Slightly Offensive - Elijah Schaffer - Escaping the Mob | Guest: Dave Rubin

Jan. 5, 2021 - Slightly Offensive - Elijah Schaffer

53:42

Escaping the Mob | Guest: Dave Rubin | Ep 53

You're never liberal enough for the liberals or conservative enough for the conservatives, so why try to please either? Just think for yourself. Escape the mob. Dave Rubin joins me to discuss this and much more.

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	Think of any movie that you love, any hero in any movie.
	What did Luke do?
	There's that princess and that Death Star thing.
	What did he do?
	He blew it up himself.
	He didn't ask someone else to do it.
	What did Frodo do with the ring?
	He went to go get the ring.
	He didn't ask someone else to do it.
	Whatever your movie is, the hero does it.
	That is our purpose as human beings, to find purpose and try to create a world that is a little better than the one that we were handed with.
	truly believe that.
	Welcome back to Slightly Offensive with your favorite Q-Pac, me Elijah Schaefer.
	If you don't know what a coupon is, you either aren't woke enough or you don't watch this show enough.
	Luckily for you, if you watch the show more, it's how you become more woke.
	I'm just kidding.
	This is slightly offensive.
	We do not care about political correctness, especially on today's episode where we have a incredible guest.
	Dave Rubin joins us in the studio to talk about his new book, Don't Burn This Book, which is incredible because right now, things are getting insane.
	Just a moment ago, the CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojaki, has decided that if you disagree with the Chinese health organization, also formerly known as the World Health Organization, your videos can be deleted and demonetized.
	Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy, and so remove is another really important part.
	So book burning is obviously still alive.
	Yes, people are not throwing books into the actual fire.
	But whether you go to an Antifa protest and they hit you and mock you and push you out for trying to expose the truth.
	Hey, hey, Brovo, hey, hey, please step off it.
	Please step off.
	Oh, what the f ⁇ , dude?
	Or if you say something that's not a sanctioned idea, your actual videos and content will be removed from online.
	What we are seeing today is an ultimate increase in censorship, not by the government, but by big tech companies and mobsters like those that riot and protest around the country every single month.
	This is going to be an incredible show.
	And before we get into that, I want to give a huge shout out to the sponsors of this show, Black Rifle Coffee, who continue to support free speech, continue to support and facilitate conversations.
	Without taking a political stance, they've let us know here that they support us, but also they support you guys by offering the best cup of coffee in America.
	And I want to let you guys know that they serve, they have whole bean, they have ground roast, they have coffee round single-serve use, whatever you like, whatever roast you like, they give it in a small batch, made to order so it's fresh right to your door.
	And if you go to blackriflecoffee.com slash offensive, it should put in the code for you, the code offensive.
	But if you go there right now, you can get 20% off your first order.
	I also suggest that you sign up for the Coffee Club, which is a way that they give whatever you want, whatever package you desire shipped right to your door or to your office.
	That's what I choose to do.
	And you can use my link in the description as well to get that.
	And so anyway, check them out, blackriflecoffee.com slash offensive.
	I want to welcome to Slightly Offensive for the first time, of course, the host, Dave Rubin, who is the author of Don't Burn This Book.
	You can pre-order it right now at don'tburnthisbook.com.
	And if you're watching this after April 28th, you can actually get your copy today.
	Anyway, welcome to the show, Dave.
	Thank you.
	It's good to be here.
	I'm going to see how slightly offensive I can be.
	Awesome.
	Well, anyway, so you wrote this book and obviously people are not supposed to burn it.
	So I'm really excited about this.
	And I wanted to jump right in into this.
	One of the things that you brought up was how you said, oh, they framed it as you left the left.
	But there's this chapter that's in there that's actually called Think Freely or Die.
	And what I've noticed is that there's a lot of talk about that.
	Oh, you left the left.
	Now you're a right-winger.
	Oh, what is your identity?
	It kind of reminds me of the LGBT community.
	You know, what are you?
	Are you a queer demisexual?
	Are you two-spirit?
	So eager to put you in some category so they can bring you in.
	But I found that, you know, people say, oh, I left the left.
	But then where do they go once they've left?
	You know, where do they go?
	They end up sometimes going into the right wing, which can be just as, I guess, closed-minded as the left in terms of this is what a conservative is.
	This is what it means to be a right wing.
	And there's not a lot of room in the middle to actually be that free thinker.
	In fact, if you are a free thinker, you kind of are left out there to die.
	And you have kind of found yourself a little bit in that limbo where the left doesn't really like you.
	And I know you're not definitely not conservative or conservative enough for the right wing, but you call yourself a classical liberal.
	Why do you choose that as your identity, as your gender?
	Yeah.
	As my gender.
	Yes.
	Well, yeah, I should have he, him, classical liberal in my Twitter bio.
	So there's a lot there.
	So look, a classical liberal in essence believes in individual rights and light touch of government, as I said.
	Now, that's thought of really as a libertarian or conservative principle.
	And that actually makes sense.
	And by the way, it's why, as I started to walk away from the left and rethink my political positions, it's why people like Glenn Beck and Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro, these scary conservative right-wingers, were welcoming me with open arms because although we do have some differences like on abortion, which I know is one of the most untouchable ones for people on the right, and we do have some other issues.
	You know, most conservatives, I think, have moved on gay marriage, but a few other things.
	I'm pro-life, I'm pro against the death penalty as well.
	So I've got a couple things that are not thought of as right positions.
	But what I have found is that people on the right broadly are much more open to agree to disagree.
	Now, that doesn't mean everybody, right?
	And because I don't come from the right, I don't see all the inner machinations of the right that maybe someone that's in it can see more.
	But what I have found is that there is a group of people who basically, the underlying bedrock principle is individual rights, meaning if you're a citizen of a country, regardless of your race or sexuality or gender or any of that nonsensical stuff, you should have equal rights.
	It doesn't mean that everyone's going to accomplish the same things.
	It doesn't mean that some people aren't going to be born with more.
	It doesn't mean that some people aren't going to have more luck and some people aren't going to work harder and the litany of things that are the magic of life.
	Those are all the variables that you hope work in your favor and you can make luck as much as it comes to you.
	But there is a unifying principle there of individual rights.
	I think what's happened on the left is there no longer is a unifying principle.
	So you can't really say that the left believes in individual rights.
