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March 15, 2019 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin

01:11:18

Covington Lawsuit, Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson | Robert Barnes | LAW | Rubin Report

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dave rubin

19:53

robert barnes

51:12

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Speaker	Time	Text
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Joining me today is a trial lawyer focusing on civil, criminal, and constitutional law.
		And according to his Twitter bio, he's America's most successful political gambler.
		Robert Barnes, welcome to The Rubin Report.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Happy to be here.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I am glad to have you here because you, sir, are smack dab in the middle of a million things that I'm thinking about all the time.
		So I'm glad we're doing this before we do anything related to civil, criminal, constitutional, or any other kind of law.
		Political gambler.
		What are we talking about there?
		I know what we're talking about, but tell the people.
unidentified		Sure.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		I started doing it when I was real young.
		So I used to bet friends and other people with elections and then started doing it, became sort of legal loosely in 2004.
		So I started betting on presidential elections and it was sort of a side hobby until the Trump election.
		And Trump, I thought this was a very money-making opportunity.
		The British betting markets are now much bigger than they ever used to be.
		So I could bet as much money as I possibly could.
		And basically dug in much deeper than I had before.
		So I'd sort of been around politics, but hadn't dug in deep for maybe, you know, 20 years or so.
		I mean, I'd been very active, but then it become inactive.
		I'd become skeptical of the political process and decided, well, I should really dig in.
		And as part of this, I discovered this whole emerging movement in a cross section of areas and what was happening ideologically.
		So I became involved for other political and legal reasons along the way.
		It was sort of like a Scott Adams win big league kind of thing.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's there somewhere.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, there you go.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Where you get like six degrees of separation, you're trying to learn this, you end up learning four or five other things in the process.
		And so I went to the Republican National Convention, the Democratic National Convention, traveled across the country, talked to tons of people, dug into what was happening in the social media space, the Reddit space, the Twitter space.
		I didn't know what Twitter was until then, really.
		I knew some bird thing.
		Exactly, it was.
		And YouTube was still YouTube.
		It wasn't censor tube.
		So I was involved and invested in it.
		Went over to the UK, placed a lot of big bets.
		They thought I was nuts when I was doing it.
		They were like, Trump's not going to get elected.
		That was the sort of consensus.
		So much so that one of the big books, Paddy Power, actually was paying out Hillary Clinton bets before the election.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Jesus.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		So if you had bet on Hillary Clinton with patty power, they acted like you had already won and paid you out.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Are they still in business?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		They are still in business, though they took a huge hit on the election after they'd taken a big hit on Brexit, which I'd bet on before that, and then after that had bet on various European elections.
		So it was just understanding how the electorate works.
		I'm a sports better as well and being able to predict and forecast elections was fun and it was a way to just make extra money and in the process ended up having this whole life experience that was fun and entertaining and very profitable.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Can I ask you what kind of profits we're talking about here?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		About half a million dollars.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Not bad.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it was very nice.
		If I could have bet more, I would have bet more.
		There was only limits.
		As an American, you only have access to the individual betting shops.
		You can't get onto the bet fair and the bet trading markets.
		If I could, I could have made seven figures with ease.
		It would have been nice.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Geez, all right.
		Well, there's a lot to talk about there, but I really want to focus on some of the legal stuff because we chatted a little bit in the green room.
		I'm starting to think, as much as I obviously am a free speech guy, and we're going to talk all about the First Amendment and all sorts of things, that the way the world is going right now with the platforms and with the trolls and with the anonymous accounts and with the targeted harassment and with the way that we see media members attacking kids, which you're very intimately involved with, and a whole bunch of others have.
		I'm starting to think we really need some legal answers to some of these problems,
		which is really against my default position as a person in terms of speech,
		and that's exactly why I wanted to have you here.
		So before we get to all that, just tell me a little bit about your legal history.
		When did you even get interested in law and what sort of made you say,
		all right, I'm gonna be a lawyer.
		Lawyers aren't that well-liked.
		I'm gonna be one.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Well, you know, I've always liked underdog representation, and that's sort of what my legal practice is, and that goes back to when I was a kid, my favorite TV show was The Equalizer.
		So it was always to equalize the odds and to represent people against, even if I'm representing someone that's famous or well-known, they're stacked up against someone that has more institutional power or wealth or the U.S.
		government behind it.
		And so as a kid I liked shows like Matt Locke and Perry Mason and that was part of it and you'd see lawyers as being integral to the process of making meaningful change and particularly to stand up for people who couldn't stand up for themselves and use our legal system and legal rights to accomplish and achieve those objectives.
		And so that's why the law always appealed to me.
		It didn't appeal to me from a money-making perspective, though I had been lucky in that regard.
		It appealed to me, and didn't appeal to me on a status basis.
		It appealed to me as, I can make a difference for little people, people like my father, who spoke out his whole life, and often was punished for it.
		And there's the old biblical proverb that says, the sins of the father will be visited on the son.
		I always say, well, the sins against the father are long remembered by the son.
		And so he was mistreated and maltreated because he stood up, not for himself, but for other people in a wide range of environments.
		And I just wanted to equalize the playing field if I could.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Was he a lawyer also?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		No, he wasn't.
