Jan. 8, 2016 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
01:00:48
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| My goal this year with the show is to expand on even more topics we discuss, as well as the people that we're talking to. | ||
| Yes, we absolutely hit our stride by calling out regressive bullshit, and by addressing the regressives, the tide is actually turning. | ||
| People are finally standing up to their insincere attacks and realizing that liberalism is about the rights of individuals before that of the group. | ||
| So if you truly believe in equality for women, then you have to defend their individual rights, whether it's to wear what they want, drive a car, or marry who they choose, regardless of their religious or cultural background. | ||
| I said there was an awakening months ago, and it's pretty undeniable right now, right? | ||
| That doesn't mean we can rest, though. | ||
| If anything, it means we have to dig in deeper and keep calling out regressive nonsense when we see it. | ||
| But, as I've also said from day one, I want this show to be a place for big ideas of all kinds. | ||
| Over the course of the next few weeks, I'm going to talk to people from hugely different walks of life. | ||
| Conservative radio talk show host Larry Elder, science writer and skeptic Michael Shermer, and former leader of the English Defense League Tommy Robinson, just to name a few. | ||
| We're going to go big on topics ranging from the election, to science, to spirituality, and more. | ||
| We're kicking off the year with CNN's Don Lemon. | ||
| Love him or hate him, Don is one of the few people in mainstream media not afraid to say what he thinks, and he often pays for it via criticism from both sides of the aisle. | ||
| Not only does he host his own nightly show, but he also reports on location from natural disasters, co-hosts electoral debates, and has even forged an unlikely friendship with Glenn Beck along the way. | ||
| I know when we see these people on TV, we have a way of thinking that they aren't even human. | ||
| That they're just robots or something, but I can assure you from personal experience that with Don, what you see is what you get. | ||
| We can always mock mainstream media, and we absolutely should. | ||
| Trust me, I have made plenty of jokes at CNN's expense. | ||
| Just check my Twitter feed. | ||
| At the same time, we should acknowledge, though, that there are many journalists in the mainstream media trying to do good work. | ||
| While online media has changed the way we get the news, I think one of the big lessons from 2015 is how online media can also be full of crap. | ||
| Just because something isn't mainstream doesn't mean it doesn't push a narrative, distort facts, or outright lie. | ||
| As 2016 begins, let's all continue to shed light on issues we care about, talk about difficult topics in an honest way, and see if we can make the conversations in our lives a little more enlightened. | ||
| All right, my guest this week is the host of CNN Tonight, self-proclaimed king of Twitter, and one of the few guys in cable news not afraid to tell you what he really thinks. | ||
| Don Lemon, what's going on? | ||
| It's called CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, okay? | ||
| Oh, with Don Lemon. | ||
| With Don Lemon. | ||
| How long did you have to fight to get that in there? | ||
| Not that I'm picky. | ||
| Listen, it's, everything is important. | ||
| It all matters. | ||
| Dave Rubin, how are you? | ||
| I'm doing good. | ||
| It actually, it does all matter. | ||
| And it's funny that you say that because I think that's a good place to start because you have been on this like upward thing forever. | ||
| We've known each other for probably like four or five years now. | ||
| And you did my old Sirius XM show a long time ago. | ||
| And you were subbing in for a lot of people. | ||
| You were jumping around show to show, but you have your own gig now. | ||
| Pretty good, right? | ||
| It is pretty good. | ||
| I mean, it's weird because people say, you've been on this upward trajectory, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| It doesn't feel that way when you're living it, right? | ||
| I'm still the same guy. | ||
| It still feels the same. | ||
| And I'm still, you know, the struggle is real. | ||
| But it's great to be in primetime on a major network. | ||
| I mean, you know, it kind of, it doesn't get any better than this. | ||
| A show with my name on it. | ||
| I have no complaints. | ||
| I'm very, I live every moment in gratitude right now. | ||
| Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff. | ||
| I wanted to have the first show of the year with you because you're in the thick of it, right? | ||
| Like every time I turn on the news and something's going down somewhere, they send you there or you're at the studio or you're interviewing somebody. | ||
| So I thought you'd be the perfect person to sort of kick the year off with. | ||
| But let's get a little bit first. | ||
| What's like the day-to-day operation? | ||
| So you have your show at night. | ||
| What's going on in the world of Don Lemon all day long? | ||
| Well, it depends on the day. | ||
| But, I mean, pretty much every night I'm on the air at 10 p.m. | ||
| And every night between 7 and 8, I have a rundown meeting. | ||
| And every single morning at 10.30, I have an editorial meeting. | ||
| And then if I'm up, I try to do the network editorial call at 9. | ||
| So it can be a very long day. | ||
| And then I do radio on some mornings at 7. | ||
| This is all Eastern time. | ||
| About 7, 7.15 Eastern time. | ||
| Eastern time. So it depends if it's a day I do radio, I'm up at 645, 7 o'clock and | ||
| I'm giving an editorial on the Tom Joyner morning show and then I try to | ||
| read in from then and read the papers are at my door and then I try to stay | ||
| awake and if I do I do the 9 o'clock editorial call and then if I don't I | ||
| wake up at 1030 for my show's editorial call and then I'll try to go back to | ||
| sleep but then sometimes other shows will call and ask me to do live shots | ||
| to do something I cover the night before I'm gonna cover that night or I'll do an | ||
| interview with Donald Trump or I come in and do a taping like I did today with | ||
| Rand Paul It just really depends. | ||
| So there's no set schedule. | ||
| So sometimes I get to sleep, other times I don't. | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| And so usually I'm here. | ||
| I try to be. | ||
| Unless I don't have any sleep. | ||
| The latest I'll get in is probably like 6 or 6.30. | ||
| But usually I try to get in about 4 or 4.30. | ||
| And you're taking naps. | ||
| That is your office right there. | ||
| I saw your LSU blanket. | ||
| So you do take naps. | ||
| I was on the couch just before we hooked up on Skype. | ||
| We connected on Skype. | ||
| Be careful, be careful. | ||
|
unidentified
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I was on the couch, and by, you know Crystal, right? | |
| I do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Crystal came in and said, hey, what are you doing? | ||
| Don't go to sleep. | ||
| You gotta Skype with Dave Ruman in 15 minutes. | ||
| I'm like, I know, I know, Dave. | ||
| He'll be fine, he'll be fine. | ||
| You know, it's funny, even the way that you started saying hook up there, and then you immediately have to hedge your bets, because you're one of these people, and I want to talk about this a little later on, that everything that you say becomes like this sort of hot button thing. | ||
| But before we delve into all that stuff, how much news do you actually have to consume every day? | ||
| Because I know I do an interview show once a week, but I'm in the news constantly. | ||
| I'm always paying attention to this stuff and on Twitter and doing this whole thing. | ||
| And there's a certain amount of bandwidth, I think, that you only have in your brain to absorb all this stuff. | ||
| But you have to know sort of all the stuff that's going on all the time. | ||
| That's a very good point. | ||
| And sometimes I consume so much that I forget, right? | ||
| Like, oh yeah, I knew that. | ||
| Like, someone will say something and then I'll go, oh yeah, yeah, that's right, I knew. | ||
| Like, today I was sent out a note on Wayne LaPierre's flip-flop on background checks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Then someone else reminded me that we did it before, and I'm like, oh yeah, that's right, we did do that before. | ||
| And then I looked up why he did it, so there's a, you know, he has a perfectly legitimate explanation in his head why he did it, but sometimes you just forget. | ||
| So what I try to do, quite honestly, is not to, I try to be informed without being inundated. | ||
| Because you don't have to know every single thing that's going on in the world, and my show doesn't cover every single thing that's going on in the world. | ||
| I don't do a traditional run-down news show, like stack, like now this, now this, now this. | ||
| It's pretty much a theme, and it is the biggest story of the day, or the hottest topic, or the talker of the day. | ||
| And usually we try not to do too many subjects, or we try to make them all relate. | ||
| And we don't do a lot of stars. | ||
| Traditionally, when Piers was here and when Larry was here, the hours that I'm in now were very star-heavy and focused. | ||
| And they didn't do very well. | ||
| And so we do water-cooler talk, provocative conversation, have conversations that people will have at home but not necessarily on television, and it's paid off. | ||