	They believe in rights and privileges based on your immutable characteristics.
	Certain people should get certain things depending on their sexuality or skin color or ethnic origin or something like that.
	And I think what that has led to is the only thing that the left broadly believes in is government.
	And then it's constantly a race for who believes in more government because government, in effect, is good.
	So the easiest way I could lay this out to you would be something like minimum wage.
	So Bernie Sanders comes out and says $15 minimum wage.
	Now, me as a small businessman, I think that's, I don't think the federal government should have any right to tell me how much I should pay my employees.
	I happen to pay my employees pretty freaking well.
	We just gave everybody bonuses in the middle of coronavirus and we pay all of their health insurance, but that's my choice to do as a small businessman.
	Bernie stakes out a position as a government operative who's never built anything in his life other than a couple failed presidential campaigns that he picks this arbitrary number.
	And then what happens?
	A few weeks later, Rashida Talib, one of the squad, says, no, it should be $20.
	And it's like, yeah, you know, Bernie, you just made up a number.
	So she just makes up a number because now she's more moral than you.
	And that's why the left always is in a race to out-government itself, outspend itself, because there is no unifying principle other than we must do everything for everybody.
	And so that is what causes so many people to be purged from the left.
	And the last thing I would say on this is the clearest way to look at this is people right now aren't being purged from the right.
	Like you could see, you know, there are never Trumpers.
	There are MA people.
	There are classical liberals.
	There's a more libertarian side.
	And they're all kind of trying to fight for what I would say is like the spirit of the right or maybe the future of conservatism or something like that.
	But they're kind of doing it.
	They're not all being purged and suddenly being like, all right, I forget all my principles.
	I'm joining Bernie.
	But you are seeing that.
	purge happening on the left because they refuse to allow you to have one counter position.
	So I do think what's happening is the middle is growing, but at the same time as it's growing, it's moving slightly right.
	I think the country right now is moving slightly right, which is why in the middle of corona right now, what are we talking about for the first time in decades in America?
	We're talking about states' rights.
	That's absolutely fantastic, actually.
	But that's an issue of the right, not the left, which wants everything done basically by federal fiat.
	Yeah, so you said, well, let me back up real fast.
	You said that on the right, you put classical liberals.
	So you consider yourself to be right-wing?
	Well, I would say right now as it stands right now.
	But again, the left-right thing, I think, isn't really the right way to look at things.
	I think the broad way to look at things right now is you're either an authoritarian or a libertarian.
	I don't mean member of the libertarian party, but you either believe in sort of centralized government and top-down power, that there is a system that is somehow inherently good and it's going to do the most good for people and people are sort of subordinate to the system, or you are a libertarian, meaning that you believe that individuals can figure out how to live their lives and hopefully build a system that is pretty good.
	And by the way, this is why socialists, they always kill an awful lot of people on the way to their utopia.
	They're always promising.
	Socialists always promise a perfect system.
	You know who also promised a perfect system?
	That guy Thanos.
	Remember Thanos, who was fighting the Avengers?
	What did Thanos want to do?
	Thanos saw a universe of finite resources and he said, no one's going to do what has to be done.
	What has to be done?
	I got to wipe out half the universe so the other half can survive.
	But that's not what a good guy does, actually.
	And that's what the whole Avengers movie is about.
	And that's why socialists kill a lot of people, because to build a perfect system is actually impossible.
	You know why?
	Because we're imperfect.
	Humans are imperfect.
	So we can't build something that's perfect.
	And that's why they're constantly purging people.
	It's why socialism kills people.
	And whether you want to call it right or more libertarian or whatever it is, if you basically want to live and let live and then have a healthy discussion about where the government does have to get involved in people's lives, if that's a principle of the right today, which I think it sort of is, then yeah, I would say I'm on the right.
	Yeah, but I think one interesting aspect of the book, though, that you were bringing up is sort of like a manual or teaching people how to sort of like leave the group thing, how to get out of it.
	And I myself kind of feel the same way because I know a lot of people have this history of, oh, I left the left or I was a liberal or this.
	But then there's people like me where I've never considered myself to be left-wing.
	I've never once in my life would ever tell someone, yeah, I'm really progressive or liberal.
	But as I've made content, as I've continued to express my opinions, my views, I have found that, you know, on the right, there's a lot of these conservatives that go, you know, I have a gay man on my show and there's going to be a small group of conservatives that go, why are you promoting homosexuality?
	Why are you letting a degenerate come on your show?
	You're giving airtime to a heathen.
	And I'm going, dude, you don't understand this channel.
	You don't understand my mind.
	I'm not bringing people on based on who they have sex with and that's not even the topic of discussion.
	I'm bringing someone on because they wrote a damn good book and I like the way they think.
	And maybe I don't even like Dave.
	Maybe I do.
	I'm going to find out.
	I'm going to talk to him.
	I'm going to challenge my ideas.
	And I have found that, you know, I get a lot of people that like go, I thought you were more liberal than this.
	I'm unsubscribing.
	I thought you were more conservative than this.
	I'm unsubscribing.
	And so the people like myself, like you, I would say I've accepted reality.
	People call me right-wing.
	I believe that I am.
	But I don't identify myself.
	I don't come out and tell people I'm right-wing.
	I express my ideas and then I let the market decide.
	Well, that's why the right and left thing is melting.
	I mean, what you're talking about there is actually what everybody is feeling right now to some degree or another.
	And as you correctly point out, I mean, that is much of the thrust of the book.
	The idea that you have to have like 10 things checked off to be a perfect conservative is a crazy proposition and one that will never lead to winning elections.
	And also, I think is sort of antithetical to being a human because the thing that humans have that separates us from the animals is the ability to ration and reason and think for ourselves and all of that.
	So when I say that right now, broadly, I see a more open-minded conservative movement or movement on the right, it doesn't mean that everyone is.
	I have no doubt there are, say, more traditionally conservative, religious people that would not be thrilled with some of the ideas in this book.
	Absolutely.
	But what I think the right is sort of doing right now, and in many ways, this is, this is, you got to kind of give Trump some credit here.
	Trump walked in and he said to basically conservatives and Republicans, look, you guys tried it with McCain.
	You tried it with Romney.
	They were usual style Republicans who were probably decent guys, but it didn't work.
	So I'm just going to kind of mess up the whole joint.