		He was an accountant, but it wasn't a certified public accountant.
		So he went through all the craziness that... It was my first experience with the credentialing society.
		Here my father was a very skilled and gifted accountant, but because he wasn't a certified public accountant, he'd grown up in an era where that wasn't necessary, he couldn't get the kind of jobs that other people could do.
		And so he was often both overqualified and underqualified for employment.
		And then he had a habit of standing up for people who are being maltreated or mistreated in his work environment or other environment, which led to him, he ended up being a newspaper delivery guy.
		So when I was a little kid, he was delivering newspapers, throwing them outside the door.
		We did a morning route and afternoon route.
		And then he ended up doing inventory work.
		So he just picked up whatever blue collar work he could.
		So even though his education and his intellectual capabilities far exceeded what he could get economically, it was a product or a side effect of the credentialing society and the ability of more powerful people to take advantage and misuse and abuse that power against less powerful people like himself.
unidentified		Wow.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So, all right, so let's flash forward a little bit to what were maybe one or two of the cases that kind of got you sort of on the map so that now you've become one of the sort of, I think, one of the central legal figures in the free speech battle.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		So I started out doing all kinds of free speech representation, represented victims of domestic violence, was suing big banks before anybody was suing big banks and subprime lending.
		I'd clerked for a Native American tribe, I'd clerked for a big corporate law firm, I'd clerked for a street lawyer.
		I always say if anybody wants to learn legal education, just read all of John Grisham's books.
		You'll get a good sense of how the legal practice really works.
		And worked for a big high-profile plaintiff's lawyer, and finally got to a space where I could do the kind of cases I wanted to do.
		And I liked First Amendment cases, and it happened to parallel in two areas of law.
		One was civil, where I was representing Ralph Nader.
		He went on TV and said, look, I'm getting bombarded.
		I have no lawyers left to help me.
		If somebody can, please reach out.
		I was like, sure, I'll take the case.
		So I remember we did the case in Arizona.
		It was me, Ralph Nader, and like 12 lawyers kept coming in.
		I kept wondering when the door was going to shut.
		Another lawyer came.
		You have the Democratic Party, Republican Party, both aligned to prevent his access to the ballot, deny people the right to circulate petitions for the cause or candidate of their choice.
		And so I took that case, and it took four years, a lot of litigation, a lot of fighting, but ultimately we got one of the most important precedents in the country out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
		It's now one of the most cited cases in the country that protects the right to circulate petitions, the right to speech in the context of elections, the right to choose who you want on the ballot, the right of third parties and independent candidates to access the ballot.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		In a weird way, though, even though, just by the fact that it took four years, isn't that part of the problem right there?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because four years later, it's like he doesn't necessarily have the energy to run again, or the movement kind of moves on to something else, etc.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		It was like the beginning of lawfare of its own kind.
		Politically motivated, ideological lawfare to exclude independent and dissident voices from being able to meaningfully participate in the political process.
		And the main goal and objective is to silence the audience, to not allow the audience to hear or choose or participate in the way they want to choose.
		They don't get to choose their news.
		They don't get to choose their views.
		That's what the censorship campaigns were about.
		And that crossed over into representing people who were accused of being tax protesters.
		And these were people who had very distinct political views about the way the tax laws were operating.
		They were mostly upfront about it with the IRS.
		I mean, how many people write letters saying, I'm not going to pay taxes and here's why?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Mostly these were libertarians, basically, right?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's never somebody that hates the tax system because they want to be taxed more, right?
unidentified		Exactly.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's never happened.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Precisely, exactly.
		And it's people being open and honest about it.
		They're not trying to cheat anybody.
		They're not trying to defraud anybody.
		And the U.S.
		Supreme Court, it said 20 years ago in a case called Cheek v. The United States, they were not supposed to put people in prison for having different beliefs about the tax laws.
		Especially given this is a country that was founded on people who had very unique beliefs about the tax laws.
		So I ended up representing Wesley Snipes in that context.
		I'd also represented him previously when he'd been falsely accused of parenting a child in New York where they were abusing the family court system to invade his privacy, to lie and libel him, and basically because of his celebrity, use his celebrity to make themselves notorious.
		So we brought a unique civil rights case in that context, had one, got them to fold and capitulate.
		He hired me then to represent him in the criminal case on a whole bunch of tax charges, ended up acquitted of all the felony, fraud, conspiracy charges, and even half the misdemeanor charges.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		On cases like that, I'm always curious, when it's a high profile, rich celebrity
		and it's tax related, I always think it's like, these people, a guy like Wesley Snipes, movie star,
		you know, he's worth millions and millions of dollars, the idea that he would, and I don't know the specifics,
		so please correct me if I'm wrong, but the idea that he would know every specific thing
		that his accountant was doing all the time, seems crazy to me, like he's running a business
		where he's mostly probably focused on acting and traveling and everything else,
		and it's like, the idea that unless he instructed the guy to do something illegal, that you'd end up in jail
		because of something like that, seems pretty bananas to me.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Completely, because what happened with him is he'd had one accountant advisor that he started to distrust.
		He thought, I think this guy's up to something on real estate deals and other deals.