| And thank goodness. | ||
| Our ratings are great, we're doing great, and we're still going. | ||
| Yeah, how much of that comes directly from you? | ||
| Because I remember when you did my show way back when, whatever that was, four or five years ago, I think that same week that we met, you had subbed in for Joy Behar over on HLN. | ||
| And I remember we were having a drink and you were saying how much you liked that because it gave you a chance to sort of be yourself and get out of the kind of traditional newsman thing. | ||
| So are all these decisions in terms of the format and all that, is that all coming directly from you? | ||
| Well, it's shared. | ||
| A lot of it comes from me and a lot of it comes from the team, our staff, the producers, and our executive producer, Jonathan Wall, who's really great with ideas. | ||
| And then I'll have ideas as well. | ||
| It depends on the day. | ||
| Sometimes, like now, You know, it's a no-brainer. | ||
| The president is having this big town hall with Anderson this week. | ||
| He did this thing at the White House. | ||
| We're going to talk about guns, right? | ||
| We're going to talk about executive orders. | ||
| And so that's pretty easy. | ||
| We're going to talk about what's happening in Oregon. | ||
| So sometimes it's just pretty self-explanatory. | ||
| It's our show. | ||
| It's great to finally have a show And that I don't have to call a newscast, because it's not a newscast. | ||
| Although, when it needs to be, we can quickly become a newscast. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That we can give you, I can give you the 30 second or 15 second elevator pitch between one floor. | ||
| Biggest story of the day or biggest talkers. | ||
| Otherwise, it does not fit. | ||
| I don't care if you're a movie star, I don't care who you are. | ||
| If it's not, if it has nothing to do with the news, if it's not relevant, it's not coming on the show. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That simple. | ||
| All right, so before we get into all the meat and we're going to talk politics and guns and all that kind of stuff, how did you get into this thing? | ||
| Did you always want to be on TV? | ||
| Did you always want to be a news guy? | ||
| What brought little Don Lemon to be over at Time Warner Center right now? | ||
| I was always curious as a kid. | ||
| When we would go out and about, my parents, I write about this in my book, which is called Transparent, by the way, that I would just talk to everybody. | ||
| And, you know, my mom would like come and grab me in the restaurant. | ||
| My dad would always say, don't teach him to be afraid of people. | ||
| And my mom said after that conversation, she just let me go. | ||
| So I would just ask people like, what are you here? | ||
| Are you on vacation? | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| I've just always been curious. | ||
| I don't necessarily think that I wanted to be on television, although I liked it. | ||
| Um, I always wanted to be a journalist. | ||
| And, you know, people remind me when I go home for holidays or just to visit my family that, you remember when you were in college, you used to bring the camera to school? | ||
| Remember we taped this fake show when you were a kid? | ||
| Do you remember we used to carry this camera around? | ||
| And then, uh, or do you remember we had you anchor our high school? | ||
| And so I forgot a lot of those things. | ||
| And so it's always been there. | ||
| Yeah, so let's talk about the gay thing for just a sec, because I don't think we... About you? | ||
| You're gay? | ||
| Let's talk about your gay thing for a second. | ||
| We can talk about mine, too, if you want. | ||
| There's so much I can go, because... Let me see that hand. | ||
| Raise your left hand. | ||
| Oh, yeah, I got one of these. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I got one of these, yeah. | ||
| Crazy, but that's okay. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You can get one, too. | ||
| I don't... Didn't you just say, I think if I'm not mistaken, just on air a couple days ago, you said to somebody, why would you get married? | ||
| Didn't you say that to Brooke or somebody? | ||
| Somebody in the crowd, why would you get married? | ||
| I just think that, I don't want to create another controversy. | ||
| I don't see the need to run off and get married right away or ever. | ||
| And I don't know if I'm the marrying kind. | ||
| Yeah, that's it. | ||
| Listen, my whole thing, and I'm pretty sure you'll agree with me on this, is that we should just have the right, the same right that everybody else has. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah, if you want to do it, do it. | ||
| If you don't want to do it, don't do it. | ||
| Like, that's it. | ||
| But that's why I don't even want to talk about the gay thing much. | ||
| So we could literally do just a minute on this. | ||
| I don't mind. | ||
| I'm just messing with you because we know each other. | ||
| No, I know, but like, to me, like, and we've talked about this privately, but like, it's exhausting talking about the gay thing. | ||
| Gay people shouldn't have to think about it any more than straight people should have to think about their sexuality or any of that. | ||
| But anyway, you basically came out when your book came out, so it was about four years ago, is that right? | ||
| Came out professionally. | ||
| Yeah, it was 2011. | ||
| It was funny because I was talking to a friend in Chicago, which was before I came to work at CNN, and he said, he goes, I know, people were saying Don Lemon came out. | ||
| And he's like, what do you mean Don Lemon came out? | ||
| Don Lemon has always been out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I've been out since my 20s, but it wasn't something that I talked about on the air or shared publicly. | ||
| But my bosses knew I would bring my boyfriends to the Christmas party. | ||
| I mean, it wasn't a big deal, but the public didn't know. | ||
| I would host events for, like, gay events in Chicago and have you, so I was basically out. | ||
| So when people say, you know, "It took you 45 years to come out," | ||
| I'm like, "Well, not really." | ||
| I think I had to do it because there was so much confusion. | ||
| And when you're in the public eye, I think it's important that you say, | ||
| at least when I came out, that you sort of, you had to make a declaration | ||
| because it's important for young people who are at home, people who may be struggling, people who may have doubt, | ||
| and I want people to know, like, "Hey, you can be a gay person | ||
| and you can host a show on CNN and it is okay." | ||
| Yeah, so that's the part that I wanted to talk about, because this is exactly what we talked about four years ago, that there was so much going on with gay rights, there was so much happening at the moment, and in a way, as a public person, it's sort of, you had like this extra pressure of, if I'm going to talk about this on air, I have to be authentic about it, right? | ||
| Like, how much of that did you actually really feel? | ||
| Well, no one forced me. | ||
| I started writing a book about, you know, sort of my exploits as a journalist and writing about my childhood and, you know, how I grew up and whatever. | ||
| And I just thought it would be disingenuous to write a book like that and not include it. | ||
| So it's like, you know, telling everything about your life except for that, you know, one important thing, that one thing that is really important. | ||
| It's not all of who I am. | ||
| But it is an important part of my life, and I think it's important, again, for other people to be able to see someone like me, or like a Dave Rubin, people who are successful and who just happen to be gay. | ||
| So yeah, there was a lot of pressure on me, and there was a lot of pressure, too, as a person of color, to come out. | ||
| Yeah, isn't it cool how it's so irrelevant? | ||
| I mean, that's even why I'm prefacing this by saying let's just... It's irrelevant to you! | ||
| Listen, let me tell you, it's irrelevant to you and it's irrelevant to many people who live in big cities. | ||
| Like, you're in L.A. | ||
| now, I'm in New York, and we met when you were in New York. | ||
| So, for us it's easy because there is no space, place where I am in the closet. | ||
| My entire team knows, the audience knows, my family knows, the people at the barbershop know. | ||
| I don't really care what Bob at the barbershop thinks about me or of gay people because I am completely out. | ||
| And that is, to a lot of people, that's not reality. | ||
| And it's strange to certain people, especially certain demographics and certain ethnicities, people aren't quite that out yet. | ||
| I think it's easier for you as a white man to be out. | ||
| Yeah, all right. | ||
| Well, okay, so we'll delve into some of the racial stuff. | ||
| So my last thing on the gay thing is, do you think there is something about gay people in general that there are so many out gay people in news right now? | ||
| I mean, you take you and you take- Overachievers. | ||
| And Anderson and Rachel Maddow and Thomas Roberts and You know, there's a half-out guy on Fox even. | ||
| He may be out already. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I'm not even going to name him. | ||
| I don't know who you're talking about. | ||
| You don't even have to smile or look at the camera or whatever. | ||
| But my point is that for some reason... Are you talking about O'Reilly? | ||
