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June 17, 2020 - Rudy Giuliani
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Democrat Party Falls Off the LEFT Cliff: Dave Rubin and Rudy Giuliani Left Behind | Ep. 45
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It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
There was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking that brought us to the discovery of our freedoms, of our God-given freedoms.
It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, written in 1776, one of the first American bestsellers in which Thomas Paine explained by rational principles the reason why these small colonies felt the necessity to separate from the powerful Kingdom of England and the King of England.
He explained their inherent desire for liberty, freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and he explained it in ways that were understandable to the people, to all of the people.
A great deal of the reason for America's constant ability to self-improve is because we are able to reason, we're able to talk to each other, we're able to listen to each other, and we're able to analyze.
We are able to apply our God-given common sense.
So let's do it.
Welcome back to Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense and today we have a really very special guest.
You know him, Dave Rubin.
You know him for a lot of reasons.
He's got a great book out, Don't Burn This Book, which is a very provocative cover.
And I think when you read it, you're going to figure out why it has that name.
It's very, very I think it's a must read for anybody on either side.
It's going to open your mind.
And he has just about the most popular podcast out there, which is filled with very much the same ideas and his observations on things.
And I think it's going to turn out to be one of our most fascinating interviews from the time that I spent with him on the radio because of his point of view.
Dave, thank you very, very much for being with us.
It's good to be with you again, Mr. Mayor.
So Dave, So let's get to where we are right now and then go into how you got there.
It seems to me that these riots that we're going through now, having been through the riots of the 60s, the 70s, and a few in the 80s and early 90s, these are very different.
They're much better organized.
They clearly have a purpose.
And then they move into really challenging the government, you know, by taking over, they never took over police stations before.
I don't ever, I never remember setting up an autonomous city.
Is there some something behind this more than just outrage?
Oh yeah, there's something deeply dangerous behind it, deeply nefarious behind it, and we should explore that a little bit.
First, I would say if people were protesting Because there was a group of people based on the color of their skin or their gender or sexuality or religion or something like that, that were denied rights based on those immutable characteristics.
I would be out in the streets with them.
That is what you are supposed to do as an American.
It is in the Bill of Rights that we are allowed to assemble and we are allowed to peaceably protest, although you probably saw Chris Cuomo on CNN saying, where does it say it has to be peaceful?
Well, you know, it happens to be in that Constitution thing.
If people were protesting unjust laws and that's it, well then I know you would be out there with them doing the same thing.
What's happening here and what sort of lays right beneath almost everything in the progressive set of ideas is that they really believe that the American experiment, and that's all that this country is for 200 plus years, an experiment of whether we could bring people from all over the world here to create something The great melting pot that we've done.
So well, right?
And you, as the former mayor of New York City, you probably know it better than anybody because you had to be the mayor for everybody regardless of where they came from, and you know what it's like.
You get on a New York subway station, and it doesn't matter if you're getting on at the Upper West Side or downtown, you are gonna see literally every person from every walk of life, every skin color, gender, all of those things.
The problem here with the progressives is that they believe That that very experiment is faulty.
It's bad.
It's evil.
And they are trying to topple the system.
And what's even more perverse about that is they've elected progressive mayors like de Blasio in New York and Garcetti here in L.A.
and the mayor of Seattle who believe that that they're allowed autonomous zones, burn down miles away from West Hollywood here in in Los Angeles which is it's quite literally it's the gayest place on earth they've got rainbow flags in the crosswalk that that you know it's 90% gay people probably that live in West Hollywood I went there for a haircut last week I'm probably could be arrested for that now I shouldn't have said that but I go to I go to West Hollywood and West Hollywood worded up now we happen to be in June which I'm told is pride
And how does this all make sense that we're boarding up gay businesses in the name of tolerance that somehow is for Black Lives Matter?
None of it makes sense.
And this is what the left has brought upon us.
They have a system of competing interests.
We're for gay people, we're for black people, we're for women.
And actually these things are very much at odds with each other.