		It turned out he was completely right.
		He was trying to tell the New York authorities for years before the guy ended up getting busted.
		And this guy was involved with Tom Brokaw.
		He was representing a whole roster of high-profile celebrities.
		Turned out he was embezzling from them en masse.
		He'd abandoned his wife for a stripper.
		Long story.
		So this guy ended up going to jail for a long time.
		No way!
		But Snipes was like, hey, there's a problem here.
		Nobody would listen.
		And that led him to turn to other professionals.
		And they said, you know what?
		If you have any questions, we'll go right to the government and get your answers.
		He was like, well, that's got to be no problem.
		They're going to talk to the government.
		They'll figure out what it is--
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		No way.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's how this unfolded?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		That's how this whole thing unfolded.
		In fact, they even tried to delete and destroy all of his letters and correspondence and communications.
		Luckily, he had separately backed them up.
		If he hadn't, we wouldn't have been able to prove how much he had communicated directly to them.
		He even asked to be audited.
		He said, come in and audit me, and then come back and tell me what is it I owe, and why it is I owe it, and how does the legal system work.
		And this is someone rooted in the African American and Native American tradition who has a long history of the law is not being applied the way they're supposed to be on the books.
		So the idea that maybe the law is not being applied the way it's supposed to be wasn't foreign to him.
		You have Native American tribes whose tribal agreements are still not being enforced.
		You have African Americans between 1865 and 1955 in the United States, like his parents, like his grandparents, who said the law in the book said they had the right to participate in the political process, the right to be on the jury, the right to run for office, and yet that wasn't happening in reality.
		So the idea that there was some mismatch here made sense to him, and he just wanted, he said, well, let's go right to the government.
		And I'm Wesley Snipes, I have a little bit of attention, they'll probably answer my questions at least.
		And then everything will get resolved.
		That's why the jury was shocked by the case.
		This was a very conservative jury.
		The lead jury foreman was a guy who had been a longtime corrections officer in upstate New York.
		They had deliberately manipulated the jury pool.
		It was literally an all-white jury pool.
		So there was a joke that it was the only thing more white than the snowfall from the Green Bay Packer in New York Giants game the day before was the jury pool in the Snipes case.
		But nine of the 12 jurors who were honest and got on the jury said they didn't think he should be convicted of anything.
		There are three jurors who were holdouts who said we want to convict him of things and they admitted they came in with a bias before they became part of the jury.
		So on the misdemeanors, they did a split verdict.
		They said, well, we'll convict him on these three misdemeanors even though we don't think he's guilty of them because that will be no problem.
		They didn't know there'd be a wacky sentence because there was shock at the outcome of the case.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So how much of law is just that?
		Just the public attention stuff, manipulating the media.
		I don't have to name, I could probably name a zillion lawyers that seem like they're far more interested in fame for themselves than doing the right thing.
		And just managing optics rather than getting to just what is right.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Precisely.
		That's what it often is.
		I mean, you're seeing it now in the Roger Stone case, where there's an obsession with silencing him.
		And all the people on the media on the left that talk about free speech and talk about the ability to protect yourself and how our criminal justice system has problems are suddenly mute.
		When here it is, you have a judge spending all this time saying maybe we shouldn't allow him to publish a book.
		How has that become part of American criminal justice process?
		So effectively, it often is defending a person in the court of public opinion because often what the government is doing is using people as sin goats, using people as sacrificial lambs, using people to coerce public opinion, often not really rooted in the facts of a case, not really rooted in the law of a case, targeting people solely because of their celebrity or their fame.
		And then you have lawyers who often look at a case and they don't look at the case about how do I win the case?
		They look at how do I get the most press coverage, how do I get the most media coverage, and they often disserve their clients in that context.
		So it's critically important, especially in high-profile cases, to put the client first and to manage the court of public opinion at the same time.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and that cannot be easy, especially in a day of social media.
		And look, you're here talking, so it's not like you're not like a totally private person.
		No.
		You want to do what's right by your clients.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		So like in Snipes case, I think the odds, going back to odds, the odds that he was convicted of the top felony fraud counts was 8 to 1.
		So they said there was only about a 10-11% chance of him being acquitted.
		You had people on CNN saying that he had no chance to win.
		Some of them are still prominent legal commentators now.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		How do we always have legal commentary people on CNN often, but all the cable networks, who get everything wrong and they keep bringing them back?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's like their political commentary.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Oh, precisely, and these are people that have mostly never practiced law, never tried a case, never dealt with a real case, and it's amazing.
		They'll just, they're there, they have a law degree, but they often don't have any legal experience, and they're really there for political purposes.
		They know if they say the right thing that their media bosses want them to say, they'll get rewarded, even if what they're saying is complete and utter nonsense.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so one of the things that I've been saying over the last couple years, and you know I'm a free speech guy, is that right now I'm more concerned that we're silencing ourselves than the government is coming for our speech at this very moment.
		Now, of course, I understand the government can always come for our speech and there are many ways that you're laying out right there that they can through going through the IRS or whatever else.
		But I'm more concerned right now about sort of the mob mentality, the way we're weaponizing the media and social media and the rest of it.