| Yeah, he's definitely gay, that guy, I'll tell you. | ||
| No, but you know my point, that there's a lot of out people that people get there. | ||
| There's something comforting in a weird way or something about gay people. | ||
| Am I onto anything there? | ||
| Yes, there's something comforting about gay people. | ||
| We're loving people! | ||
| We're loving people. | ||
| But here's the thing. | ||
| I don't think, Dave, that those numbers are any different than any other profession. | ||
| I think that there have been some people who are brave enough to step up in this profession because I feel that if you're a journalist, you take an oath, much like you do if you have a Juris Doctorate when you become an attorney or you have it when you, you know, you take the medical oath when you become a doctor. | ||
| I think that journalists really feel that, you know, you have an obligation to inform people. | ||
| You have an obligation to tell the truth. | ||
| You have an obligation to be as unbiased and objective as any human being can be. | ||
| So I think that when you're in this business, in order to get the truth from people, | ||
| in order to be truthful, you have to live who you are. | ||
| And you can't put different rules on other people that you put on yourself. | ||
| And so I think that maybe people are just more visible because it's a visible medium, obviously. | ||
| And I just think that, you know, we sort of take that oath. | ||
| But I think there are plenty of gay doctors, there are plenty of gay lawyers, there are plenty of gay politicians, as we have seen. | ||
| There are plenty of gay people in the clergy, and on and on and on. | ||
| I don't think it's any different. | ||
| I just think that we happen to be more visible. | ||
| For the record, I have a friend who's a gay janitor. | ||
| So we are out, we're in every occupation that there is. | ||
| I know gay athletes. | ||
| I know gay everything. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| So there you go. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| So that's it for the gay thing. | ||
| Forget about that. | ||
| Let's move on. | ||
| Let's all right. | ||
| So cable news. | ||
| Let's talk. | ||
| You got a ring on your finger. | ||
| Stop it with me. | ||
| It's enough already. | ||
| So cable news, what do you make of the general state of cable news? | ||
| Because it gets a lot of crap at, you know, from everybody all the time. | ||
| And I'm not talking about you specifically, but in general, you say cable news and people start freaking out, right? | ||
| So what do you make of the general, like, sense of cable news? | ||
| Well, I think it's, you know, obviously it's an easy target, right? | ||
| The media, excuse me, the media is always an easy target. | ||
| And so when you're in that easy target that happens to be on 24 hours a day, you're going to be an even bigger target. | ||
| And when you're on and there's no script there, you know, then you're an even bigger target because we are human. | ||
| And sometimes, many times, most times there are no words in that box to read when you're in cable. | ||
| Now, if you're on broadcast, it's a whole different story. | ||
| If you're doing an evening broadcast in national or local, Everything is scripted for you. | ||
| You read, if you're doing a 30-minute newscast, maybe you read, at the most, five to seven minutes of copy, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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You're saying, oh, the big story out west was the flooding, and blah, blah, blah. | |
| Dave Rubin joins us with the latest. | ||
| Dave, what do you know? | ||
|
unidentified
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Boom. | |
| And then that's it. | ||
| And then you go, thank you, Dave. | ||
| And now let's talk about the president's, you know, reform on gun control. | ||
| And you even talk like this. | ||
| It's a very specific way that you have to talk. | ||
| The words are for you, and blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And all you're saying is thank you. | ||
| And the most that you'll say is, Incredible report, Bob. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| And that's it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| When you're on cable, you're saying, no, listen, that's not right. | ||
| The facts aren't there. | ||
| Hold on, let me get my information. | ||
| What the president said back in such and such and such, and then other people are screaming, right? | ||
| And you're like, wait, wait, wait, now you talk. | ||
| Wait, wait, wait, now you talk. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And so there's a lot more room for error. | ||
| There's a lot more people talking back and forth. | ||
| It's a lot more interesting to watch. | ||
| So of course, people are going to, you know, we're going to be a target. | ||
| And sometimes, deservedly so. | ||
| Most of the time, not really, because we're just We just happen to be on television in very real moments a lot of the time. | ||
| Yeah, so to that point, how often, because I right now in this very second, I have an IFB in my ear just so that I can hear you because it's the nature of how we're doing Skype. | ||
| I don't think you have one in, right? | ||
| You're just doing Skype off the computer. | ||
| But one of the things, yeah, okay, we have proof. | ||
| But one of the things I hear all the time, and I think I probably thought this too, is that when you're on cable news or you're on television in general, There's someone in your ear always barking orders at you. | ||
| How often is that actually true for you? | ||
| That you're doing your broadcast and someone is actually telling you what to say? | ||
| And I'm not talking about the technical stuff, cut to commercial. | ||
| I mean, you know. | ||
| Well, sometimes people tell you what to say and sometimes you're like, amen, thank you. | ||
| Sometimes people are correcting you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sometimes people are like, they're your other ears. | ||
| They're listening to the guests. | ||
| And then someone will say, well, you know, um, uh, well, it's going to, it's going to affect the fourth amendment. | ||
| And then the producer will say, the president never mentioned the fourth amendment. | ||
| And you'll say, Hey, listen, the president never mentioned the fourth amendment. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Or sometimes you'll say, um, uh, it was, uh, an unalienable right. | ||
| And then the producer will say inalienable. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| So there are little things or, um, I always like to tell people that, well, this recent example is we go on the air. | ||
| Everything is ready in the show. | ||
| You know, the open is scripted, right? | ||
| And it's like, you know, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| Donald Trump is at a rally in Iowa. | ||
| This is CNN Tonight. | ||
| I'm Don Lemon, right? | ||
| And then all of a sudden, you know, introduced. | ||
| Now let's go to our panel. | ||
| Dave Rubin is here. | ||
| Ryan Liz is here. | ||
| And, you know, Kayleigh McEnany's here. | ||
| So panel, and then someone will say, stop. | ||
| And I'll go, Oh, standby. | ||
| They'll say, and then they'll roll the breaking news animation. | ||
| You're like, Oh, okay. | ||
| And they'll go breaking news and you go breaking news. | ||
| And they'll say, uh, there's been a plane that's been diverted. | ||
| You say, there's been a plane that's been diverted. | ||
| And then as you're talking, they'll say, okay, now go with prompter. | ||
| And so all of this stuff, you're talking and then you look up and they say, okay, joining us on the phone. | ||
| And they'll say, Bob Williams. | ||
| He'll say, Bob Williams from Nebraska, from Nebraska. | ||
| And so you, you know, and sometimes you'll be in the middle of a sentence and people will talk to you. | ||
| So it does happen. | ||
| People at home think you're stupid, but actually you're not that stupid. | ||
| You're just like, whoa, what? | ||
| So that's it. | ||
| And that's why I wanted to ask you that, because I think there's this sense out there that you're getting orders of what you can and should say. | ||
| And what you're really saying is it's technical stuff. | ||
| It's stuff because we have a live program and maybe they're fact checking you, but they're not being like, Don, you better tell them. | ||
| Or saving you. | ||
| Saving you by, wait, whoa, explain what you meant by that. | ||
| And you're like, oh, what I meant was, because someone might misconstrue it, but it doesn't really, everything gets misconstrued. | ||
| And everything now gets taken out of context. | ||
| Like, I can say, look, Dave, let's not talk about the gay thing, right? | ||
| And then someone will just take that and say, oh, Don Lemon's ashamed of being gay. | ||
| And you're like, no, that was like a half a sentence in an entire conversation that we had. | ||
| And then it builds upon itself. | ||
| And it keeps building. | ||
| It's like a wildfire. | ||
| And by the time it gets to the end, it has absolutely nothing to do with what you said. | ||
| And then people believe it because of social media. | ||
| It's really kind of ridiculous. | ||
| I want to explore that somehow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think we should investigate that. | ||
| Well, it's something that we've been talking about here a lot, because one of the things that I'm seeing all the time now, and unfortunately I see this more on the left, is people being misquoted all the time. | ||