	And I think what most people sort of wanted was a panther in a China shop.
	Most people saw something wrong and were like, could we get a panther to walk in here and knock off a couple pieces of China with its tail and paw off one thing and then walk out of the China shop and close the door?
	Except there is no metaphor.
	There is no phrase, a panther in a China shop.
	What there is is a bull in a China shop.
	That's what we got.
	And I think by Trump sort of unearthing so much stuff on the right, you know, as a Republican, I think he's allowed for some healthy fights to be happening on the right.
	So I would say if, look, if you weren't getting some hate right now, and if you didn't get some hate from having me on, then you're probably not doing anything worthwhile.
	So the amount of hate that I get, it's not directly correlated to the fact that maybe I'm doing something relevant or decent, but getting hate, if you're going to do anything remotely true in life, anything remotely good, you're going to scare a lot of people.
	And I would rather do that than just say things that are safe all the time that everyone can agree with just so that I don't get hate.
	Not that getting hate is that much fun.
	It ain't.
	Right.
	And before we jump into the next point, I want to let you know that the internet is not necessarily a safe place, especially if you're a kid and you type in ashy sky on Google Images.
	Type that in.
	You will not find pictures of ashes in the sky.
	I made a huge mistake looking for ashes and it's not.
	That's not what you find.
	But don't do that.
	Anyway, wouldn't it be nice though if search engines and social media sites were unbiased platforms and they didn't choose a political side?
	Well, you can keep dreaming because in 2016, the tech elites at Google bragged about donating millions of dollars to Hillary.
	It's crazy.
	These big tech companies that push their political agenda and restrict free speech rights of conservatives are the very same corporations we are trying and trusting with our personal data online.
	I use this awesome service because I don't want any of my web history, my email metadata, or my video searches used against me.
	And that's what they're going to do.
	And that's why I use ExpressVPN every time that I go online.
	ExpressVPN protects your data so that the people that want to use it and sell it to actually use against you can't do that.
	Isn't that crazy?
	They take your data and then they sell it to use against you.
	I hate that.
	So, I mean, if you're a smart person, you're going to use a VPN, but why not use the highest rated VPN, ExpressVPN, online?
	Anyway, you can go to expressvpn.com slash offensive, and you can use my code offensive right now to get the first three months free of a year subscription.
	This is incredible.
	I mean, it's not even, the cost doesn't even matter, to be honest.
	It's like, do you want to be safe or not?
	Then it's a no-brainer.
	Anyway, go to expressvpn.com/slash offensive.
	Use my code offensive to get the first three months free of a year subscription.
	It's really incredible.
	But I want to jump right into a serious question then.
	Because you get pulled out of the left, I think what people get really confused about is what that actually looks like in their real lives.
	And there's two sides of this.
	There's what it looks like in your day-to-day social life.
	And then there's what it looks like in your actual, I don't want to call it your mental sexual life, but it's your political life, right?
	This is the intimacy.
	This is where it gets into the world.
	My mental sexual life?
	Yeah, this is the bedroom.
	The bedroom of your thoughts is who you vote for, right?
	This is what changes.
	This is what makes or breaks you.
	So you go over here and it's actually who you vote for.
	So, I mean, if you left the left per se or are leaving the left, do you start voting for somebody on the right?
	Are you going to vote for Donald Trump?
	Let me do the first part of the question first before we get to the mental, sexual, political part.
	I'll do the first part of sort of what will happen because a lot of the book is actually about that.
	And unfortunately, when you leave the left, and for sure, I actually hear your premise here that there's some version of this on the right as well.
	It's just not the version that I'm that familiar with.
	But when you leave the left, you are going to be called a racist.
	You're going to be called a bigot.
	You're going to have friends turn on you.
	You're going to have family members unfriend you on Facebook.
	You are going to have a litany of things.
	You're going to have a mob come after you on Twitter because you say you're for low taxes or a series of other things.
	One story that I don't tell in the book, but I think really illustrates this well is I have a lifelong friend.
	I've known him since I'm, you know, literally since we were born.
	Our moms went to college together, so we've known each other forever.
	And about three years ago, we actually went to college together.
	We were both political science majors, both lefties our whole lives.
	But about three years ago, he had seen my political evolution and I met him in New York City at a bar and we sat down and he just started going on and on about, you know, oh, I've really figured out how to trick the right and make some money and just like all of this, all this really awful stuff that you just wouldn't say to somebody.
	And I kept countering it and saying, you know, that's not true.
	And he's racist and bigot and all that stuff.
	And finally, I said to him, because the conversation was just getting nowhere.
	He wasn't giving an inch and was really going after my motivations.
	I said to him, do you think it's possible that I believe what I believe as much as you believe what you believe?
	And without pausing, without thinking, he said no.
	And I've never done this before and I've never done it again.
	Yeah, I've never done it before and I've never done it again, but I took my wallet out, I threw cash down at the bar, paid for everything, and walked out.
	Now, we subsequently have spoken since, and I've tried to fix that because I don't like losing friends over politics.
	But I think that sort of mindset is the type of thing that anyone that leaves the left will confront.
	You will have people attack your human, your humanness.
	You will have them attack your ideas.
	You will have them attack your motivations and the rest of it.
	Now, to answer the question about who will I vote for, I would say anyone going into a voting booth.
	So I'm a registered Democrat here in California because I wanted to be able to vote in the Democratic primary.
	So for the primary just back then that we just had that feels very irrelevant right now, I did vote for Biden, not because I like Biden, but I really, it was just to vote against Bernie, who stands for everything that I formerly believed that I now know to be complete nonsense.
	So I don't know exactly who I'm going to vote for across the board in November, but whether they have an R or a D next to their name is going to be largely irrelevant.
	I will generally, and when I go into a voting booth and when you see all of those, all of the little programs that they're trying to stick in that you've never heard of before, and you have to read four paragraphs, and it's all very confusing.
	And you're like, if I vote for this, does this mean it happens?
	Or if I vote yes, does it not happen?
	It's all very, you know, it's intentionally confusing.
	I pretty much always now vote, at least in these last few years, for things that will decrease taxes, which we never see happen in California.
	But I try to vote against things that I just see as big government programs.
	I just don't think we need any more big government programs.
	I think if anything, we need less.
	And I try to make sure that whoever I'm voting for is going to at least fight a little bit against the machine more than just endlessly give it power.