		So, let's just start with the big question right now.
		Social media, are these publishers or platforms right now?
		Twitter, Facebook, YouTube?
		And can you explain the difference between the two?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		So all of these big tech platforms originally were able to obtain their monopoly status Two ways.
		First, they got Congress to pass special immunity laws, loosely called Section 230, the particular section of the laws that applies, that says we're going to presume that everything you do is as a platform and not as a publisher.
		And consequently, you'll be immune from any lawsuit as a publisher as long as you are acting as a platform.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So meaning that you're just the space, so to speak.
		People can put all kinds of crap up on there.
		You can decide what you take down or leave up, but you're not endorsing it.
unidentified		Exactly.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		You're just the public venue.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		You're the venue where they're coming to organize the Republican Party on the election night.
unidentified		Right?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		You're the restaurant.
		You're the convention center.
		That's all you are.
		And then that was even additionally privately promised by people like Jack at Twitter, who
		said, "I'll be the free speech wing of the free speech party."
		So he induces people to participate, induces people to become part of Twitter and to give
		them a competitive economic edge against their then competitors on the grounds that, "Hey,
		look, one, the law only applies if we're a platform, not a publisher.
		Secondly, we are promising you we will protect your free speech rights and your free speech
		liberties."
		Now, it's important in that context, free speech means the right to not be stalked for
		your speech, the right not to be harassed for your speech, the right not to be censored
		It's both.
		That's why I always tell, for free speech, it's not just the right of expression, it means I have a right that someone can't target me because of my expression and use illicit mechanisms.
		They can question my ideas, they can attack my ideas.
		If I'm a public figure, they have limited space in which they can talk about Me as a person, but what they can't do is invade my privacy.
		What they can't do is follow me down the street.
		What they can't do is put a billboard outside my home.
		These are things they can't do.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So is that a, I mean, to me, that's a really fascinating change on the way things have happened.
		Because if I was to look at just generally what's going on on Twitter these days, if I was to walk down the street right now and somebody just every day was waiting outside my house and started screaming at me and all sorts of things, there's legal recourse I could take, right?
		I can file a, what can I do?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		You can file a civil suit and get an order of protection against them.
		I did a lot of work back in the day when I was a young lawyer for victims of domestic
		violence and we were part of the beginning of the orders of protection that got instituted
		for them.
		But it's not limited to the domestic violence context.
		It's anybody who's stalking, anybody who's harassing, anybody who's invading your privacy.
		You have an equitable right and a legal right to bring legal action against them and have
		the court say, "I'm going to stop you from doing this."
		And if you violate this, you're going to be responsible for legal fees.
		You're going to be responsible for costs.
		I can even put a statutory amount on there.
		And they often do, they'll say, every time you violate this, it's a thousand dollars or it's 5,000, 10,000, whatever's necessary to deter those laws exist.
		Already there.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So are those laws, are there any laws related to that that exist in the digital space?
		Now again, I want to be very clean when we're doing this because, so for example, all day long trolls are jumping on me, go fuck yourself, well, you know, just the worst, it's far worse than that usually, but like just the worst kind of things all day long, same accounts, I block them, I mute them, they just make new accounts, over and over and over, okay, it's not the worst thing in the world, I'm still here, I'm alive, it's okay.
		Right.
		Doing it in the digital realm, I think people would see that very differently than stalking someone just outside of their house or in the realm of reality.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		It is only to a certain degree.
		The same laws apply.
		So it doesn't matter whether it's the digital world or the physical world, the same stalking laws apply.
		The same harassing laws apply.
		So somebody who stalks can be sued.
		Somebody who stalks, they can even be charged with crimes under particular cases.
		So they can be referred for criminal prosecution.
		That's happened to people that have done that to Mike Cernovich, for example.
		So you can use civil remedies, you can request criminal remedies with criminal referrals, you can bring equitable actions, you can bring legal actions, and the courts are actually very sensitive to it.
		Particularly like in California, where because of the problem of stalker ROTC, they expanded the kind of protection either in the digital space or the personal space, and the U.S.
		Supreme Court has increasingly recognized that these days those spaces are indistinguishable.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So it's interesting to me because as part of, let's say, the free speech crew online right now, I'm very hesitant of a lot of this stuff because it's like I want everyone to be able to express themselves and yet I understand we need certain super specific laws, libel laws, slander laws, harassment laws, and yet there's a certain irony where it's like the free speech crew are the ones that are gonna have to defend those laws.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's like a really weird place for people like us to be in, I think.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		I agree.
		The way I think of it is I see it as an unequal equation.
		So what's happening is you're seeing big media, big powerful forces, people with big platforms be able to defame little people at will, be able to run smear campaigns against people at will, be able to attack and encourage stalking and harassment and online mobs at will, and not be held responsible.
		And it's the little guy that's still fighting for their free speech, and yet they're the ones, the little guy who's getting sued by big institutional actors or backed by big institutional players.
		And they're being sued for defamation.
		They're being sued for libel.
		They're being sued for... They're being de-platformed.
		And so what we need to do is equalize that playing field.
		Because the First Amendment is also about protecting everybody's speech, and that means the little guy can't get harassed in ways the big guy is immune from.