| And no matter what you say, and so that it's a good segue actually, because I think you in terms of the mainstream media people, you are the victim of this all the time. | ||
| I mean, every time I open up Mediite, Don Lemon says this, Don Lemon this, Don Lemon that. | ||
| Did you ever go back and look at the whole thing of what I said and you were like, wait a minute, that's not what I said. | ||
| Not what happened at all. | ||
| Well, Don, I don't have that kind of time to listen for context. | ||
| I have things to do. | ||
| But that's exactly what your point is, that they get you on the one-liner, they know that nobody's going to go back and watch the two minutes before or the two minutes after. | ||
| So for you, how aware of that do you have to be? | ||
| And how much are you thinking the whole time, oh, I better not go there, even though it's what I really believe or it's what I want to say? | ||
| Well, I'm aware a little bit, but I can't do that to myself. | ||
| I don't want to censor myself that way because then you're not authentic. | ||
| And I think that, you know, whatever success I've achieved, I think it's been through authenticity. | ||
| And so if I was worried about every single word and how it's going to be, of course you want to be smart, right? | ||
| And you want to be buttoned up in a certain way. | ||
| Have your facts straight. | ||
| I don't want to do that. | ||
| And so if you want to take me out of context, then that's your business. | ||
| And I think for the most part, smart people, the viewers aren't dumb. | ||
| They understand what's happening. | ||
| And the stuff that happens online, especially like Twitter and all those, it doesn't usually translate to television. | ||
| It certainly doesn't translate into ratings. | ||
| And it doesn't translate into credibility. | ||
| So, you know, you just... | ||
| It's wonderful that I work for a network and a boss who says constantly, ignore the noise. | ||
| You guys are doing great. | ||
| The network is doing great. | ||
| Our story is great right now. | ||
| Continue the momentum. | ||
| Be yourself. | ||
| Be smart. | ||
| Keep moving. | ||
| It doesn't even matter if we tweet or not, or we don't have to read it. | ||
| It's amazing and wonderful. | ||
| We're in a great spot right now at CNN, so we don't worry about that currently. | ||
| Right it's kind of funny because on the social media side you know like I could pick something like when you said the the black hole thing during the the plane thing and you know you're on air for hours you're talking about all of this stuff you're just throwing out you know oh somebody said it could be a black hole like you weren't saying it's in a black hole or what like whatever it is and then next thing you know Don Lemon is trending and all that so you really you really can just put it aside No, I mean, I can, because we, listen, we, I've talked about this ad nauseam. | ||
| The New York Times did a thing on it. | ||
| It's not that you believe those things. | ||
| We had a thing called crazy conspiracy theories that people were sending to us. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So one of those was that. | ||
| It was a question from a viewer. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| I read the question from a viewer, and that was the end of the story, and that took on a life of its own, but so be it. | ||
| It made me famous. | ||
| But it did not come from me. | ||
| I'm not positing that. | ||
| I'm saying, hey, look, this is what viewers are saying. | ||
| They were also saying it was in a hangar somewhere that we mentioned that. | ||
| They were also saying that it was flown, someone else took it and hijacked it. | ||
| There were a number of different things that were said about it, all of which we talked about on social media. | ||
| That one just happened to get picked up. | ||
| Yeah, you know, at the top of the show, I did a little piece on how I was saying we need mainstream media, but we also need online media, because I do believe we need both for different reasons and different corporate interests and all that. | ||
| I think I think I think we look at the online guy and the mainstream guy. | ||
| We need more. | ||
| We need more. | ||
| honest online people. We need online people, online people who will actually do their homework, who will call, who | ||
| will not write an article off of someone else's article or off of someone else's opinion of what someone else did. | ||
| Online people who actually saw the entire segment in context to do | ||
| their job, not just like lazy people are lazy and they just go. Oh, you know such and such whatever. Yeah. He said that | ||
| and you're like no, that's not so it's and it's kind of hard | ||
| for us for those of us who are in more traditional media to chase all of those things down and it's just not worth it. | ||
| Yeah. I mean you literally took the words out of my mouth. | ||
| That's exactly what I was going to say because I think at some | ||
| point there was the online media did was doing a lot of good stuff getting to stories that maybe hadn't bubbled up | ||
| to you guys yet and yet somehow in the last year or two, there's | ||
| so many trashy sites that are just waiting for for not not just the you know the on air guys, but for politicians to | ||
| just find any little thing that they can say and run with that just so that they can get clicks and they're no longer | ||
| doing a service either. | ||
| It's what we call a clickbait. | ||
| So we're at the point here at CNN where we realize that I'm clickbait. | ||
| So just say Don Lemon, people are going to click on it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So they will say Don Lemon and then anything. | ||
| What I wanted to say is, oh, when you talk about online people, so have you ever worked for a traditional network? | ||
| Well, you worked for Sirius, so that was, I would imagine that's pretty. | ||
| Yeah, that was corporate, that was corporate. | ||
| It is so rigorous here. | ||
| Before I can say anything on the air as a fact, or, you know, present something, it's gotta go through our fact checkers, it has to go through standards and practices, you know, what our definition of, when we're talking about the guys in Oregon, what our definition of terrorism is, all of those things. | ||
| how we confirm things. | ||
| We had, the other night when Natalie Cole died, everyone was reporting Natalie Cole died, | ||
| but we couldn't get in touch with her publicist because the publicist was busy. | ||
| And every time we called, the phone was busy. | ||
| The email gets ran. | ||
| We could not report that. | ||
| CNN would not report that until we heard from an official person. | ||
| Online people don't have those, you know, they don't have to climb those hurdles. | ||
| And I think that's sad and missing because, listen, we don't have to be first. | ||
| We just want to be accurate. | ||
| And I wish, like, I wish the online people wanted to be more accurate than first or funny or opinionated. | ||
| Yeah, I totally hear you. | ||
| I feel like I sort of exist in between those two worlds, and I'm just trying to do what you're saying, which is be honest and have honest conversations. | ||
| And even though I have one of these things in my ear, nobody's yelling. | ||
| What are they telling you now? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| They're saying you're doing a hell of a job. | ||
| That's what they just said. | ||
| So the other thing that I think is interesting about you is that you get heat from both sides. | ||
| And I'm not talking about when they misquote you now. | ||
| I'm talking about if you say something, for example, about Black Lives Matter. | ||
| Are you taking a selfie right now? | ||
| I just wanted this for, I'm gonna do when I post online. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| So that you get equal heat from both sides. | ||
| So if you take a Black Lives Matter, for example, there's a certain amount of racist people who will look at you as a black man and they're gonna just say racist shit that's just gonna come no matter what. | ||
| And then there'll be people, when you've said things that haven't been sort of in lockstep with the movement, that'll say you're an Uncle Tom. | ||
| And I'm only using that word because when I googled you, it was one of the first words that came up. | ||
| That Don Lemon is a... I hate to trademark that word, but go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, that Don Lemon is an Uncle Tom. | ||
| But to me, it seems like you're usually doing good stuff when people on both sides are attacking you, and that's what you're getting all the time, right? | ||
| Well, yes, and the thing that people, here's the thing when we talk about double standards and expectations of people. | ||
| As a person of color, someone just to say, someone not of color, people don't expect you to be the spokesman for all white men, right? | ||
| Thank God, yeah. | ||
| They don't even expect you to be the spokesman for gay people. | ||
| But somehow there's this expectation of me to be the spokesman for black people or gay people and I am neither what I am | ||
| the spokesman for is information and truth. | ||
| And so if Black Lives Matter does something that is worthy of criticism, then it is my job as a journalist to give | ||
| that criticism. | ||
| Because no movement is perfect. Even the civil rights movement wasn't perfect and received its share of criticism. | ||