So thus you can go into the gay community in tolerant West Hollywood and see that they have to border up their windows So in the old days when we used to have protests, the more normal protests, and I was involved either in the policing or prosecution of them, we'd always try to figure out who's really running this.
There really was no such thing for more than about three hours to a spontaneous peaceful protest.
Because as soon as the protesters see it, it's a target of opportunity.
So they move in, and then they try to figure out how much they can do with it.
The job of the police is to find out—not to negotiate with the neighborhood guy who's really a legitimate guy who's protesting the beating of his son or protesting the shooting, like we saw, of Mr. Floyd.
The job is to find the guy running it, and you negotiate with him.
And then you can get some control over it.
You get some ground rules.
You can't use the whole city.
Have to stay on the block.
You let them know when they're going to get arrested.
You step over that line.
It's not even a joke.
You step over that line, you're arrested.
Stay in the line, you're happy with it.
Nowadays, we don't know who those people are.
We're not allowed to investigate.
The police have been driven out by First Amendment cases.
So they have the foggiest idea who's doing it.
The people who are doing it seem to me much more politically sophisticated.
It used to be the Sharptons and the Jacksons.
What did they want?
They wanted to shake the businesses down later to make money.
They were almost a form of mafia, gangster kind of thing.
These people, you get the feeling, want our government.
They want our government to fail.
So we'll be part of something else, maybe some world government, maybe some compliant government, what Europe does.
I also get the sense, and correct me if I'm being unfair, this has a George Soros feeling to it.
Yeah.
Well, look, first off, we know that Open Society, which is funded by George Soros, is linked at some level with some of these Antifa groups.
And by the way, I will go out of my way to say that when you say that something is George Soros linked or related to one of his organizations, That is not an anti-Semitic slur in any way.
George Soros has basically lived his life to demonize Israel and almost any cause that anyone would think would be pro-Jewish.
So criticizing George Soros is not anti-Semitic.
That's number one.
Two things on... And you're Jewish.
And I am Jewish.
And that's still irrelevant relative to being able to criticize George Soros.
And I'm a better Jew than George Soros.
You are a better Jew than George Soros.
I know you've said it before.
I'm willing to debate him.
I'm willing to debate him on that.
I think I even know more of the Talmud than he does.
But you know it's funny because I remember when you said that a couple months ago and you know and the outrage machine started attacking you and it's such nonsense because you know when you said that I know what you mean by that and every certainly every New York Jew knows what you mean by that that there's a spirit a New York spirit really is what you meant by that and and that you obviously have and and I certainly think most Jews probably think you're an honorary Jew but putting that aside There's two things going on with these autonomous zones and what these people want.
Now look, the mayor of Seattle, in effect, she's saying, hey, you can do whatever you want in my city, and we're going to allow you to do it.
There are going to be no rules.
know exactly who to negotiate with, which is what you're saying is the important part
of controlling some of this stuff.
But it's even worse than that, because then when the president tweeted about the autonomous
zone in Seattle, she tweeted back at him saying, in effect, everything's fine here, mind your
own business.
And it's like, I have friends in Seattle.
They don't think everything's fine right now.
There is a part of the city that in effect is being run by, you know, either you can call it a bunch of gangsters or whatever you want to call it, that's what they are.
There is a lawless part of the city.
So that's number one.
And number two, what we have to understand is this really is by design.
Who's in charge of this thing?
It's very unclear.
And I think they're designing it to be unclear so that it can spread everywhere.
It's obviously not particularly spontaneous when they're going around toppling every monument.
And where are the lefties?
I mean, we talked about this on the radio last week, but where are the good, decent liberals who are supposed to stand up to this stuff?
They're gone.
They really are gone, and it pains me to say that as what I would consider myself to be a good New York old-school liberal, which I think in many ways now is just a modern conservative.
But there are no adults in the room on the Democratic side.
It doesn't mean that the right and conservatives and Republicans are right about everything, but there is a rich ability to debate.
It's now time to take a short break and we'll be back with Dave Rubin in a moment.
