up. And that's been one of the topics that we've been covering at this conference. I've really enjoyed being here I kind of feel like I' may be the dumbest one here, but I'm happy to be. I mean, you know, I've got doctor Rosaria Butterfield, doctor Kinham, doctor Al Moller. I think I'm the only one here maybe without a doctorate. So just plain old Meghan Bashet, but I'm happy to be here. You tell him you're a doctor, I always wanted to name my son Lord. be Lord Claven, but I didn't get away with it You know, this is so fascinating to me. It's fascinating the determination that they have, and I guess that they have to insinuate themselves into churches especially. I guess I'm wondering, you've written this book, Shepherds for Sale, you talk about this. They're clearly corruptible. The churches are clearly corruptible. and I guess what I'm wondering is how alert are the churches now now that you wrote this book, now that they're having conferences like this? How alert are they to this happening still not very alert at all. I mean, I think part of the reason that my book did as well as it did was because people were aware that changes were happening that Influencers were coming in, they didn't understand why, they felt that something was off. And so you know when I wrote this book, I don't think there was a reaction of you're telling us something completely new that we didn't sense. I think part of the reason it resonated was because people did sense that something was going on. They just didn't know what it was. And this I don't know that this was the longest chapter in my book issue on infiltration, particularly on the Pide flag issues, LGBTQ issues But it may have been the longest because this is really one of the things I said in the book is that this is where the fight is now over faithfulness. I think that if you are a Christian and you say, I believe in a literal virgin birth, No one is really gonna to bat an eye about that If you say I am someone who even believes in a literal six day creation, as I do, you'll get some funny looks, but nobody's going particularly hold it against you and say you're a bigot. They're just going to say you have some funny ideas But this is the issue where I think the church has for a number of reasons been really reticent to speak clearly and to educate their children clearly, because it's the issue where you're going to get called a lot of mean names. if you say, this is what we believe. You know, we believe that men cannot become women We believe that creation of the female body, as you said, means something and it means something ontological. It's not just Gosh, you know, there's slight differences and God doesn't really know why, you know, but we can be interchangeable that actually being able to produce and nurture children means something. So these are the issues that I think the church has been most uncomfortable with, even though you will have a lot of faithful churches that believe it, they're not really excited about talking about it. So you know, on the one hand, we have I mean, if I described it to you, Andrew, we have like with this Reformation project group, for instance, They will do training programs that are almost like a college level course So if you come into their training program and you're going to get trained on this affirming theology and your purpose is to bring it into these Bible believing, conservative evangelical churches. And this is not me saying this. They say this in their own literature that our purpose in doing this training is we want you to go into conservative Evangelical doctally sound church, they wouldn't say doctrnally sound. but they would say we want you to go into conservative churches that have this theology and we want you to change their theology. Your work is to get them to change their theology. So they do openly admit that that's what they're trying to do And so they do this extensive training where on the other side, you have churches that are manipulated with, I think, largely false claims that the church has been incredibly harmful to transgender people, to gay people, they've been so hurtful. And so they're kind of in a crouching position. so we don't want to talk about these things openly because we or we're being told that we've been hurtful and it's been harmful. And so we don't engage these topics where on the other side, you have people who are so committed to their beliefs that they're not just engaging these topics, they're spending millions of dollars to train proselytes to go out and change the theology of the church Everything we do starts with how we sleep. That's why I'm such a mess. Sleep affects everything, focus, energy mood, and I never get any. Honestly, the fix for not sleeping turned out to be a lot simpler than I expected. I was sleeping on the wrong mattress. Now, I still don't sleep, but I'm incredibly comfortable on a helix. Helix isn't one size fits all, they offer over twenty models, so you take a quick quiz and get matched to the right mattress for how you actually sleep or in my case, lie awake. 