		And the big guy can't use powers that the little guy doesn't have access to.
		So it needs to be equalized out.
		So true free speech means people who are important in the independent press and the freedom of press of the independent press not be harassed, the legal system not be used against them disproportionately and discriminately.
		Not have the deplatforming happening against them disproportionately and discriminately.
		And that's what's taking place and that's what needs to equalize.
		So true free speech means we need to have some equality of treatment between everybody.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so now backing that to the platform versus publisher part of this, so they help get these laws, what statute did you say?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Section 230.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Section 230, okay.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So they help get these laws passed, now they're treated as platforms, but it seems that they're acting often more as publishers, right?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		They now admit that.
		So in other suits that I brought against Twitter, they said that they are a publisher and they want all of the protections as a publisher.
		They want all the legal privileges of a publisher.
		Because a publisher has a wide range of special protections, particularly if it has any institutional form or backing.
		So there are certain libel laws that apply to individuals differently than they apply to corporations.
		The same is true of big media publishers.
		So they're now saying to courts, so in the Prager suit against YouTube, YouTube and Google's defense, is we're acting as a censor.
		We're acting as an editor.
		We're acting as a publisher.
		And look at all these privileges we have as a publisher.
		Which a lot of people, and it was one of the issues we raised, was if they're acting as a publisher, they shouldn't have the immunities of a platform.
		Unfortunately, the courts have interpreted what Congress sent to them in a political way.
		This is often the case with a lot of law.
		A lot of law is interpreted through a political framework.
		And how they interpret it is, oh, Congress doesn't want us to allow big tech to be sued.
		So we're going to give them all the protections as a publisher and all the Section 230 immunities as a platform.
		So they have a degree of protection, as Senator Hawley described it, a degree of immunity and benefits that no publisher in the world has.
		That Congress is the one that actually gave it to them as the courts have construed it.
		Though some would argue that's beyond what Congress intended.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right, so Prager lost the initial lawsuit, correct?
		And I know Dennis, but I actually don't know the answers.
		Are they pursuing other legal measures?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		They're still trying to go through the appellate process, but they're unlikely to prevail under the current environment.
		Because the current environment is such that, like when I pursued Twitter, I brought unique novel theories.
		I brought breach of contract theories, Consumer Protection Act theories.
		Because my, equitable theories, because my view was Twitter had lied to people to induce their participation, profited from that participation, sold that person's, like someone like Charles Johnson would come in and 30,000 other people joined Twitter to follow Charles Johnson.
		They now have all of their private information.
		They get to aggregate that information and then marketize it and monetize it.
		And then they get to censor and ban Charles Johnson forever from Twitter because they don't like one tweet he made.
		Well, my view is that's really a breach of contract.
		That's really a breach of equitable duties and obligations.
		But the court saw, oh, Congress is saying Section 230 means I'm not supposed to allow Twitter to ever be sued for anything.
		That's what's happened.
		And that's why Congress needs to fix that side of the equation, because unfortunately the courts haven't stepped up to do it themselves.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you think there's an interesting piece of this that is just because of anonymous accounts, and I don't know what the legal protections or non-protections would be around that, but if you generally look at what's happening online, if we removed anonymous accounts, and by the way, as a free speech guy, I'm not for that because I understand, many times, many times, I mean, I see this with people that I meet at live events, they'll come up to me after and they say, you know, I have an anonymous account because I'm a conservative, and I don't, you know, so it's not that they're Trolls, it's not that they're flaming people or whatever else it is, but there's a piece of me that thinks, man, if you just removed anonymous accounts and put aside the decent human part of it for a second, that actually 80 to 90% of all of this nonsense would disappear because you've got brave keyboard warriors with no skin in the game that are trying to sow havoc.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if there's a legal piece of this somewhere.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		There's a legal way to do it.
		So if you're operating on an anonymous account and you're doing something that's not protected by the First Amendment, like stalking, like harassing, like invading someone's privacy, which is a broad tort that covers a wide range of remedies, including like in the Covington case, will bring the first case that establishes that doxing is in fact an invasion of privacy.
		So you can sue.
		You can require that Twitter or Google, whoever did it, Facebook, identify that individual, and consequently that individual
		can be held legally liable for their course of conduct.
		So people who think they can do bad things behind anonymity are wrong.
		They can do good things behind anonymity, and the First Amendment encompasses that.
		Anonymity is often critical to all kinds of free speech.
		But if what you're doing has always been outside the scope of the First Amendment, like stalking,
		like harassing, like intending to censor and shame people based on lies and liables, you
		can be held individually liable, and the anonymity of your account will not protect you from
		legal responsibility.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's so interesting because I'm hearing you on all of this, and then there is this other
		-- there's the absolutist part of me on speech, that even though I know we need these protections
		more than ever, there's just this little piece of me that's like, "Ah!
		I don't want everything to get caught up in legalese."
		And I guess that ultimately is the balance that guys like you have to deal with every day.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		The pitch that we had made to Senator Hawley was, don't treat these as utilities and start to regulate them.
		I understand why people are calling for that, because what they're seeing is monopoly power.