Here where I live in New York City, you see people wearing these more and more as they commute.
and what happened, there was an insurrection at the New York Times and now they, you know,
they're firing people who are old-school journalists. So we're watching this thing
spread across every institution. It's now time to take a short break and we'll be back with Dave
Rubin in a moment. Here where I live in New York City, you see people wearing these more and more
as they commute. They're earbuds from Raycon. When commuting, you'll see them all over the city.
But they're great to wear right now, from home, on video conference calls, or when you're exercising, or you're watching this video podcast, or if you want to listen to music.
You just put them in, hit the music, and I'm listening to Bocelli's Conte Partero.
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You're going to really enjoy them.
Thank you.
Welcome back to our discussion with Dave Rubin.
Well, Dave, I have to tell you, one of the reasons that I admire you very, very much, and from the very beginning, when I started hearing you and reading about you, is you're one of the few people who remembers that.
Or I'm sure a lot of people remember it, but it's in the forefront of their minds, because I also was a Democrat, probably a libertarian-type Democrat.
I always hated their foreign policy.
Always thought they were too weak.
I liked their domestic policy, social programs.
I liked that.
But I also liked the classic idea of liberalism, which the Supreme Court—I've forgotten the justice now— used to say, your real adherence to the First Amendment, it's not when you allow the people who agree with you to speak, it's when you protect with your life the people who disagree with you.
To me, that's America.
To me, that's understanding.
That's what makes us different than everybody else.
Everybody else allows protests if they're protesting how the dictator's wonderful.
Right?
But the minute they say, down with the dictator or the dictator has too many bananas, all of a sudden, they get in prison.
Well, that's where we are now.
That's where, you know, Condoleezza Rice wants to speak at Boston College, and they won't let her go to Boston College.
That was a while back.
When that started, I started to see the leftists turn.
That could never have happened.
If that had happened when you go back, the leftists would have been out there demonstrating.
Yep.
They've been demonstrating more than the rightists that she should be allowed to speak.
Well, that's why these things are cyclical.
You're totally right.
The Berkeley Free Speech Movement, these were lefties that were protesting for free speech.
These things come and go.
Let's not forget, 20 years ago, there were people on the right, say Joe Lieberman and John McCain, who wanted to ban violence in video games, and they wanted to get Mortal Kombat out of stores.
It's not that one side has a complete monopoly on what's right, but as it stands in 2020 right now, you can basically debate anything with someone on the right and they're not going to try to take away your job.
They're not going to try to de-platform you or destroy you.
For example, in my book, I lay out what I call a begrudging pro-choice position.
I completely accept That it's life, when the sperm meets the egg, and we don't have to get into all the science of it.
We sort of come to the same conclusion after 40 years of analysis, including my own, having once wanted to be a priest, so it gets very theologically confused too.
But I come to pretty much the same analysis you do.
Absolutely.
So look, in my book, I lay out a 12-week cutoff, and I know for the person that is fully trying to protect life, I understand that that's an arbitrary cutoff.
I do too.
Right.
So your position on this, this is what I think is the sort of new right position.
It doesn't mean that you, Mayor Giuliani, are trying to convince every pro-life Christian that they should be more pro-choice, but there's obviously a spot for people like us carved out on the right.
to agree to disagree with these people. Now, try to have that position on the left where you say
12-week abortion, which used to be a commonly held, or 20-week even, right? 20 weeks. If you
try to have that position as someone on the left, they'll tell you that you hate women and that
you're an anti-abortion nut job and the rest of it. So what the left, in effect, is doing
is if you don't tick off these 10 things that they want you to prescribe to the second they
get there. You got to do it the second they get there. They'll kick you out. What I see
happening on the right is more of an opening for that. And I would say...
The more the right can do it begrudgingly on pro-choice, the wider that tent will be.
Because I just firmly believe that the future of American politics, if we're to remain a nation that's anything close to the country that we love, the future will be a center-right future.
The left has basically destroyed every decent tenant that they used to hold, and it's now incumbent on the right to save this thing.
I think that's right.
I think the best outcome for this election would be a big defeat for the Democrats, the Republican Party probably accomplishing a lot of what they want to accomplish, maybe even the Republican Party going a little too far.