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It is I have read this book cover to cover Very, very It's a book that'll wake you up. Let's put it that way. Peter, it's good to see you again. Thank you for coming on. It was great to be with Y Andrea. Thanks so much for having me. So most of us looked at the border during Jo Joe Biden's presidency, if we were watching Fox News because they weren't playing it anywhere else. And we saw these armies of people coming across and it made us feel bad It was basically just our laws being broken and people coming in that we didn't know and sort of the idea that by chance some bad guys might get in and you know, just it just viscerally made people uncomfortable. shows that visceral feeling actually only scratches the surface of what was going on. You are talking about Well, well, look let's you tell it. You were talking about A people using this system or instigating the system in order to use it? which is a great question, Andrew. Yeah, I think that when we look at the issue of immigration of the border, it generally breaks down to issues relating to jobs and the economy and wages, violent crimes in our street or cultural influences. those are all important debates to have. I'm not minimizing those What I'm trying to point out of the book is it's not just typical immigration where there's too much and it's illegal. It's actually weaponized immigration Who's weaponized it? Well, foreign actors have weaponized it. Some of those are foreign state actors like China or Mexico. Some of those are foreign organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood And what I mean about weaponized immigration is they are literally deploying people in a way as weapons. Some of them are criminals, some of them are political activists. But the goal is for these individuals to fundamentally change American society and to achieve the strategic objective of the people who's encouraging them or sending them to go. So if you look at for example, Mexico, people think of Mexico kind of sleepy neighbor, you know, corrupt government, incompetent government, when you look at the conversation among the leadership in Mexico, meaning the president, senators and others They have a totally different view of immigration than we do. I mean, I quote them extensively in the book. They, for example, Andrews, see this as an opportunity to extend Mexican sovereignty into the United States. And they're actually doing that. They're actually setting up political networks and infrastructure in the American Southwest. to achieve that purpose. So that's an example of what I mean about weaponized immigration. It's actually organized and they're trying to achieve strategic objectives that are to our detriment by encouraging and pushing this migration. So when you say that, you're saying basically they want to take parts of America back, the parts that they feel that they were stolen from them How on earth can they do that? I mean is that a realistic thing? I mean, you call the book The Invisible Cp, and it's one of those things that makes you sit up, but is that an actual realistic goal? Yeah, I mean, I think it is. You know part of it is it is just the way that they say it and how they consistently do. If you just indulge me, let me just give you a couple of quotes. and I could literally read a dozen or more of these This one is from a senior Mexican Senator, Felix Selgado just a couple of years ago. He's on the National Defense Committee, the most powerful committee in the Mexican Senate, member of the Marina Party, o, that's the ruling party of Mexico. This is what he says about mass migration.ote Mexicans are in our territory. California, Nevada, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming, were going to take back the territory that was stolen from us. That sounds ridiculous. I mean, this guy sounds like a nut job But then deecember of twenty twenty four, Gabriella Rodriguez, she's a top A to President Scheinbaum. She wrote in an official Mexican government report, quote, We already know that the Mexican population in the United States reaches thirty nine point nine million. We Mexicans are reclaiming our territory So so what does that actually mean Well, one of the things the Mexican government has done and I shaare this. I met with President Trump with Mar Aobio and Scott Besscent in the Oval Office the week before the book came in at their request. They were shocked about this. The leadership in the Senate and the House that I met with were shocked about this. Mexico right now literally has has federal government officials from Mexico whose job, they live full time in the United States is to represent Mexicans in our country before the Mexican government. They serve in the Mexican Parliament, they serve in the Mexican Senate. which is a massive intrusion in our sovereignty. And they're not only serving in the Mexican parliament while they're here, Andrew, they're engaging in political activities One of the guys, Alejandra Roes, he's a member of the the Mexican Congress or Chamber of Deputies, lives in Ontario, California, outside of Los Angeles He describes how in twenty twenty five, his job was to go across the United States to in his words, quote, organize the militancy against Donald Trump So again, you have a foreign political official who is in the United States organizing, by his account, anti ice protests, anti Trump protests. So you have that network, you have the additional network of the Mexican consulates that are in the United States. Now, Great Britain has six consulates, China has seven, Mexico has fifty three What are those consulates doing? Well, yeah, they're stamping visas and doing that stuff. They're also getting involved in American domestic politics. And one of the things we found was that in May of twenty twenty four presidential election year in the United States at the Oklahoma City Oklahoma Consulate of Mexico Consular officials from Los Angeles to Orlando all gathered there, and they met Andrew with Democratic Party political activists And the transcript of the meeting was We've turned California from red to blue. We've turned Arizona from red to blue. How are we going to turn other states from red to blue to defeat Donald Trump? This is ostensibly Mexican diplomats having this political conversation in the United States. So this is what I