		The interesting thing is, in the First Amendment, including in California, and it used to be the law, and it still is the law in some places, which is if you have the effect of a corporate monopoly on the public square, You were then considered a state actor for First Amendment purposes.
		This was established way back because you had company towns who were like, well, how do we suppress this union movement?
		Well, why don't we just own the whole town?
		We own the sheriff, we own the cop, we own the public square.
		Now we'll ban petitioning.
		Now we'll ban circulating.
		Now we'll ban organizing.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So by that definition, you would argue the social media companies are Absolutely.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		It's called the Pruniard Doctrine here in the state of California, which applies to private malls.
		Private malls can't ban you from circulating certain things in the public spaces of those private malls.
		Well, is there any more monopolized public square than big tech media, than Twitter, than Facebook, than YouTube, than Google?
		They own 85 to 95 percent of the public square.
		And all corporations are creations of the state.
		And they get certain protections for that, because they have a corporate charter, they're given certain immunities from individual liability for participating in that company.
		Well, in exchange for that, once they get to the place where they monopolize the public square, those two things exist, both the monopoly and the public square, which is usually over 75-80% control of the market space.
		When they have that, and when it's the public square, I think they should be held to the same First Amendment standards as everyone else, because otherwise we create this huge loophole in the First Amendment to privatize control of the public square.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So, Eric Weinstein, who I'm guessing you're familiar with, I've had a couple discussions with him about this, and one of the ideas that he's put forward, and my libertarian side doesn't really like this, but I see some value in it, is that because we don't have public spaces online, So it makes everything, so in effect, everything's private, there's nothing public, so the government has nothing to do with anything.
		But maybe this would be an actual good use of the government.
		If there were platforms that were government platforms that the only rule basically was you can't break the laws of the United States, so that people could get their information out there.
		But if you break the laws of the United States, you're in trouble.
		Then the private companies could do whatever the hell they wanted, and we'd have no reason to, we'd have no ability to stop them.
		But in effect, because everything is private, There's nothing public anymore.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		And so my view is that once you become a monopoly, and particularly when you become a monopoly based on federal congressional immunity, then you have different obligations than any other private actor.
		So that's one argument.
		So one argument is if you choose to have a monopoly in the public square space, you're going to have the same First Amendment rules as any government actor.
		That's one option.
		Another option is just to condition their continued immunity.
		on First Amendment inclusion.
		This was the argument that I made to the Twitter lawyers in the Johnson case.
		It was like, look, you guys don't have to reinvent the wheel
		like they said they were worried about stalking and harassing and it's like very simple.
		Just take all the First Amendment rules that already exist, incorporate them within your terms of service,
		and then you'll eliminate 90% of your concerns and questions.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And you won't have to deal with a lot of the nonsense, Absolutely.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Like, right now, their rules would be considered void for vagueness if they were stateless.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Because you have rules that are subject to individual women discretion.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And they're intentionally written that way, right?
		Absolutely.
		I mean, did you catch any of Tim Pool on Joe Rogan with Jack?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		He detailed this instance after instance after instance.
		I mean, the way they decided to de-platform Alex Jones was highly subjective, very interpretive, and I've seen far worse conduct.
		I mean, for example, the Covington case, you had a prominent Hollywood figure show an image saying the Covington kid should have to go through a shredder and be killed.
		You had Reza Aslan calling for him to be punched in the face.
		Nothing was done about that.
		And yet, Alex Jones posts something that's just a funny video, and they're like, oh my goodness, we have to get rid of Alex Jones.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so I want to spend a whole bunch of time on Covington, because I think actually that was the moment that this shifted, and maybe at a legal sense it crystallized in my mind a little bit more.
		That's actually when I reached out to you, because I saw you just going for it, going for it, and I thought, okay, this is a conversation we have to have.
		But let's talk about Jones for a minute.
		So Jones, so you've done some defense work with Jones.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I'm representing Alex Jones at InfoWars, and now his outside general counsel on all these legal matters.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So you represent him across the board on all of these things.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So I guess my first question is, what's it like when Alex Jones knocks on your door or calls you up?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		He's a very animated guy, very nice guy, very open, very sincere.
		What was fascinating is from the get-go he was saying 90% of what they're saying about me isn't the case.
		He's like, I would defend this on free speech and free press grounds anyway, but what they're actually saying I said I didn't say.
		I never attacked these families, I never went after these families, I never told people to go to their families' homes, none of that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so this is, that stuff specifically is about the Sandy Hooks.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly, the Sandy Hook case.
		And so they took a Media Matters video and assumed that's what I said and it wasn't really.
		And they took most of that out of context and didn't put in that I had corrected the record a long time ago.
		And so part of it was, you know, very nice guy, actually very friendly guy, very accessible guy.
		Even more so than Snipes, he gets mobbed when he goes out in public with people wanting selfies and that sort of thing.
		And he doesn't act like the Jaguar did with the lady.
		He's very nice and sociable and friendly.
		So he runs a nice small business enterprise, Access TV, to talk radio, to internet, and he's intended to be the poster boy of their deplatforming campaigns.
		What I told the press is this case really isn't about Alex Jones.
		It's about the ability of the independent press to operate.