	So you basically said over one minute, but you could have just said, I'm voting for Donald Trump because there's this.
	It's like, that's like someone being like, oh, do you like her?
	And there's two girls in the room.
	You're like, well, I like one of them and it's not the other one.
	And it's like, oh, so you like, that's the girl you like.
	I'm not going to say, but I don't like that one.
	And you're like, okay, all right.
	Well, hey, I like the junior high political voting talk here.
	I love it.
	Donald Trump is running.
	He's doing a lot for us.
	But I think there's a certain portion of people who, this election's coming down to a point where it's sort of like the last one.
	They still don't like Trump, but it's like, who do you want?
	The guy who's literally trying to take action against the coronavirus or that one guy who can't remember his first name.
	You know, and I mean, that's really what it's come down to.
	And people are looking at the options.
	I know a lot of Democrats who are so upset that Biden is the frontrunner.
	I mean, I know they haven't had the actual DNC official nomination or whatever, but people look at him and go, this is who's going to lead me.
	Is this a sign that the left is falling apart if this was the best that they could put up on the throne?
	Think about what a flawed candidate Hillary was, which led us to Donald Trump being president, which is something that you could have only imagined in a sci-fi novel in 1985, right?
	Hillary was the most deeply flawed candidate you could possibly find.
	And what did they counter it with four years later?
	A senile man, an old man who cannot remember things.
	This is just sad.
	This is actually sad, right?
	So like we can be kind of glib about it or whatever, but watching this guy implode is not fun.
	And, you know, most people have a grandparent or know somebody, an aunt or an uncle or a parent who's older, who gets to that beginning stages.
	I'm not diagnosing him with dementia, but something where they start talking and they can't find words, they can't finish sentences and the rest of it.
	So it's very sad, but that they've all chosen, that the entire machine chose to coalesce around him.
	Well, at some level, you could say that's good because it stopped Bernie, right?
	So it stopped the onslaught of socialism.
	But what everyone has to remember and what your friends who are Democrats who are upset really have to keep in mind is that if you vote for Joe Biden, you must know for a fact you are voting for his vice president.
	You are not voting for Joe Biden.
	That man cannot do the job.
	It is obvious.
	And not only that, I still think it's very possible that they pull some crazy trick right before the convention and replace him or he announces that he has a medical condition and he can't do it.
	Or what would be even more perverse was that they get him through the election.
	He somehow wins.
	And then two weeks later, they announce that he's stepping down and the VP is in charge or that he's just this puppet for the DNC.
	I mean, these are all sort of conspiracy theories that aren't really conspiracy theories.
	The guy obviously is not equipped enough to do it.
	So I think a lot of people are probably in the position that you're laying out there, which is they're not thrilled with Trump.
	You know what I mean?
	I'm not talking about people on the right.
	I'm talking about the disaffected lefties and sort of more moderate Democrats.
	It's like you may not really like Trump, but you know that thing is a serious mess and you have no idea what you're voting for.
	And by the way, he's already decided that no matter what, he's choosing a female vice presidential candidate, which is just an absurd notion.
	It's like you should pick the best person regardless of their gender or ethnicity or anything else.
	And it would also show what an absolute fraudulent event the entire nomination process was because it would be like, oh, well, we just forced this guy in.
	And then really we know he's going to step down.
	And we're just going to pick somebody that we wanted to be the winner.
	And I think that would dissuade many Democrats from voting in the future.
	Yeah, and that's really an interesting point, though.
	And I don't want to predict Trump's assured win.
	But then if people are voting for the VP, let's take someone like Tim Poole.
	I know you've had him on your show, I'm pretty sure.
	Very familiar with him.
	The weird thing is with, like, I feel like Tim Poole and I have very similar views.
	But I am not, and I'm not a big, I'm not a big Republican guy myself.
	I think the Rhinos are more proliferating through the party than people think.
	And there's definitely a huge swath of very weak candidates.
	I mean, look at who the Republicans have put forth to run against some of the biggest and strongest Democrats, very low-level, low, I guess, not even popular people that had no chance of winning.
	It almost seems like the Republicans want to lose a lot of seats, especially this next election.
	But then you take someone like Trump.
	I don't just think Trump wants to win.
	I think he's willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that he gets into office.
	And I don't think he really cares if the Republicans and the establishment are behind him.
	And I like that.
	I like a fighter.
	I like someone who I think, I think Trump does Trump, and I like what he does.
	And so I'm a big Trump guy myself.
	I'm not this, you know, I don't have MA flags in my bedroom or something.
	But I will say that as I've gone to protests, this is what I want to bring up, and something that I've even seen at your speeches, a lot of what I cover is radical left-wing culture.
	And people always ask me, why don't you cover radical right-wing culture?
	I go, well, 500 stations already do that for us every single day and even invent radical right-wing culture that doesn't even.
	Right, they have to invent it.
	That's the difference.
	So I just happened to walk outside my front door.
	I mean, you're, you know, you live in a big city too.
	So you walk outside and there are these protests every single day.
	And you look at these people and you look at the candidates that they support.
	And you go, they support mostly Sanders, but they're from the left.
	They support Democrats.
	And then you go to these right-wing rallies that support Trump and they're full of love and peace.
	People are articulate and they have these ideas.
	And so it's like, why as somebody who's smart yourself, why wouldn't you be encouraging people to vote for Trump?
	Not be Republican, not being right-wing, but why wouldn't you take a stronger stance?
	Oh, well, it's so funny you're saying that because I get so much crap for never, you know, people say I never attack Trump or I say nice things about Trump or whatever.
	I just posted a video on my channel literally yesterday that I met Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
	I had dinner with Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfall, his wife and David, my husband.
	We went to Mar-a-Lago.
	The four of us had dinner.
	And then Trump was sitting next to us.
	And I got to spend some time with Trump and Melania.
	And he was thrilled that a gay couple was there.
	He couldn't have been happier.
	He said some interesting stuff.
	Can I curse on this channel?
	Oh, 100%.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	So Don Jr. introduces us.
	Trump is sitting there.
	And Don Jr. says to him, Dad, this is Dave Rubin.
	He has a great podcast.
	You know, he's a great guy.
	Trump looks at me.
	He's sitting and I'm standing above him.
	He looks at me.