| So as a black person in this position, the only one who is in primetime on a cable network, when people see that | ||
| coming from me, they're like, "How dare you?" | ||
| Well, I'm not daring. | ||
| I'm doing my job. | ||
| That is what I'm supposed to do. | ||
| So, and if someone who is white sees me talking about Black Lives Matter in a way that's positive, then of course I agree with them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, you know, I can't win. | ||
| And so the point is not to be an advocate or Someone who is, you know, an activist. | ||
| My point is to be a journalist. | ||
| Yeah, I get there's racism. | ||
| I get there's homophobia. | ||
| I get there's sexism. | ||
| But at the end of the day, what I'm giving is information. | ||
| Or if I say, you know, I just received information that, you know, Michael, that the cop in the Michael Brown case is not going to be indicted. | ||
| That word is going to come out. | ||
| People who want him to be indicted are going to get upset and call me and Uncle Tom because it came out of my mouth. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then 20 minutes later, when the guy comes out and says, there's no indictment, no one goes, oh, he was right. | ||
| They just go, oh, he's covering that story. | ||
| I can't believe him. | ||
| You know, so it's just. | ||
| It is what it is. | ||
| People take out their frustrations on the person who is in front of them, and I happen to be that person. | ||
| And do you find that a lot of it, it's odd that like with the Uncle Tom stuff, that that comes from people on the left, that they would want you, right? | ||
| The people on the left, they should see you as an individual, except what they're seeing or what they're complaining about is that you should be this representative of black America or whatever it is. | ||
| I find that the people who are supposed to be the most tolerant are the least, because they never consider that they, in fact, may not be. | ||
| Because they think that everyone thinks like them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And not everybody thinks like you. | ||
| So, you know, I find that, listen, I get it from all sides, but I find that the people who are most incredulous about things, and many times the most vocal, are liberals. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And many times for me as well, African Americans. | ||
| Because they're looking at me regardless of the facts. | ||
| Even if the facts don't pan out. | ||
| Even if the evidence and all the investigations and all the autopsies show no hands up, don't shoot. | ||
| I have to come on television and say, hands up, don't shoot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can't do that. | |
| That's not what the evidence shows. | ||
| So I have to say, the evidence does not show that, so that never happened according to the evidence. | ||
| I can't believe you! | ||
| You sell out! | ||
| And you're like, well, I... What do you want me to do? | ||
| Lie? | ||
| I can't lie! | ||
| Right, and then that's exactly where they go, oh, it's because he's getting the information from his ear, which I think you've illustrated is actually not the case. | ||
| Okay, so a lot of people have been asking me this on Twitter and I thought you'd be the perfect person to pose this question to. | ||
| The way the media frames certain things, so the way the media frames Black Lives Matter versus how the media is now framing this Oregon militia thing. | ||
| And we don't have to get into the nitty gritty of every little instance that's happening. | ||
| But a lot of people were saying that the media is not calling these Oregon people, they're not calling them terrorists. | ||
| And if this was a group of black people, or especially if this was a group of Muslim people, we would be calling them terrorists. | ||
| And I was Googling the word terrorism, and it talks about intimidation or violence, not and violence. | ||
| And to me, it's a little hazy whether them taking this building, where they had to use no force per se and you know | ||
| apparently the building was just open and yes they had guns in its federal property and so on | ||
| whether it's actually terrorism and would the media be treating it differently if it was either | ||
| black people or muslim people? | ||
| Why are you falling into that trap Dave Rubin? Tell me why. | ||
| Get me out of this trap. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| So here's the thing. | ||
| So I actually wrote an editorial saying that it was terrorism in my editorial for the Tom Joyner Morning Show. | ||
| And so, you know, it was read by someone here at CNN and they said, well, our definition of terrorism here at CNN is different, is that it has to be political. | ||
| It is political. | ||
| It is political. | ||
| But it also has to have someone who has been hurt by it, like physically hurt. | ||
| So it's not terrorism until someone is actually hurt or killed or what have you. | ||
| And I think that's part of the definition here. | ||
| But according to the law enforcement people I spoke to... | ||
| If you are doing something for a political end or whatever that is illegal in that manner, then it is terrorism. | ||
| So I have called it terrorism. | ||
| I've heard other people call it terrorism. | ||
| I don't know how other media organizations frame it, but here at CNN, I don't think there is a double standard about what's going on and what it is. | ||
| Now, here's the thing. | ||
| Is it, do I know that it, you know, would it be different if it was Muslims or if it was black, black people? | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| I live in America. | ||
| I know that. | ||
| In this particular case, though, I have to hedge it and say I'm not so sure, and here's why. | ||
| Because it is in the middle of nowhere. | ||
| It's 280 miles from Portland, Oregon, the next biggest city. | ||
| Burns is what, 80 or 30 or 80 miles away and no one really knows | ||
| where Burns, Oregon is, right? | ||
| So it is basically a truck stop, not even a truck stop, an arrest stop in the middle of nowhere. | ||
| What the government is trying to do, the FBI is trying to do, is to avoid another Ruby Ridge | ||
| and another Waco. And so it is the middle of winter, nobody's there, nobody is in danger of | ||
| being hurt. | ||
| The best thing that these guys can do is be ignored. | ||
| I hate that we even have to give them media attention because they're yahoos. | ||
| They're not within their legal right for anything. | ||
| So I think what they're doing now is perfectly fine. | ||
| Let them sit there in the middle of winter and freeze their asses off. | ||
| And fine, if you want to stay down in the middle of winter in that little crappy building, then that is your business. | ||
| Yes, it is a federal building and they are breaking the law. | ||
| And at some point they will have to take care of it. | ||
| But I think at this point, I think they're actually doing the right thing. | ||
| As far as the media reaction, I don't, I haven't seen any, I don't know anyone who's called it like a peaceful protest | ||
| or what have you. | ||
| It is what it is. | ||
| It's people who are ignorant of the law, who have taken over a building and they should pay for the, pay the consequences when the time comes. | ||
| But right now I say ignore them. | ||
| Yeah, and I'm pretty sure they're not going to get what they want at the end of this. | ||
| They're not. | ||
| That's usually just not how these things work. | ||
| And it's many of the people whose land was saved by the government helping them out years ago, and now they want to reclaim it and get the money back, more money than was already given to them. | ||
| They're just ignorant of the law. | ||
| If this was a building that mattered in the middle of a city that mattered, the reaction would be completely different. | ||
| Sure, and there would be more direct threat to people. | ||
| There would be more of a direct threat, yes. | ||
| But I do think that they're getting a pass because of their religion. | ||
| They're not Muslim because they're, you know, white, not African American. | ||
| I do, but I don't know how different the reaction would really be. | ||
| I don't know because it's a building that nobody cares about in a city, in a place that nobody really cares about. | ||
| And it's only 15, about 15 or so people who are actually in that building. | ||
| It's not hundreds of people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're running out of snacks, I heard, so this thing can't last that long. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Alright, so let's talk about some of the things that bring us together, because You know what, the audience is gonna go nasty. | ||
| Lemon's looking at somebody who's giving him the signal whether he can talk about it or not. | ||
| Someone is in my office, but we're just laughing. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| So one thing that you've done that I really appreciate because it comes completely with the spirit of how I've done this show is you've really tried to build bridges with people that perhaps some might think you shouldn't get along with or you shouldn't talk with. | ||
| So I've seen you a couple times with Glenn Beck. | ||
| And I was tweeting up a storm the first time I saw it because I thought, this is exactly what the news is supposed to be. | ||
| This is what, not reporting, but this is what conversation is supposed to be. | ||
| You guys come from very different places. | ||
| He's a pure libertarian, I suppose. | ||