		Will lawfare be discriminately or disparately used against ordinary individuals in the same way that deplatforming is happening already in the big tech space?
		And so are we going to protect the little guy or not?
		And Alex Jones, they figured, would be the convenient They would sort of create a parody of him, a caricature of him, that they could get the public to believe, make the audience feel bad if they watch him.
		They may feel guilty to be associated or attached with him.
		And as soon as my representation was announced, and another lawyer, Norm Pattis, big old school civil rights lawyer in Connecticut.
		I think he still has a ponytail.
		I mean, he's old school.
		He had friends and family members that are connected to what happened at Sandy Hook.
		So he immediately wanted to be involved in the case.
		As soon as he was, Huffington Post writes a hit piece on him.
		They don't talk about a civil rights legacy.
		They don't talk about any of that.
		The whole thing is intended to smear him and to send a message that if you're a lawyer and you dare defend Alex Jones, we're going to try to destroy your reputation in the public space.
		That's exactly the problem that needs to be fixed and remedied.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Related to Jones specifically.
		I mean one of the things that I thought was was most incredible I forget the exact order of it, but basically within 48 hours all the platforms took him down Yes, and it's like okay Is that is that that you guys truly are calling each other and coordinating it or is it that you're all sort of cowards?
		You somebody breaks the ice and now you're just followers, and I don't know that it matters either way, right?
		It probably doesn't matter either way, but what I thought was okay It doesn't even matter what he has said, short of breaking an American law, in my opinion.
		The real issue here is that if he can't be on there, then why is Farrakhan on there?
		I'm not making a direct comparison to them.
		Why is Hamas on there?
		We could do a zillion other things, you know?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		The disparity is obvious and evident.
		There are people who have said far worse things, that just happen to have a different ideological, intellectual perspective.
		Even if you took all the accusations against them at face value and 90% of them are not true, and that's your typical smear campaign, the conservative or the person on the right or the person on the independent anti-war left will often be attacked and smeared.
		90% of what's said about them is not true.
		But even if it was true, what the other side has said is usually far worse and far more egregious and far more excessive.
		And it's the obvious disparate treatment.
		They're using their concentrated power And including their lawfare power to effectively wipe out the little guy so that only the big guy's voice is heard.
		And ultimately it's about the audience.
		Because Alex Jones is still going to talk, it's just can the audience hear him?
		So it's about their right to choose.
		Their right to choose what news they want to look at, what views they want to have, how they filter information.
		I always say like I don't represent people that are accused of racism or the rest, people that are actual racists, not everybody.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right, well being accused and being a natural racist are very different things.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		But people who are really involved in something, I generally avoid representation of them, because I just don't want to be affiliated, just because that is an old personal issue.
		But if you look at what those people, I've always said, let those people debate.
		Because if you watch Richard Spencer debate somebody else, 99% of the time the nice, calm, reasonable person is not going to say Richard Spencer is right.
		So always expose ideas to more ideas, more sunshine, because let the ideas get, let, trust the audience.
		That's really what they're all saying.
		All what big tech is doing, what these big lawsuits are doing against little guys, is intended to say, we don't trust the audience to make up their own mind.
		We don't trust the audience to make up their own decisions.
		We have to control what you think, we have to control what you do, because you might choose something that we don't want you to do, if you actually have freedom of choice, freedom of thought, freedom of expression.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you think lawsuits are the answer to stop some of this stuff?
		I'm also realizing right now that our runway to fix this is becoming perilously short.
		Like, we're getting to the abyss pretty damn quick.
		The 2020 election is right around the corner, and that seems to me to be what this is all ramping up to.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		The Covington case was such a glaring example of that.
		So I was on vacation in Mexico.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so let's just go all in on Covington right now.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		So, a little town north of Puerto Vallarta, I was just hanging out, just, you know, going through Twitter, and I'd seen- You poor son of a bitch.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Try it on Twitter on vacation.
unidentified		Exactly, exactly.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		I was like, eh, we'll see what happens.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		And so I see Maggie Haberman, the premier reporter for the premier news publication in the country, covering American politics.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		New York Times, yeah.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Basically calling for the expulsion of a bunch of kids that she's never met, that she doesn't know, based on an event she didn't see.
		And I found that so shocking.
		I was like, we're crossing a whole new line now.
		If we're going to go, it's one thing to go after what somebody said 10 years ago.
		That's problematic on its own terms.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		We'll get to that in a little bit too.
unidentified		Exactly.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		That's what we have statutes of limitations for.
		But the, is that you're not going to be held responsible for what you did when you're 10.
		Or when you're 20, when you're 40.
		But here these kids were, who were just going up to D.C.
		to be part of the Pro-Life March.
		And usually the Pro-Life March, I've had family participate in that.
		They're just having fun.
		They're not mean.
		They're not out there harassing people.
		They're just expressing what they believe.
		These kids are having fun.
		Probably their first time ever to Washington, D.C.
		They're by the Lincoln Memorial.
		It was a beautiful memorial.
		And all of a sudden they start getting harassed out of the blue.
		And they have likely never met the Black Hebrew Israelites, right?