	He goes, Dave Rubin, Dave Rubin, I think I know you.
	I recognize you.
	I go, oh, well, I'm on Tucker a lot.
	He goes, he turns to David, my husband.
	He goes, and who are you?
	He goes, well, I'm his husband.
	He goes, husband, husband.
	He slaps his hands on the table.
	He goes, I want to stand up and shake your hand.
	Thank you guys so much for being here.
	That's just great.
	And then he turns to Melania and he says, Melania, these guys, they're married.
	Can you believe it?
	Their only problem is that they're too good looking.
	Look at these guys.
	He goes, I don't give a shit, and I don't think anyone's given a shit for 20 years.
	And that's what I got to see of the real Donald Trump.
	I have no, look, in terms of policy, I have almost no problem with Donald Trump.
	I think he's what I would say is sort of a mainstream conservative.
	I think he's doing a bunch of good stuff.
	And the parts about Trump that I don't like, you know, some of the boisterousness and the tweeting and all that stuff, I actually don't give him a lot of crap for because he had to fight through the system.
	As I said earlier, they tried it with the nice guys, McCain and Romney, and it failed.
	So in many ways, all the rhinos or the never Trumpers, I find to be the most unbearable people because he's doing all the dirty work so that they can survive.
	Where all they do, you know, the bulwark people, the, what's his name, Bill Crystals and the David Frums and all these never Trump conservatives, it's like you guys are supporting Biden and Bernie in effect, while this guy's doing all the stuff to break through the media, break through the political establishment, to get all the things you apparently, you're supposed to care about happen.
	So I find those guys to be just absolutely unbearable.
	I mean, I've had from on the show.
	I think he's probably a decent human being.
	But like the Trump derangement with these people, it's like, you guys don't know how to fight.
	And as you said before, Trump's a fighter.
	It doesn't mean I love absolutely everything about him.
	You know, there are times I wish he would tone it down a little bit, but he's fighting the best way he knows how.
	And we always demand for politicians to stand up for what they believe in.
	And he actually does it.
	And it's just weird for, I think, some liberals to, liberals and moderates, whatever, to accept that.
	So what I'm translating is that you've partially come out of the closet to your friends and family, and you're in that mode where it's like they all know.
	It's like your mother's like, look, I've known for 43 years, Dave, that this is the way that you think.
	But, you know, not everybody knows because the girl next door still thinks she's going to get married to you.
	And I think that's how it sounds with your political views.
	It's like, well, you're still thinking and you're still coming out and you're still developing your stance.
	And I think what's really important about that, though, is what strikes me different about where you come from versus other people that I talk to.
	And, you know, between you and myself, we talk to hundreds, if not thousands of other people, you know, on air and in person all the time, is that you're not afraid to stay, you're still thinking, that you're still continuing to develop your views.
	And that's why you have a chapter.
	I think it was called It's Time to Come Out, right?
	I think that's the first chapter actually in the book.
	It's time to come out.
	It's time to be open.
	It's time to be candid.
	It's time to be honest.
	I think why people are scared is because they don't really know who they are, right?
	They're like, coming out, coming out as what?
	Let's speak to those people a little bit and what your thoughts are on that.
	Yeah, well, look, later in the book, after the coming out chapter, because people think of coming out having something to do with sexuality exclusively, but you could be closeted about any, any set of thoughts that you have that you don't share with people.
	You don't share with your family, you don't share with your friends.
	In effect, you're closeted by that.
	And, you know, the problem with being closet is there's only room for one in the closet.
	And, you know, we're social creatures.
	We need to map reality against what other people think.
	So if you have a whole group of other people who are always saying what they think, who are always shouting you down, who are always telling you how horrible you are, and you think that by being quiet and not sharing what you think, that that's going to offer you some protection, well, actually, what it really will offer you is just isolation.
	It'll offer you depression, truly.
	And I think so what I try to do in the book is I liken the traditional closet related to sexuality to the political closet because I meet college kids all the time who tell me I am afraid to say what I think.
	And I'll ask them, well, what are some of the things that you're afraid to say in your college classes?
	And usually they tell me some pretty libertarian stuff.
	I'm for low taxes.
	All right.
	And then they'll go, well, I'll say, well, why can't you talk about that in class?
	And they always tell me the same thing.
	The professor or the other students, if you say you're for low taxes, will say you're racist.
	And now, here's the thought process behind that: you say you're for low taxes, they'll say, Well, that means you don't care about poor people.
	And if you don't care about poor people, that means you don't care about black people.
	And if you don't care about black people, you're racist.
	Now, you can lay out a million examples of why there are actually more poor white people than poor black people.
	You can lay out examples as Thomas Sowell and Larry Elder and many have for decades now about how the welfare state is actually destroying the black family and that anyone, regardless of their skin color, that gets stuck within the welfare state can't get out because they give you such cheap housing.
	It's like, how can you ultimately leave?
	And you get people to be dependent on.
	So you can calmly lay out a million statistics around that.
	And I've done many shows based on that.
	But they will still, because the cries of racism and bigotry are so effective, they will not let that go.
	And good people, and that's what you're getting to, really, good people are afraid to say what they think.
	But here's the key: they cannot silence all of us.
	And by the way, that's why I get as much hate as I get.
	The left does not like to let people walk.
	They can't have somebody who fits the mold just walk because then they know everyone else will walk.
	So they say they're for gay people, but they're not for Peter Thiel, right?
	They're not for Dave Rubin.
	They're not for Tammy Bruce.
	And they're not for Rick Grinnell, the highest-serving openly gay ambassador to Germany who's now the head of intelligence, the acting head of intelligence.
	They're not for any of these people.
	They're not for women, right?
	Because to say you're for women doesn't mean anything.
	Everyone's for women's equality.
	But when you just say you're for women, no, that's meaningless.
	You're for women who think like you do, meaning you're not for Nikki Haley.
	You're not for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the litany of Republican women that there are.
	You're not for black people because you're not for Larry Elder or Thomas Sowell or the or Candace Owens or the millions probably of black conservatives now.
	So breaking out of that is really tough.
	And I'll just add one thing to this.
	It's why, by the way, that they constantly attack Tucker Carlson.
	It's not that they just want to take Tucker Carlson out because he's an excellent orator and he's an excellent example of how to say what you believe.
	It's that they're trying, and when they do all these boycotts and media matters, they're trying to say, look, we can take Tucker Carlson out.