| Your politics are different. | ||
| And you're just trying to have the conversation. | ||
| And that's what I'm trying to do here. | ||
| And I thought it was pretty beautiful. | ||
| So I guess I don't even know what my question is as much as I want to see more of that. | ||
| Well, you say that our politics are different. | ||
| I'm not political. | ||
| I'm like the least political person that you- Come on. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| I swear, I don't care about conservative or liberal. | ||
| I think all politicians are full of it. | ||
| I'll go with you on that. | ||
| And I judge things on my own. | ||
| So, you know, especially coming from an African-American background, African-Americans are pretty liberal in some things and also very conservative and many times conservative socially when it comes to the church. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, you know, you know, for people to sit there and pretend like, oh, we're these big liberals and they're not, and then you don't accept gay people. | ||
| And then so. | ||
| It's not true. | ||
| So I'm not, I am not political. | ||
| So when you say my politics are different, it's not. | ||
| I will listen, I think the only way, especially if it's someone you don't agree with or if you consider them your enemy or not on your side, don't you want to know what they're thinking? | ||
| I don't understand when people say, I am never going to talk to them! | ||
| How would you dare sit down? | ||
| You know how much crap I got? | ||
| Because I sat down twice with Darren Wilson. | ||
| And I almost got the interview. | ||
| It was between me, George Stephanopoulos, and one other person. | ||
| I forget who it was. | ||
| And we almost, you know, George ended up getting the interview. | ||
| I got so much guff because I wanted to do an interview with him. | ||
| It's like, don't you want to hear from him? | ||
| Even if you don't agree with him, especially if you don't agree with him, you want to hear his rationale and his reasoning. | ||
| So it has never made sense to me to not talk to someone who you disagree with now. | ||
| That said, I think that people should be respectful and they should be in their right minds, you know, before you or when you're talking to them. | ||
| And if they don't, then they're out of here. | ||
| I'll cut you right off. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you're being an ignoramus, I'm not dealing with it. | ||
| Yeah, well, interestingly, I wasn't even gonna bring this up, but a couple months ago, maybe two months ago or so, you had Sam Harris, who's been on my show, who's become a friend of mine, and Dean Obadala were on, and they were debating this Islam and sort of, you know, religion versus people thing. | ||
| And in the midst of it, Dean said something that I knew to be, you know, implying that Sam believed something about all Muslims. | ||
| And I knew it to be not true because I had sat there with Sam and rehashed it. | ||
| He's rehashed it a thousand times. | ||
| And while it was infuriating for me to watch, I thought, all right, | ||
| at least they're having the conversation. | ||
| So that's what you're just opening the door for. | ||
| Yeah, and the thing about that is that we have to stop calling people, you know, | ||
| isms or phobias, homophobic or Islamophobic or whatever, That's part, that's what we do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is have a conversation. | ||
| And when you have great minds like, you know, Fareed Zakaria or Sam Harris or whomever who say, yes, there is a problem that must be addressed in Islam and we have to figure out how to do it. | ||
| When you have great minds like that, those are the people that you should listen to. | ||
| When you have people who say there is no problem, And by you saying this, then you are Islamophobic. | ||
| That person is very dangerous because the evidence is there. | ||
| It doesn't mean that people in that religion are bad. | ||
| It doesn't mean that Islam is bad. | ||
| It doesn't mean that Muslims are bad. | ||
| It doesn't mean that because we talk about crime in Chicago that is committed mostly by African Americans. | ||
| It doesn't mean that African Americans are bad or that black people are bad. | ||
| It means that we're just having those conversations. | ||
| And so we have to stop that. | ||
| And, you know, that's I think that's why I can talk to someone like a Glenn Beck is because, you know, I want to I would rather have common ground with people or try to reach some sort of common ground or consensus rather than just having them an enemy, keeping them at arm's length and not being at the table. | ||
| That's what's happening in Washington with the Congress right now. | ||
| What good is that doing anybody? | ||
| Yeah, so that's actually a perfect segue for the political climate. | ||
| So let's just talk about that a little bit. | ||
| So you've been in this for a while. | ||
| It's pretty bad right now, right? | ||
| Could it get much worse? | ||
| I keep thinking that it's not gonna get much worse. | ||
| And now I realize we're in an election year. | ||
| We've got this crazy thing with Trump right now. | ||
| Yeah, you just have to nod through this whole thing probably. | ||
| But really, how much worse is this thing gonna get before this election comes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's gonna get, A lot worse. | |
| And I think because of how much it's being amped up on both sides, so whoever's in the White House next is gonna have a huge challenge. | ||
| Like, if a Democrat is in there, all of those people that have been revved up by the right and by Donald Trump, they're gonna be like, oh, I hate her! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, some people, if you just go Hillary Clinton, they go, oh, I hate her! | |
| You can't even get her name out, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Same thing you say Donald Trump, they go, Oh my god, you can't even get their name out. So I think people are | ||
| becoming amped up more than almost any election that I've seen | ||
| except for during the Obama election. It was pretty it was pretty | ||
| crazy. Right? Him and Sarah Palin. It was like, wow. | ||
| But in a weird way, doesn't it seem, like to me, it seems like we were all on ecstasy back then. | ||
| Like it was like seven years. | ||
| You always romanticize the past. | ||
| Is that it? | ||
| We just romanticize the past? | ||
| It was bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| It was, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't American. | ||
| He was a Muslim. | ||
| He went to a madrasa. | ||
| What else? | ||
| Oh, you know, heirs. | ||
| Socialists, all that stuff. | ||
| Socialists, all those things. | ||
| And then, you know, McCain couldn't find a running mate. | ||
| And then he found Sarah Palin. | ||
| And then that was a disaster. | ||
| And then people said, Oh my God, everybody was out to get Sarah Palin. | ||
| And then as it turns out, she was not as informed as she should have been. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so it was, you know, it was This is a little crazy. | |
| Right. | ||
| All that said, we didn't have a Trump, right? | ||
| How do you deal with this Trump thing? | ||
| Because one of the things that I've noticed, and we've talked about a bunch... He makes me... I love interviewing him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You love it? | |
| No, I don't necessarily love what he says. | ||
| That's not... Don't get me wrong. | ||
| Yeah, no, but the spectacle. | ||
| I love... No, no. | ||
| I love interviewing him. | ||
| Because you don't know what he's going to say. | ||
| I love the back and forth. | ||
| I love the way his mind works. | ||
| Doesn't mean I agree with him. | ||
| And you know, when he's like, excuse me, excuse me, Don, you know, people at home are like, oh, he cut you off. | ||
| Inside, I'm kind of laughing. | ||
| I'm like, oh my gosh. | ||
| And I'm like, you know, when he goes, uh, excuse me, Don, he, it's, it's a bit comical sometimes. | ||
| He's, he's a performer. | ||
| So I love interviewing him, but that's about it. | ||
| So is that really, though, the secret sauce to what he's doing, that the rest of these guys, all of them, pretty much, I would argue that Bernie probably is not, because Bernie does seem like he's speaking from the heart, and he speaks in a way that doesn't sound like a politician, but pretty much the rest of them, they all just sound like politicians, and people are over that. | ||
| And because of that, even when Trump says crazy stuff, it makes people like him. | ||
| We have this thing that's eating itself constantly with him. | ||
| And because of that, I mean, I tell people this because I usually tick them off, right? | ||
| I usually tell, like, people who are on the left that, President Trump, get used to it. | ||
| They're like, no way! | ||
| But it's, you know, I had never, I have not underestimated him since he got into the race, because here's why. | ||
| And I said this from the beginning, you can probably find it on tape somewhere. | ||
| He's used to swimming in these New York media waters, sharks, right? | ||
| He knows how to handle and manipulate the media. | ||
| He knows how to cut a deal. | ||
| You know, if you can, when they say, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. | ||
| This guy's made it with help from his dad, don't get me wrong. | ||
| But he's made it here. | ||
| He's become at the top of the sort of food chain and the media food chain here. | ||