mean about weaponized immigration. Mass migration gives them, in their mind political power. It gives them influence, it gives them people to organize. And that's actually what they're doing inside the United States. So are they looking at a situation where Biden virtually opened the border, I mean not virtually, he opened the border. So are they looking at and thinking, here's our here's our chance or Are there people inside our country, Americans inside our country thinking we want these people to come in and establish some kind of sovereignty in America I think it's both. I think it's both. It's interesting when Biden won in November of twenty twenty About three or four days after that election, the president of Mexico at that time, it was Lopez Obador Amlo, convened a special section of the Mexican Parliament. and they passed three bills as it related to immigration. and each one of those bills Amlo talked about the fact that it was going to flood people and lead people to head north From the moment they knew that Joe Biden was going to be president, they said, this is our chance, let's flood the border. If you look at the United States equation, particularly the progressive movements, and I quote them extensively in the book Progressives say that part of the reason they want mass migration is that this is a transformative opportunity. to change American political culture, which they view as too individualistic too free market oriented, not collective enough minded and in their words, too selfish So it's a cultural transformation and they say that mass migration is the way to accomplish that. They can't in effect win the argument and convince enough people that live here or came hereillegally. So we need to import part of the political movement. And that's why you've seen people like Bernie Sanders who used to be in favor of closed borders wanting open borders because they see the political benefit from it. And do they They themselves think that there's a chance of the U.S government losing sovereignty over U.S. land. Do they That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. Although it's interesting, you know, they have before the Democratic meeting in twenty twenty four, when the DNC met, I think it was in Minnesota, they actually had one of these land acknowledgement declarations before the DNC met, where it was, you know, we acknowledge we are on stolen land and this is part of The mindset, the mindset is that it really does not belong to the United States. It belongs to indigenous people. The problem being, of course, that when you're talking about Mexico, you're talking about a Spanish country where the conquistadors basically conquered the indigenous tribes. So they ignore that But there's no question when AOC talks about the reason she's opposed to IC activities, part of her argument is We cannot remove people from their own land. And so if you're illegally in the United States and you're from Mexico, you are in effect on your own land. And that is, I think, part of the corrosive effect of this thinking. So let's move from Mexico to China here. What are they doing Are we doing anything to try and stop them? What is going on from China Great question. The thing that immediately sticks out when you look at all these actors is they have different methodologies. and Mexico's is very sort of opportunistic. We're just going to flood the border. China's is extremely sophisticated and I think is frankly genius in a really evil way. And it comes down to exploiting birthright citizenship, which is this notion that the fourourteenth Amendment, you know, if you happen to be in the United States by hook or by crook and you give birth to a child, the child is immediately granted U. S. citizenship What China has done is exploited birthright citizenship on an industrial scale via what is called birth tourism. And birth tourism is an industry where you pay a company fifty to sixty thousand dollars in China, they will get your pregnant wife or girlfriend to the United States. They will give birth here. They will then go back to China almost immediately, but the child now has US citizenship. And this is a policy weirdly that is endorsed by the Chinese government The Chinese government actually ran an article in twenty thirteen that really kicked all of this off in the People's Daily and the article It's kind of bizarre when you think about it, Andrew, The Chinese Communist Party instructing party elites on their quote unquote constitutional rights in the United States. accccording to their interpretation, the fourteenth Amendment means your child can get US citizenship in the United States. and they allow these birth tourism companies to openly advertise in China This is endorsed by the Chinese government That's the first thing you need to know. The second thing is the massive scale and size of what we are dealing with here. In China right now, there are more than one thousand Chinese birth tourism companies that openly advertise their services in China And these are overwhelmingly to arrange for birth tourism to the United States, meaning The United States or U. S. territories like Saipan or Guam, where the same rule applies Your child is born there, you're granted citizenship. So it's a massive industry. That's the first thing to know. Second thing is our federal government has absolutely no idea how big this problem is because when a birth certificate is issued in the United States, we don't know the nationality of the parents So you ask the federal government, how many people are doing it every year? Nobody has a clue Out of China, there have been a series of estimates. The Chinese government believes that every year since twenty thirteen, roughly