	So you better shut up, little person with a regular job and no defense.
	If we can take this millionaire on Fox News out, we can take all of you out too.
	And it's why, although I happen to like Tucker and we're friends, it's why I always defend Tucker because if they were to take him out, it's not about him.
	It's the signal that they'll send across the galaxy basically, saying to all of the other people, see, we got you too.
	So the only counter to that is we need more people to start being brave.
	And by the way, I suspect it's happening right now.
	I think coronavirus has flipped a lot of things on its head.
	I think a lot of the things that I wrote about in this book, which again, I finished last summer, are things that people are finally talking about now.
	I think we have people on the left suddenly talking about states' rights for the first time.
	They don't care about states' rights.
	They love federal government.
	But suddenly they're talking about states' rights.
	Suddenly they're actually talking about guns because they realize maybe they have to be able to defend themselves.
	They're suddenly talking about low taxes, meaning people need to keep more of their money because the economy is hurting.
	So the ideas that I lay out here are becoming more relevant because of a crisis.
	And I think that's generally because leftist ideas are bad.
	And when the shit hits the fan, good ideas actually rise to the top.
	Yeah, and then just before I jump in the next point, I want to let people know that both myself and Dave, actually, you can find a lot more content on Blazetv.com.
	But don't use his code or his link because he's already got it.
	I only have one producer and my studio is in a utility closet.
	Dave has a bigger show.
	So actually go to blazetv.com/slash slightly offensive.
	Use the code Elijah to get our best deal ever.
	It's 69 bucks for a year right now.
	And I think it's very weird they chose the number 69.
	Very suggestive.
	Very interesting.
	Those of you that are suggestive.
	Right.
	69.
	Like, what are you going to tell your grandma?
	Hey, by the way, if you want to get Blaze, 69.
	And it's very important.
	Nobody wants to think about grandma in 69.
	That's not good.
	No, I know, but I'm just saying.
	But anyway, it's actually good because a lot of you guys think, oh, Blaze TV, what does it have to offer?
	There's a lot that it has to offer.
	And you wanted to actually find out, sign up.
	There's no drawbacks, no holdbacks.
	Get a subscription today.
	Again, go to blazetv.com/slash slightly offensive.
	And that's just absolutely the truth because YouTube and all these different places throttle all of our videos.
	You guys know a lot of you guys get unsubscribed, unfollowed, all this stuff constantly.
	I know our own intern, Dave, you've had a problem with this.
	Our own intern, three days in a row, he got unsubscribed from our channel.
	He's an intern on this, and he's been unsubscribed three times in three days.
	It's real.
	Conspiracy theories have started to become obviously real.
	I mean, big tech is not going to be a friend of anyone that's liberty-minded, anyone that takes any position outside of woke groupthink.
	And the second you go from woke to awake, they really hate you.
	So I have no doubt that Twitter is unsubscribing people, and YouTube's unsubscribing people, and they deboost and they shadow ban and they manipulate the algorithm and everything else.
	You may remember that about a year and a half ago, there was the Google leaker who full-on said that one of the channels that was being attacked was Dave Rubin's channel.
	He also mentioned Tim Poole and a couple other people.
	So we're also fighting big tech, which is which, by the way, is one of the reasons that I decided to partner with the Blaze in the first place, because we all are in this together and we need to help each other offer some protections and offer a little bit of an alliance against the oncoming onslaught, which, by the way, is coming.
	I mean, as the election rolls closer, you can already sort of feel it online.
	It's like we had a big tech problem.
	Well, now because of Corona, we're all more addicted.
	We're all more hooked on big tech.
	It's the only way we can communicate.
	You can't go to a bar to share your thoughts.
	You have to do it online.
	So we have a bigger problem even than we're thinking about.
	So Corona has created a lot of secondary and third problems.
	Yeah, and that's a good point because, you know, Susan Bojecki was just on CNN, the CEO, saying that if you disagreed with the World Health Organization, not only would they demonetize your videos, but they'd consider even pulling them.
	And so I was going to ask you the question: you know, is deleting videos the new book burning that people are doing?
	But I think actually, I want to get into this.
	They've gone a step further than just deleting the videos.
	They're deleting the people.
	So it's like, it's one thing to delete one video and the people have access to, you know, your other 30 videos you put out a month, but they're deleting the person from the access to the channel to a point where my own mom-in-law, I say mom-in-law, she's Australian.
	They call them moms.
	So my mom-in-law said that she could not find my new video even on my channel.
	She goes, You sent me the link and I click on it through Facebook and it takes me to it.
	But when I go to your page and I look at your new videos, it's just not there on coronavirus.
	I'm not seeing it.
	And I'm going, that's insane.
	She's showing me, it's like, she's going to my page.
	This is a family member and it doesn't, it doesn't show up on her computer.
	That is madness.
	We are playing a fixed game with fixed rules and pretending it's not fixed.
	This is sort of like the Harlem Globetrotters playing basketball.
	You know who's going to win at the end.
	And we're all playing this.
	And this, by the way, includes Trump.
	You know, he didn't do anything about big tech when he could have.
	Now, I didn't want him to, by the way.
	I don't want the government regulating big tech.
	And by the way, this is a place where Tucker and I have a pretty significant disagreement.
	He wanted and was really pushing Trump and the government to get involved in big tech.
	My feeling was you don't take the biggest monster and then you see another monster on the horizon and then combine those monsters.
	Because although there could be a short-term win, the idea that, well, what if Trump loses the election and now you've got some progressive and now the government's controlling YouTube?
	Then we're all absolutely screwed.
	So we have to be careful what we wish for.
	But by the way, this is why I started a tech company in the last year.
	We started locals.com and we're building digital homes for creators that aren't reliant on YouTube and Facebook and everything else.
	So right now I built out the Rubin report community through locals and we put all of our videos there that we own, we own the data and the rest of it.
	And yes, I put it out on YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and all those places, but it's subscription-based and we set the rules in there.
	We have no trolls and no bots because people won't pay you.
	And in many ways, it's just sort of a micro version of what Glenn and you guys have built with the Blaze, which is that we need protected networks.
	But what you're talking about about the pipes and then can people actually see the videos and all that, I just think we have no idea how we are being manipulated right now.
	We have no idea the way they're pushing videos to some people, hiding them from other people.