| He knows how to deal with the media. | ||
| And he's got a lot of money. | ||
| A lot of it of running for president is having a ton of dough | ||
| and he has a ton of dough and he knows how to deal with people | ||
| and he has a good ear on what people want to hear. | ||
| So when he's in front of a crowd, he's like, "Oh, they like that, huh?" | ||
| And he gives them more. | ||
| "Oh, they don't like that so much." | ||
| He changes the subject. | ||
| So having known all of that and being here in the '90s and knowing Donald Trump, I was like, | ||
| "This guy isn't going anywhere." | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All right, I got just a couple more for you, because I know you have to actually... Are you blowing me off? | ||
| You have to be live on air, not too long from now. | ||
| In about two hours and 15 minutes. | ||
| Oh, I got plenty. | ||
| Listen, I'll talk as long as you want to. | ||
| Go ahead, go. | ||
| So, how much do you think... One of my major issues is when I watch something... Are we on live, by the way? | ||
| No, we're not live, we're not live. | ||
| When I watch something like the, you know, the Press Club, the yearly thing where the media gets together and roasts the politicians and all... What's it called? | ||
| Not the Press Club, the... White House Correspondents' Dinner. | ||
| The White House Correspondents' Dinner, thanks. | ||
| When I watch all of this stuff, and even I saw you a couple weeks ago in the spin room at the debate in Vegas, we were at the Democratic debate there, and I've been around it a little more lately, One of the things that I really do fear is that the media and the politicians are just in it too tightly. | ||
| That people are just too friendly with each other. | ||
| We have so many instances of people that are married to people on television, and they're the kids of this one, or the uncle of that one, on all of this stuff. | ||
| I'm pretty sure no one in your family is pulling strings in politics, right? | ||
| Let's get that out of the way. | ||
| Except for my cousin, Barack, but that's about it. | ||
| Of course he's your cousin, of course he's your cousin, right. | ||
| But really, do you see that as an actual threat to democracy? | ||
| Because that I really see as a major problem. | ||
| I don't know if I would call it a threat to democracy. | ||
| I do see it as... | ||
| It's a little fake and phony to me. | ||
| Like, you know, it was great going to, you know, being invited to the White House Correspondent Center, but it was a lot more fun when I was covering it and I can make fun of people. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So how much does that make you bite your tongue? | ||
| Because you want to go to the dinners, right? | ||
| Like, we've all been around. | ||
| First time I went to the White House Christmas party, right? | ||
| And because I knew the Obamas from Chicago and it was it's tough and I said this before like when you know someone people I didn't know them that well they weren't my best friends but I knew them from around the way right from I was a local news anchor, and they were there. | ||
| And I would introduce them at chicken dinners, like, you know, State Senator Barack Obama. | ||
| And then his wife would always say, oh, Don, stay out of trouble. | ||
| And I'm like, who, me? | ||
| Why? | ||
| So to have to sort of criticize him on policy and things, at first, it was uncomfortable. | ||
| And I'm like, well, he's the president. | ||
| And the buck stops with him. | ||
| So I've got to, you know, and he's black or whatever. | ||
| I've got to do it. | ||
| I'm a journalist. | ||
| I took an oath. | ||
| And so when I saw him sort of in an informal context and not like throwing questions at him | ||
| or seeing him at the NABJ and like yelling across the room, like, "How are you gonna handle this?" | ||
| And having him yell back. | ||
| When I had to go and like shake their hand and take a picture with them, I was like, | ||
|
unidentified
|
"Oh, what are they gonna say to me?" | |
| And so I walked up and they were like, "Hey, you know, you did the right thing by coming out." | ||
| And I was like, thank you, right? | ||
| And so they get it. | ||
| They get it. | ||
| But it was a little weird, and I felt like, I don't know if I should be that close to, in this sort of situation, to be partying with the president, or for that matter, partying with some of the people, you know, when you go to the Oscars and all those things. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I just feel like, I kind of feel like Wendy Williams, right, who sits on her purple chair, and she, like, talks smack about everybody. | ||
| And then when they see her, or when she sees him, she's like, oh, girl. | ||
| I kind of feel like that a little bit, so. | ||
| Yeah, but don't you think that more of you guys need that sense? | ||
| Because I totally feel like everybody, you know, and it's not just, I don't mean just at the friendly level, but, you know, we don't have to, I'm not trying to, you know, name names or out people here, but there are plenty of anchors that literally used to work on campaigns for presidents. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Or, I mean, you can name some names. | ||
| It's a little weird to me. | ||
| Look, I mean, somebody like, you know, Stephanopoulos, right? | ||
| Stephanopoulos, there is Diane Sawyer, there's George Will. | ||
| I mean, even George Will is a commentator. | ||
| David Gergen, he's a commentator. | ||
| Donald Brazile, commentator. | ||
| That's different, but when you're a journalist, you know, there are plenty of journalists who have worked for campaigns, yeah. | ||
| But when you're a commentator, how different do you actually think that is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So somebody like Donald Brazile- It's totally different, Dave. | |
| But don't you think they have a certain amount of allegiance for a campaign that they worked on previously? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think they do. | ||
| That's why we hire them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not because they have allegiance, because they have knowledge to that person. | ||
| Or we will say, Donna Brazile worked for the Al Gore campaign. | ||
| Everybody knows that, so she can offer insight, but also, unless you're crazy, you know that her allegiance would be to Al Gore. | ||
| I think it's totally different, because when you're a commentator, you're hired to commentate, as they say, or to comment, and to give your opinion. | ||
| As a journalist, you're not necessarily, that's not your role. | ||
| Yeah, but you're pretty much right, I would say you're right in between those two things. | ||
| I do, on CNN, what I do is, I do a more of a point of view. | ||
| I am hired as to give commentary on the Tom Joyner morning show, radio show, which had to be approved by CNN. | ||
| So I feel free and different in that zone to give. | ||
| But when I'm on CNN, I have to watch myself because that's not exactly what, you know, I do. | ||
| But everyone has a certain lens and everyone has a certain background and they have a point of view. | ||
| And I think that's OK as a human being, as long as you let people know that. | ||
| And but that's nothing new. | ||
| You know, Murrow, Cronkite, all those guys gave commentary. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, I always do think that's funny when, you know, some of these people on TV will say, well, I don't share any of my opinions. | ||
| And it's like, that's pretty much impossible, actually. | ||
| Even if for no other reason than your body language when you're talking to somebody, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| I don't see anything wrong with it, especially if you declare it. | ||
| That's why I had, you know, when people were saying, Fox is to the right. | ||
| Okay, fine. | ||
| They let you know. | ||
| MSNBC is to the left. | ||
| Okay, fine. | ||
| They let you know. | ||
| And we are neither here. | ||
| We want to be objective at CNN, but we don't want people in our objectivity to let people run all over reality and truth. | ||
| No. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I should tell everybody that right before we started the recording here, you said to me, what are we going to talk about? | ||
| And I said to you that I knew with you, I wasn't going to have to, you know, a lot of times I'll tell my guests, oh, we're going to touch on these kind of things. | ||
| But I knew with you that you were going to be cool with that. | ||
| So I hope that that alone, I want my audience to know that, because I hope that alone will dispel some of this stuff about sort of how a lot of you guys have to operate, or at least how you have to operate. | ||
| Because the person that I know off the camera is the same guy that I know right this second. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| And I don't want to know the exact questions you're going to ask me. | ||
| And most of that was just like, hey, what are we going to talk about? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| No, you didn't. | ||
| You didn't push me at all. | ||
| Hey, don't do that or I'm going to get mad. | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| And we don't do that with our subjects either. | ||
| Like someone we're going to go interview, we don't give them the questions. | ||
| I mean, they'll say, what are you going to talk about? | ||
| We're going to talk about you running for president. | ||