Because when parties take over, they sometimes go a little too far.
And that would be an opening for the Democratic Party to reform itself, to kind of do maybe a more legitimate version of what they did in the 80s when they had the new Democrats, from which Gore and Clinton—and even though Clinton was a lot of problems, compared to now, he was a moderate Democrat.
His wife had that left tendency, but I don't even know if he was a moderate.
He was a pragmatic politician.
He knew how to make deals.
If he had to give up three things to get five, he'd give up three things to get five.
I'll tell you, the biggest deal I was involved with him was the crime bill, the now infamous crime bill.
And the biggest proponents of more police in the crime bill were Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer.
And to watch the two of them squirm away from it, Well, that's why—yeah, I'm with you on that.
Look, that's why Joe Biden is so dangerous in a weird way.
Now, first off, he's obviously having cognitive problems.
I don't mean that to be glib or sarcastic or take any joy in that, it's just obvious.
And the media won't touch it, and yet the day that it leaks out
that they've known about it, everyone in the media is gonna say,
oh, I wanted to talk about it, but the editors wouldn't let me or something like that.
But Biden, who is now running against, even on abortion, he's running against himself.
He's running against himself on crime.
He's running against himself on all these things.
You may have seen at the LGBT Equality Forum where he said that if you're going to prison,
it shouldn't be what sex your birth certificate says, it should be whatever gender you identify with.
Well, we're gonna have an awful lot of male rapists in female prisons.
I mean, all of these things, all of these things are counter to logic and reason,
which used to be, as you said before, liberal principles.
So Biden, to me, is sort of the last, the last sort of stop between full leftist insanity.
and he obviously isn't the guy that can stop this thing.
So I agree with you on this.
The only way we get out of this and get a sane left back, which by the way, people on the right, conservatives should want a sane left, because you want some healthy tension in a society, right?
So the only way you get to that is that Trump, I think, has to win in a landslide, thus finally causing whatever adults are left, In the Democratic Party.
And I don't know who they are anymore.
But there's got to be a couple blue dog Democrats left who can finally say, look what the progressives wrought upon us.
They destroyed our party.
They tried to insert terrible ideas of identity politics and socialism.
And out of that, perhaps a phoenix could rise.
And then congratulations.
Well, then we can reset and we have, okay, a right, a Republican Party.
That has power and a Democratic Party that maybe can be sane again.
And I think that would be, that would set us back on a track that would make sense for most people.
Well, Dave, you know what I think would be interesting to everyone, and it certainly is to me, a bit of your personal journey.
How you went, I mean, you know, there's the old Churchill saying, if you're not a liberal when you're 20, you don't have a heart.
And if you're not a conservative by the time you're 40, you don't have a brain.
Yeah.
And I use that a lot when I explain my own.
Well, you were once a Democrat, and then I used that as an example.
But I know many people, maybe because they joined me because I was a Democrat once, who made this change.
Many!
And I'd just like to see how it happened.
Sometimes it's over a period of time, and sometimes it's almost like a St.
Paul moment.
You know, Jesus appears to you and says, you're converting, you're killing my people.
Yeah, there were a couple moments, you know, I quote that Churchill quote often.
And then, of course, there's the other one by Ronald Reagan, which is, I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.
I believe that's true.
Yeah, it's the same thing.
If the Democrats were the Democrats of old, I mentioned this to you on the radio as someone that grew up in New York, you know, Ed Koch, you know, before you, JFK, obviously, and he's before my time, but ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
And then Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was our great senator in New York, who I actually got to meet in a social studies class when I was about 12 years old.
He was a great friend of mine.
I mean, I remember he walked around, he had a little pocket Constitution, and he was extremely tall, and he talked about freedom and liberty and all of these things as a liberal.
So for me, as coming from a New York liberal position, I always believed, you know, every holiday, I talk about this in the book, every holiday that my family ever had, It was all the adults sitting at one table, all the kids at one table, and I was always trying to get to the adult table because they were arguing about everything under the sun, every political thing you could think of, from abortion to foreign policy to whatever the stuff of the day was.