	And we all keep playing along.
	Every day we all get on Twitter and tweet our thoughts and go, oh, I got 5,000 retweets on that.
	That's exciting.
	When for all you know, it was actually supposed to get 30,000 or it was only supposed to get six.
	You just simply don't know.
	But we're all playing the game because we've been so trained by it.
	But that's why I started Locals.
	And what I'm trying to do is just show creators, don't live in a place like YouTube that your landlord is insane and might kick you out even if you're paying the rent.
	What you want to do is build a digital home that is yours.
	So we built tech that other people can leverage.
	And that's completely consistent with all of my beliefs in capitalism and free market and competition and the rest of it.
	Well, yeah, and that's actually been a really beautiful thing too, because I didn't start with the Blaze.
	And we were growing.
	I mean, when YouTube was good, when the algorithms were not as restrictive as they were today, I mean, this is the difference.
	Like, I think the last month before I got the email that they were changing authoritative sources.
	So the month before, I think it was last year, early in the year, before they decided to, you know, give a higher voice to certain people and roll the new algorithms.
	We had, we got 30,000 subscribers that month.
	And then the next month, it dropped down to like 4,000.
	And we've never recovered ever.
	I mean, and there's the point now, every time I launch a video, this is the weirdest thing.
	The minute I go live, within the first minute, I lose anywhere from 30 to 100 subscribers.
	Every single video, that started a few months ago.
	Every video, in the first day, videos are negative subscribers.
	And then they go up.
	So for some reason, before people can watch the first 40 seconds of the video, they've suddenly decided they no longer want the content on the channel.
	And so it's like, you look at it and you go, this is burning books.
	You are telling people what they're allowed to read.
	But not only that, what they're allowed to see and in turn, what they're allowed to think.
	You are policing freedom of thought right in front of us.
	And then we, as creators, like you said, I mean, it's like we still continue to make the content.
	Sometimes we feel like a little bit in the corner.
	Do you think that we're going to have a way out of this?
	Do you think things are going to get better?
	Do you think they're going to get worse?
	Well, I don't think big tech is going to get any better.
	There is no signal and no sign that they'll ever change course.
	What I think will happen, and I hope that Locals is one of the products that solve the problem, is I think competition will arise.
	Look, nothing lasts forever, right?
	There were giant companies that don't exist.
	Kodak Film was a monolith.
	It doesn't exist anymore, right?
	Like, so things change over time.
	And as big as Google and the rest of it seem, you know, there was that David vs. Goliath story.
	So if David could beat Goliath, maybe Dave could beat Google.
	So I do believe that human ingenuity can take these things down.
	And I also think it's possible, by the way, that they will have become so big and so out of control internally that they won't be able to manage Their own competing interests.
	So I think they could just all sort of collapse on themselves anyway.
	But, you know, they've done obvious things that we should be wary about.
	So I'm sure you remember this.
	A couple years ago on any YouTube channel, you could see very specifically right up front.
	If you went to youtube.com/slash Rubinreport, you could see my subscriber number.
	Now they hide it.
	And why do they hide it?
	Because they don't even really want you knowing.
	So you have to internally figure out how you can show your subscribers and all that stuff.
	Remember, there used to be a site called Social Blade that could track your subscribers literally by the second, and you could watch it rise all the time.
	And then suddenly, exactly as you're saying, you'd put out a new video and suddenly you'd lose 2,000 subscribers.
	Well, they realized, oh, it's too obvious.
	We can't show everybody all of our tricks.
	So they just shut down the API so Social Blade can't even do their job anymore.
	I don't even know if Social Blade exists anymore.
	So we're fighting a monster.
	I mean, we really are fighting a big tech monster that in the last two months because of coronavirus got much bigger.
	And one of the unfortunate things is that people should be talking about this more than ever before.
	But unfortunately, I think we've moved our eye off the ball.
	And at some level, it was necessary to really focus on Corona.
	But I'm not just focused on the virus itself.
	I'm focused on what are the other things that are changing beneath that.
	And again, building some infrastructure like the Blaze has, having studios like the Blaze has and the rest of it, that offers some protections.
	You know, me doing my own thing with locals offers some protections, but the game is afoot.
	Yeah, and I want to bring up that as a last point here about this idea of book burning.
	You know, I think what a lot of Americans and people in the world are sharing in common, like people, this is such, it's such a terrible reputation.
	At least, Dave, you have this reputation.
	People are like, oh, Dave Rubin, you have Donald Trump Jr. going, he has a really great podcast in telling the president.
	When people go, oh, Elijah, isn't that the guy that gets punched in the head by radical left-wing girls or something?
	And it's like, oh, you're that guy who gets his head cracked open by transgenders.
	And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's me.
	And so at least lots happening in your head, apparently.
	Oh, I don't, for some reason, I always get punched in the head by people while I'm doing my job.
	It's like, it's just a thing.
	Like, just a couple months ago, I got a concussion because somebody was trying to steal my producer's camera, this Antifa girl.
	And so someone came behind with brass knuckles and punched me in the back of the head and gave me a concussion.
	I had a headache for two weeks.
	It was terrible.
	But it's like, this is just what they do.
	And because we expose them.
	I actually am happy though, because at least Antifa knows me by name.
	So whenever we go there, I'll start yelling out, hey, Elijah, you with your little bitch boy, Andy?
	Where's Andy?
	And it's like, Andy's, there's only like two gay people that I like.
	Most gay people are insufferable.
	That's actually, it's actually true.
	But you're one of them.
	I like Andy.
	I happen to like Andy no, too.
	But you know, it does kind of suck that Antifa was ahead of the curve on the mask thing because they're kind of looking wise right now, which kind of sucks.
	But you got to get them.
	They're prepped for COVID.
	You saw that they were making the way that they were like protesting or helping out that they started like an Antifa hand sanitizer like fundraising thing where they started making hand sanitizer for the community.
	These guys are our next level, but I just want to say with the idea of like, I think that people thought, oh, well, you know, I get Elijah's going out into all these protests.
	I get that he, you know, focuses a lot of his focus on this stuff.
	And he's putting himself in danger of being attacked.
	He's putting himself in that place and that position.
	But right now, it's no longer just if you go to a protest that, you know, you're putting yourself as a political target.
	Not just if you're just Dave Rubin and you have a podcast, you know, you're going to be a political target.