| That's what we're talking about. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Give me, uh, give me like your worst moment with a candidate. | ||
| Like, what's like the worst thing that's ever, any real flub or did you ever really offend anybody or anything like that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No! | |
| I mean, one of the, um... | ||
| One of the most contentious moments was with Rand Paul. | ||
| I'm sure you remember that. | ||
| And I started this whole thing called No Talking Points. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because I hate, I hate, I hate talking points. | |
| And I hate the way politicians answer questions. | ||
| So ask me a question, just a simple question, and I'm going to be a politician. | ||
| Don, is that your office that you're in right now? | ||
| Well, when you talk about offices, what my grandmother taught me was that you don't really own anything. | ||
| It's all shared and it's all part of the, the American people own everything, right? | ||
| And then you're just like, okay, are you going to answer the damn question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So the simple answer is yes, this is my office. | ||
| Politicians have a hard time doing that. | ||
| So Rand Paul had did that with me. | ||
| And I was just like, I'm like, look, man, Could you stop telling me what you did yesterday in Congress and what you did... How do you feel about this? | ||
| Do you hear the question that I'm asking you? | ||
| And so then he got really upset and it became really heated. | ||
| And so it was an uncomfortable moment but it was also a very freeing moment to me because I was like, you know what? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I'm sick of this. | ||
| And so I set a marker there. | ||
| And so everyone I had that came on had to answer the question and they do now. | ||
| Now, I'm not going to badger people because sometimes they just won't. | ||
| And I'll say, OK, and then I will say, it is obvious that you don't want to answer the question. | ||
| So we will move on. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because I don't want to waste the audience time. | ||
| So that was probably an uncomfortable moment that I had with a candidate. | ||
| But then I just interviewed him two hours, three hours ago. | ||
| So it's all it's all good. | ||
| Yeah, do you ever bite your tongue, though, related to the fact that you want these guys to come on again? | ||
| Because even when I was in the spin room talking to their representatives, not even the candidates, I did feel a little bit of, you know, I had Huckabee's campaign manager. | ||
| They're all gonna come back on. | ||
| At the end of the day. | ||
| It may be different for you, but they all wanna be on CNN. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| They all are gonna come. | ||
| But yes, I know where you're going with this. | ||
| And the thing is, it's not, so let me share a little secret with you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| This is just between us. | ||
| This is just between us. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you have that concern in your head, and that's a very real concern, and that's real because you do want people to come back, right? | ||
| So it's all in the way you ask the question. | ||
| It's all in the tone. | ||
| And if I say, Dave, why are you such a damn bleeding heart liberal? | ||
| You'll go, what do you mean? | ||
| So you can just go, well, you know, that's a very liberal perspective. | ||
| Why, why do you feel that way? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's the same question, right? | ||
| Pretty much. | ||
| It's all in the way you ask it. | ||
| It's like asking a question with a smile on your face. | ||
| It's all in the tone. | ||
| And you can do it by complimenting. | ||
| It's like, I know you pride yourself on your politics and your liberalism. | ||
| So would you answer this question for me? | ||
| It's the same thing. | ||
| It's all in the way you ask the question. | ||
| That sort of brings it back to where we started, this sort of online versus mainstream media thing, because I'll see a lot of times the online guys who aren't interviewing these people, who are just commentating on it. | ||
| They'll be like, ah, Lemon didn't attack him for this, or he didn't do this or that. | ||
| And it's like, well, guess what? | ||
| He's the one that actually has to stand there, do it, get another interview in the future, figure out how to get truth from people that aren't going to give you much truth. | ||
| So my point is, it's easier said than done. | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| And it's not even that. | ||
| It's easier for them to say it, because their way is not necessarily the best way or the easiest way. | ||
| Because you want someone to continue to sit there in the interview to answer questions, right? | ||
| And you also don't want to antagonize them. | ||
| And I'm also thinking about the viewer. | ||
| Because if I continue to antagonize them, the viewer gets no information, that person shuts down, and it's not good for any of us. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So it's done. | ||
| So rather than, what am I going to do? | ||
| Stand up, go over to the chair that the subject is sitting in and wring their neck. | ||
| It's not going to happen. | ||
| So if you're sitting there, Dave Rubin, and you don't want to answer a question, what am I going to do? | ||
| Inject you with, what do you call it? | ||
| Sodium pentothal. | ||
| Sodium pentothal to make you tell the truth? | ||
| It's not going to happen. | ||
| So you get as much as you can and then you move on. | ||
| That's how it works. | ||
| All right, I got one more for you, but first, have you ever touched Wolf Blitzer's beard? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I feel like I'd really- I actually did today, but not in that way. | |
| It was, we gave each other a TV hug and it was a little weird, like, oh, yeah. | ||
| I'm convinced there's something, there's something, like the whole secret to his success is the beard. | ||
| It's magic. | ||
| It's magic. | ||
| It will be on my show at 10 p.m. | ||
| so you have to watch. | ||
| Oh, nice. | ||
| All right, cool. | ||
| All right, well, then my last question for you is, what's next? | ||
| Because I've seen this thing, not to talk about the rise that you didn't want to talk about before, but I've seen it. | ||
| I've flat out seen it. | ||
| So what's next, man? | ||
| So I'm sure you've read... So here's the thing. | ||
| People always ask me, oh, what are you going to do next? | ||
| What's your... Do you know how long I've fought to get where I am? | ||
| So I'm just going to love this for a while. | ||
| Like, I really... | ||
| I wake up every day. | ||
| And usually, you know, sometimes the first time I wake up is because an alarm goes off and it's time for my editorial call. | ||
| And the first thing that's on my mind every day is, well, what am I going to put on TV today? | ||
| That is pretty freaking awesome. | ||
| So I'm in a really great spot. | ||
| I live every moment in gratitude. | ||
| I am very happy. | ||
| I'm content. | ||
| I'm not complacent. | ||
| So I'm going to enjoy this for the moment. | ||
| And I would have to say that the next thing, if I could think about it, but best laid plans, right? | ||
| It's probably a show that is more Bill Maher or Chelsea Handler-ish or something like that, where I can actually Give a point of view and actually say, like, you said shit or whatever it is that you said. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And not have everybody going, oh my gosh! | ||
| I can't believe Don Lemon said that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, they're probably going to do that either way, but. | ||
| Yeah, so that's probably if I had to think of something, but who knows? | ||
| I will probably do this. | ||
| If all goes as it's going now, knock on wood, you know, God allow. | ||
| For the next 10 or 15 years, and that's not a bad thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, listen, I 100% you know how thrilled I am for your success and our friendship, and I look forward to our next adventure at Blondie's. | ||
| You can down some wings. | ||
| You put me to shame. | ||
| I mean, it was sad. | ||
| I had to cut back. | ||
| I was there this weekend, past weekend, and I only ate 8 of my 10 wings. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I've ordered like two, I've ordered double orders when we've been together before. | ||
| Yeah, you literally, you got a double order. | ||
| You had, I think, 48 wings on a plate. | ||
| No! | ||
| Let me tell you this. | ||
| Let me tell you. | ||
| I used to be able to do that in my 20s and 30s and 40s. | ||
| And now I can't do it. | ||
| Wait, did you hit the big 5-0? | ||
| I thought you were 49. | ||
| No, not yet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Shut up. | |
| I don't want to hear it. | ||
| No. | ||
| When do you turn 5-0? | ||
| I'm a little behind you. | ||
| How far? | ||
| I'm 39. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| You're older than me. | ||
| I'm 37. | ||
| Wait a minute. | ||
| Something ain't right here. | ||
| Anyway, you guys can catch Don weeknights on CNN and pretty much wherever and whenever breaking news happens. | ||
| Don, thanks a lot, man. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Good to see you, Dave. | ||
| You too. |
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