I'm sure they argued about policies in New York City.
I should mention to you, by the way, that I've had Living in New York City since around 1908, we were able to trace it back to.
And over the years, you know, the American dream, of course, is that you move to the suburbs.
But my sister and her husband and two kids just moved out of New York City because of the craziness right now.
And we only have one family member left in New York City, which is very, very sad for me, actually.
Because of how much I love New York City.
But there's just such, I don't have to tell you, there's just such chaos there.
But as for the direct answer to your question, there were a couple moments that really woke me up that I describe in the book.
I'll give you one of them.
It was very much laced with identity politics.
So you may know David Webb, the conservative radio host on Sirius XM.
Who happens to be black and I say happens to be black because I don't like describing people as he's also here
His wife are also close friends of ours. Oh Great. I love David. We're friends with them, too
All right. We'll all do dinner sometime. Please So I was on Sirius XM years ago and I was a big lefty at
the time and David was on the right on the We met in the hallway one day, we started chatting and then I started going on his show every week and I would argue the liberal positions and he would argue the conservative positions.
We never got angry at each other and at the end we'd go downstairs to Del Fresco's and we'd have a steak and some whiskey and we were good.
Years later, this is about five years ago now, I was on the Young Turks Network, which is a far-left YouTube channel, and I was a progressive in the whole thing, and they were showing a clip of Fox News, and David Webb was the guy, I think he was sitting in for Hannity that night, and they're showing a clip of him, and he's talking about some standard conservative talking points, and I'm looking at my co-host, and they're all talking about this Uncle Tom black man, this sellout, this grifter, You know, he hates himself, he's doing it for the money, all of these things.
And I'm watching these supposed tolerant, open-minded liberals say this about a black man just because he thought differently than they wanted black men to think, or black people to think.
Right.
And suddenly, so when you talk about the Jesus moment, in that way it was because the light went off because I know him.
It's not like they were just talking about a guy that I don't know.
They were talking about David?
They were talking about David?
Yeah, they were talking about David.
Oh my goodness!
They were talking about David Webb.
He was on Fox News and they're watching this clip of him going on.
He's a sellout, a grifter.
And they didn't realize that I knew him.
And then because it was, it suddenly struck me, thought, you know, we think of racism as, oh, you don't want these people to use the same water fountain or you don't want these people to have jobs.
But the left has imported a new pernicious racism, which is that if you are of a certain color, that means that you should think a certain way.
And what I realized was that these were the new racists.
And that really was one of the three moments that really got me, because I knew and know him, and I know he's a good man who believes in what he talks about.
I mean, that's really a very good point.
It's like when Biden just very quickly said, well, if you're not going to vote for me, you're not black.
And of course, he is black.
That is a racist.
How can you define for someone else their race?
And the man is clearly black.
You can't tell him he's not black.
What are you, excommunicating him?
But that's the thing.
People don't think of that because it doesn't seem like overt racism, right?
It doesn't seem like something obvious.
You can't do this because you're black.
But in many ways, it's more, as I said, it's pernicious.
It's insidious is what I would say because it sort of sounds right.
Oh, black people must be Democrats because Democrats care about black people.
But then all you have to do is think about it for about five seconds and if we look.
What cities are burning?
What cities have the most shootings and the biggest problems with police?
They're all Democratic-run cities.
What was going on in New York City before the man I'm talking to right now took over?
Absolutely.
I used to go visit my grandma who lived on 66th and Central Park West and I would wanna go down
to Times Square and my mom would never let us walk down there.
And then that was David Dinkins who was a progressive and then you took over and you cleaned up the place.
These things are not coincidences.
So when they're all blaming Trump for what's happening in Minneapolis,
what's happening in Ferguson, what's happening in Atlanta, in New York City and in LA, they're all run by lefties.
I mean, the media refuses to touch this.
Yeah, you know, I think of the process that they go through when they do the Uncle Tom Or you can't be a Black if you support Trump or the Republicans.
I think it's dehumanizing.