fifty thousand Chinese babies have been born in the United States per year, cororrect. There is a professor Barbonas from Australia. He's very friendly with the Chinese. He travels, researchers there all the time, is quoted there, giveiv speeches. He thinks it's twice that. He thinks it's one hundred thousand a year every year since twenty thirteen And then there are Chinese research firms, again, I quote them in the book, who say that in any given year, it can spike much higher. and they estimate that in one year it was one hundred eighty five thousand. So It's massive. It's been going on since twenty thirteen. And if you do the math If those estimates are accurate, you're looking at anywhere from eight hundred thousand to one point five million right now. quote unquote U. S. citizens that are being raised in China. And when they turn eighteen They're going to be able to vote in American elections. They're going to be able to apply for government jobs. So this is a massive exploitation of birthright citizenship that I think is going to have huge implications beginning in twenty thirty when these Chinese quote unquote U. S. citizens who've never actually lived here are actually going to be able to start to vote Hey,'s Andrew Clan with this week's interview with Lionel Shriver. I am so excited to have this fine novelist on my show. I read her book We need to Talk about Kevin many years ago was deeply impressed with its absolutely unflinching view and it' incredibly graceful pros and then I lost track of her. the truth is, and I I opened the Wall Street Journal the other day and found her interviewed as someone who let's say goes against the politics of the day. I don't even know what her politics are, but I know they're there not the politics is being sold by every other novelist out there except for me. And was a I felt a little bit like Robinson Cruso finding a footprint was very excitedited to talk to her. Among her many works is a collection of essays called Abominations, Slected essays from a careareer of Cting self destruction. I know all about that, so I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome Lionel Shriiver and who has just brought out a new book called a Better Life Lionel. Thankk you so for coming on. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm glad to meet you too. and I have to take myself to task because I have been apparently mis advertising myself for some time because I like to boast that I am the only consonservative literary novelist writing in the United States today. And apparently, I have a fellow traveler. twentyenty years ago, I looked in a mirror and I had already won many awards in my field and I said, do you realize you're never going you publish what you're writing now, you'll never win another award twentywenty years later, I got nominated this year Wward You have just brought out this book called A Better Life. and I just maybe I should let you tell the story of a Better Life. I've read the beginning of it. I laughed out loud several times. Your prose is absolutely lovely and it's incredibly graceful. Your irony is hilarious. But the New York Times hates you so much that they know that they compared you to M is Trump. It makes me laugh out wow. Have you seen the Atlantic Did I say? No? I didn't see that. What did they say? That one is even more extraordinary, partly because it goes on for thousands of words know, David Mammett told me that after he came out as a conservative, the time showed up at his next play twice in a row so they could review it badly they could pan it twice. So I think you're in good company.ell If you tell people the idea of a better life, I think they will get the idea. It takes its inspiration from a program that former New York City mayor, Eric Adams proposed in twenty twenty three It was during the migration crisis uh initiated by Biden Biden's Pivity. in relation to the southern border. And as we know, New York was inundated with literally hundreds of thousands of migrants who expected to be put up and cared for So Adams proposed that heay he would pay regular New Yorkers to put up migrants in their spare bedrooms Well, He never manifested this program But I did In fact, I rather liked the fact that it didn't come to pass. so Um I basically had a clean slate. And I didn't have to do any kind of ononorous research of the people who had participated in a real program And so it's about mother and her twenty six year old son in Brooklyn Uh, and The mother is a Progressive Democrat And wants to Oh supportu of the disadvantaged and decided to participate in this program and ends up inviting one Honduran migrant to live with them The story is seen completely through the eyes of the twenty six year old son who is a University graduate Oh, for the last four years since graduation. has done absolutely nothing And is living at home. In fact, he He aspires to nothing He's proud of it. He claims to be a perfectly contended person until this woman, Martine comes to live with them and shakes up his gloriously inonsequent life. and Nico, the son, is much more conservative than his mother and is skeptical about mass immigration And You know, it's a little H motivation is a little confused because obviously he doesn't like his nice, peaceful, nothing life being interfered with with this woman. so He has a dog in this fight U but Uh he is a little bit of a hypocrite. becausecause one of the things he doesn't like about these migrants is that they're dependent, they're expecting New York City taxpayers to pick up their bills Um, and yet, uh, New Yor a New York City taxpayer picks up his bills, his mother The rage that this inspired, as I said, they compared you to Melania or Trump, which