	Right now, because we're in an internet information-heavy society, just being alive now makes you a target of attack.
	It makes you a target of discrimination.
	And if you try to challenge the narrative, you are in danger.
	You are in danger of losing your job.
	You are in danger of losing your social media accounts.
	These things, there's real risks involved.
	And so you can't just stay safe by staying home, you know, per se, COVID orders.
	It's not just like, oh, well, Lija's a moron.
	He goes out there and puts himself in that position.
	You can be outed, essentially, like out of the closet.
	People are looking to out people and to expose them that they're not group thinkers.
	And so the going's getting tough.
	And the stakes are high.
	But I think that channels like yours, channels like mine, and all the ones at Blaze, a lot of people who aren't on there are showing people that we are not taking this shit anymore.
	We're not taking the pressure.
	We understand the pressure is there, but it's actually making us become better people, stronger orators, more confident in our opinions.
	But I wanted to leave the people with a genuine connection from your heart.
	If they're not supposed to burn this book, and I don't think they want to, and I think they're curious, and I want to tell people, even if you don't read books, even if you don't want to read this book, get a copy for your friend.
	Get a copy for somebody that you know.
	Is there going to be a digital version too, I think, probably?
	There is a digital version.
	There is an audible version.
	And by the way, for anyone that is a Blaze subscriber, they already got an email that there's a 35% off link in their Blaze email just by being a Blaze subscriber alone.
	Perfect.
	And so, yeah, so get this book.
	But get this book.
	It's so important.
	But what, going forward, what is your encouragement to people who are trying to wake people up, who are afraid for the danger?
	Do you want people, should people start getting more bold?
	Should they get less bold?
	What's the next steps that they take?
	Well, first off, everything that you just said there is the ethos of this book.
	So you summed it up quite nicely.
	And to answer the question very directly, you must stand up.
	What type of person do you want to be in the world?
	Forget reality for a second.
	Think of any movie that you love, any hero in any movie.
	What did Luke do?
	He had a problem, right?
	His aunt and uncle were burned.
	There's a problem on the horizon.
	There's that princess and that Death Star thing.
	What did he do?
	He blew it up himself.
	He didn't ask someone else to do it.
	What did Frodo do with the ring?
	He went to go get the ring.
	He didn't ask someone else to do it.
	What did Neo do in The Matrix or whatever your movie is?
	The hero does it.
	That is our purpose as human beings, to find purpose and try to create a world that is a little better than the one that we were handed with.
	I truly believe that.
	And if you think that just being quiet right now, because it feels kind of scary, is going to buy you time or ultimately get you to the other side or make sure that you're safe, all you're doing is putting yourself in that pot that is slowly getting warmer.
	And I can promise you this, it doesn't work out well for the frog, right?
	He just slowly boils instead of just getting boiled all at one time.
	So you must fight for what you believe in.
	And you're right.
	I wrote this book, even the length of this book, the idea was I wanted to give something to people that they could read in a couple days and then hopefully hand it to a friend and say, you know, you may not agree with everything in this thing, but there are some core principles and some ideas behind that about how you can fight for what you believe in.
	If you walk away from this book and you go, you know, Dave, I still disagree with you on abortion.
	I still disagree with you on taxes and I still disagree with you on foreign policy, but I'm thinking about them for myself and you made some interesting points and I can map my reality against that.
	I will gladly take that.
	And that's what we need more of.
	It's as simple as that.
	They cannot silence all of us.
	And they are actually part of their tactic is to see how many of us they can silence.
	And all you have to do is stand up.
	They will not destroy all of us.
	They can't.
	And everyone that I know that has sat in the chair right across from me right now that I've interviewed that has stood up to the mob, whether it's James Zamore from Google or Brett Weinstein from Evergreen State or Lindsay Shepard from Wilfrid Laurier, who as a TA dared to show a Jordan Peterson video in her class and then got taken in to the diversity and inclusion office and reamed out.
	Every single person that has stood up has come out better on the other side.
	And that's what we have to map for people.
	And once we do that, we can beat these guys and better ideas can prevail.
	You know what?
	I could not have said it better myself.
	And just letting you guys know who are watching, make sure you do pick up a copy at don'tburnthisbook.com.
	You find the links in the description as well.
	Pre-order if you're watching this before April 28th, or you can get it after April 28th, and there's that discount.
	And just so you guys remember, you know, I myself worked in science and I got blacklisted.
	I had a very, very liberal professor and PI and everybody that I worked for.
	And he blocked me from getting jobs in any field.
	I got offered two jobs and they rescinded.
	He was an anti-avid anti-Trumper, big, big La Raza Mecha guy.
	He told me my race was on the decline, that, you know, I was insufferable.
	Even at one point, he like that, he regretted hiring me.
	And I was never able to work in science again because I could not get a good recommendation from my last employer simply for political reasons.
	But you know what?
	God turned things around and now I have a show and I'm able to earn a good living and more people are able to earn a living from helping out in the show.
	So rather than me just working in science, providing for myself, God's provided for a lot of other people and that's the way that he turns things around.
	So never give up.
	Don't get discouraged.
	It might get bad in the beginning, but it does get better as you get bolder.
	Anyway, Dave Rubin, thank you so much for coming on slightly offensive.
	We hope to talk to you again sometime soon.
	Elijah, it's been a pleasure.
	And next time we'll get into some of your, what did you call them?
	Your psychological sexual mental sexual.
	The bedroom.
	Yeah, the bedroom of your politics is the bedroom.
	It's the bedroom of the mind.
	It really is.
	Because everyone gets, it's like when you try to talk to someone about their sex life and they get like, like you can have the most like, you know, conservative, like collected person.
	And then all of a sudden they become like this little like limp-wristed gay person.
	They're always like, well, I mean, we're not really supposed to talk about that.
	And that's how people get about their politics.
	It's like they'll talk to you about their ideas, their philosophy, but you're like, well, who are you voting for?
	And then they go like, oh, I'm not showing you that.
	You show me mine.
	I'll show you yours, Dave.
	I look forward to talking about your mental sexual issues one of these days.
	Awesome.
	All right.
	Have a great rest of the day.
	Anyway, guys, make sure you like, share, and subscribe to keep independent media and journalism alive.
	My name is Elijah Schaefer, your favorite queer person of color.

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