Oh, it—of course it is.
It is basically saying, you're too stupid to have your own ideas.
Therefore, you have to have our ideas, and that'll make you intelligent, and that'll make you acceptable.
I mean, when is it in the history of democracy, has one person been able to tell, Two million people, they must all think the same thing.
Of course.
Well, look, this is the essence of what collectivism is.
And collectivism is basically the worst time-tested idea of all time.
I mean, you may remember this, that right before the election, when Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire, you know, the co-founder of PayPal.
Oh, very controversial.
I remember.
Yes, yes, yes.
When he announced that he was going to support Trump, the ad magazine, which is supposedly the Peter Thiel happens to be gay.
They ran a piece saying that Peter Thiel is not gay.
Yes, he does have sex with people of the same sex, but that in and of itself is not gay because what really is gay is a mindset.
I mean, that in many ways is the most anti-gay thing you could possibly say.
Here's what they misread about the gay situation in the Republican Party.
It wasn't civil rights.
It didn't have the same jarring effect because it wasn't followed by busing enforced integration tactics that immediately they had to accept a new way of life and immediately was forced on them.
And then they overreacted in a terrible way.
I think gay rights was handled beautifully from the time of Stonewall for 20, 25 years.
And people were softened up for it.
By the time we got to it, there were just a few hardheads left.
I think if we ever have to do something like that again, that's the better way to do that.
I know the young Turks say they have to accept it right away.
Well, that's what it is.
But you realize if somebody's living a life of 50 years, even very smart people and open people, maybe you got to give them a three or four year orientation, and then they're going to accept it.
I completely agree because otherwise it's anti-human.
You can't expect just because you change one day that everyone else is going to change one day.
And by the way, to your point, Republicans right now, I'm not saying there aren't some, let's say anti-gay or not gay marriage.
I don't even think that necessarily makes you anti-gay, but with a biblical view of marriage.
I'm friends with Ben Shapiro.
I'm sure you know who he is.
He's an Orthodox Jew.
It's a biblical definition of marriage, but he's not trying to stop gay people from getting married.
That's his personal view.
I can, you know, that's a more libertarian approach that I can, but if you think about it this way, the biggest voices who were against gay marriage, you know, say 10 years ago in the Republican Party, actually don't have any influence at all in the Republican Party right now.
So your point is that the Republicans did Well, it's been a terrific conversation.
Just one last thing.
they would say, hey, we did get a win here.
Let's be gracious about it.
Not let's just consistently try to continue to paint them all as bigots and racists
and haters and the rest of it.
Well, it's been a terrific conversation.
Just one last thing.
How do you see the race right now?
First off, I'm not convinced that Biden is gonna be the nominee.
I think that they still may pull something.
And even if he is the nominee, if you're a Democrat, you have to know you're not voting for Joe Biden.
You're voting for whoever the DNC puts as the VP.
So in many ways, the entire nomination process, I think, is gonna be looked back at years from now as just a complete sham.
Which, by the way, it would be incredibly dangerous.
Everyone's saying Kamala Harris right now.
I mean, she is an authoritarian of the worst order and would not care about due process or anything else.
Um, so I'm not convinced it'll be Biden, but either way, regardless of who it is, I think, I think short of sort of another absolute economic, you know, there's another lockdown and something like that.
I think most people think that Trump cares about this country.
I think that he's trying to keep the wheels on.
And when you see the anarchists, If the choice is people that sort of play with the anarchists or Trump, who maybe, you know, some people have an aversion to the way he tweets or speaks, but I think they basically think he likes America, I think Trump wins.
Well, I think this has been an interesting discussion.
I'd love to follow it up on how we solve it, and we can do it on my podcast or yours.
No, you're coming on my podcast, so we'll pick it up there.
I'd love to talk about what is it?
How do we fix this?
I mean, it shouldn't be this way.
Thank you very, very much.
And thank you for being really one of the first to put the issue in this way.
You really framed it in a way that I think can be very useful.
Thank you very much, Dave.
Appreciate it, Mr. Mayor.
Thank you.
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