is what the New York Times does'tead of just I'm a better writer than Melan. I suspect that is true. Now I have Where did you see that? I think I've missed something. Yeah, that was the opening line. It's like Melania Trump has her fashion weird hats or something like that. I can't remember it exactly. And this carping he, you know novel of mean spirit.' I wish I could remember the exact words, but they were all there, all the things that you want to hear And it was it was so obviously a political hit that it was kind of they're really pulling all out all the stuff. So ye And I have to say it's kind of satisfying. this We just got notified that Michelle Goldberg wants a copy. Oh, boy, that's going be. Oh, that's going to be great. She's's be a bloodband. So I want to know how you got to this terrible pass. When I read your book, your book Ran won the Orange Prize, right? in the UK, which is a very prestigious we need to talk about Kevin Yes. That was back when Wittery prizes meant something besides DEI. Yeah. One of the last. Yeah. So I read that book and I was incredibly impressed with its unwavering eye. I mean, for those people, it's been made into a movie but it's basically about the mother of a mass killer and it like looks on this evil that comes out of nowhere really. I mean, the poor mother is sitting there going, I can't connect with this child. And some of reviewers said it was about causing problem, but the way I read it, it was really about the kid just coming out evil. Th I'm wondering, is there a connection between accepting the idea of evil and taking a different political tack than the rest of the literary establishment Um You know, I think that's for literary critics to decide I don't consciously make big connections between one book and another. And I tend to move rapidly on. It's funny, I have conversations with people and they remember the names of my characters better than I do. Yeah. I know I know about that. It's like I'm finished with that and I move on. so I'm not busy making Oh interconnections between them. I there's probably a certain There's certain consistencies of concern I think u One of the things that you can see in more than one book is a a conflicted relationship to Judy. And I do mean conflicted. because in some ways, I'm a big believer in dauty, but I also resent being called to it. I don't think you're alone in that. Yeah. I mean, I think and I think that our culture has a conflicted relationship to duty. In fact, if anything, it's not conflicted enough. That is we reject Judy. Yeah You write this book, you're celebrated for the book, you know, movieies made of the book. at what point At what point did you start to feel that you were at odds with the literary establishment? And Was it because they had moved or had you moved or was it both Oh it was definitely because they moved And there was a pretty identifiable break in twenty sixteen I had been invited to a Brisbane book Festival in Australia. It's not especially U famous You know, it's But they wanted me to do the opening address. And I said yes, because I was promoting book at the time And they asked me initially to do an address on community and belonging And I said, you have to be joking What did that mean? So I instead did an address about the concept of cultural appropriation and This was very early on in with that particular concept and hadn't been imposed on fiction to a large degree, but I was sounding the alarm and saying, you know, this this idea that you can't steal from other cultures is antithetical to the nature of fiction And if you can't write about people who are different from yourself, then you're just going to be reduced to writing memoirs Um And you know, if anything, I think literary writers today tend to be too self involved. I think we need to encourage each other to write more about the rest of the world and less about you know, ourselves feeling sorry for ourselves in our bedrooms. You know, it's just What's Let's turn outwards. So and I actually thought it was so obvious that this was a an unworkable idea um, that that that that you have to keep your hands off what doesn't belong to you that it would be boring, that it would be a dull speech. Um Instead, it lit up literally an international controversy and Um, Boy was I surprised? I just thought, wow. Whered this come from? And maybe I was slow to the party, but it was that was right around the time that I had to get really get up to speed on the identity politics front. Um and You know I've never looked back. The more I found out about identity politics, the more I detested it And um So ever since then, you know, the last ten years, U it's been issue after issue that Pgressives have been promoting that I have been resisting and to To some degree, of course, that makes it into my fiction I also do a a certain amount of nonfiction, mostly comment journalism, and I have a a column in the British Spectator magazine so You know, it's I don't make a mystery of my views. Yes. lot of a lot of novelists do that, you know, there's There's a whole other model for this profession that You know, you're rareified, you're um, you're mysterious, you're You're an artist, you're unknowable And once in a while you come out with your great works and others are to pour over them to try to discern something about you. but but you're behind the curtain. Yeah. And I'm not one of those people. I am not interested in mystique And life is short and I'm going to get my views out there however I like So it won't surprise anybody who reads my column that I'm a restrictionist on immigration For more Claveny Magnificence, like and subscribe and also subscribe to the Andrew Clavven Sh wherever you get your podcasts