		Some of us that have know what's coming.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I lived in New York City for many years.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I've been yelled at by these guys many times.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Every insult known to man.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		It's like, really, they're almost like an insult comic, right?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		The routine is so extreme.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		It's like they find something, they go, next thing, the next thing, the next thing.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		They're like bad Don Rickles, basically.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, exactly.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		The worst version, right?
		So you combine Farrakhan with Don Rickles, right?
		But these kids have no ideals.
		And they have an African-American friend that's there with them, and he's being attacked.
		And so they start defending him.
		They start making various anti-gay slurs.
		They respond back to that in defense of people who are gay.
		So I was like, these are not mean kids.
		These are kids trying to handle a shocking environment.
		They decide to go internal and start, OK, let's not deal with these guys.
		Let's do our school cheers.
		One of their school cheers is the old haiku dance.
		Which is the Great New Zealand Rugby Team, all black.
		In fact, two weeks before, I'd shown it to my son, because I was like, look at how awesome this is.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		No, it's awesome.
		It's all over YouTube, by the way.
		Anyone can watch it.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		When I first saw it in the movie with Matt Damon, I was like, that's the greatest sports dance I've ever seen.
		In fact, before, if I want to get inspired by something, I'll just put it on and go get ready.
		So they do that as part of it.
		That's why when the kid's tearing his clothes off, and it's right after that's happening that all of a sudden a Native American comes up with some friends and they're doing the drums.
		So two-thirds of the kids think, oh, he's joining in because we just did the haiku thing.
		Oh, this is great.
		And what do they know?
		The most popular Native American sports thing they know is the tomahawk chop.
		Yeah.
		From the Florida State, from Kansas City Chiefs.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Cleveland Indians.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Atlanta Braves.
		All the places where they're familiar.
		And they're right on the border of the Kentucky-Ohio border.
		So the kind of programs they'd be familiar with, that's what they see.
		Nobody's mocking him.
		Nobody's chanting, build the wall at him.
		Nobody's blocking him.
		Nobody's surrounding him.
		And then at one point, some of the kids start to figure out, OK, something's odd, because some of the people behind him are saying, go back to Europe.
		And it's like, where did that come from?
		And then they realize something's weird, and then they just leave.
		And then as they're on their bus home, all of a sudden their lives are being upended.
		And they're not being upended by just some random bot account who started.
		They're being upended by Kathy Griffin, who's calling for them to be doxxed.
		They're upended by Maggie Haberman, calling for them to be expelled.
		They're upended by Matthew Dowd, who's on ABC, who's a prominent Catholic on ABC, saying bad things need to happen to these kids.
		And a Navarro who's saying bad things need to happen to these kids.
		Almost the entire media.
		And then you have Hollywood celebrities calling for them to be put through the shredder, for them to be attacked.
		You had a writer who claimed to be part of Saturday Night Live say she was going to extend sexual favors for anybody who physically assaulted these people.
		I was like, these are private kids.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		These are, by the way, these are blue-check verified people.
		All of them.
		These are not fake accounts.
		These are legit.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		These are the people that Twitter says you should pay attention to, that we've verified, that we've validated, that we've authenticated, that we've authorized.
		And Twitter, social media, does almost nothing about this.
		In fact, they run with the fake news story.
		And these kids' lives are almost over in five seconds, based on a misleading video.
		And so I saw it, and when I first saw the video, I was like, oh, that's going to be a fake news story.
		Just because, you know, DC politics.
		You know, you know lefty protest culture.
		You know, the chances that a bunch of Catholic kids came up and found a lefty to harass is not real high in Washington, D.C.
		If they had said it happened in a small town in Alabama, OK, maybe.
		But I was like, this story doesn't make sense.
unidentified		Yeah.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		And so I was like, OK, that will probably blow over.
		And that was while I was getting on a plane to go to Bucerias.
		Then I get to Bucerias and see these things and I'm like, they're going to destroy these kids' lives.
		And I realized if they think if they can do this, they can do anything to anyone, anytime, anywhere.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And that's exactly, so then you started tweeting about it alongside a couple other people, and I thought, a couple other people in the legal world, and I thought, alright, I've got to talk to this guy because if this one doesn't get corrected, which fortunately, thanks to you, and it's ongoing, you and several other people, it is getting corrected, but I thought if this one doesn't get corrected, if we let them demolish high school students We're done.
		We are done.
		So can you catch us up on sort of where this is all at now?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		So what I did initially is I first just put out a tweet that said, if anybody wants to sue Maggie Haberman, I'll represent them for free.
		And I was just agitated.
		I was just ticked off.
		And I didn't tune into Twitter until like two days later when I came back.
		And all of a sudden it blown up and I'm getting all these inquiries and I'm like, OK, I realize that this is becoming very high profile.
		And so I go on Fox and my goal is to get everybody to start to retract, start to back up, start to retell a different story.
		And unfortunately, almost all the institutional media starts to backtrack fast.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So to be clear, you did not want to go the legal route, actually.
		You were giving everybody a minute.
		I saw you do this.
		You gave them the chance.
		Guys, just delete the tweets.
		Did you even ask them to issue apologies?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		I don't even remember that specifically.
		All I said was that everybody's got 48 hours to do one of three things.
		Either correct, or delete, or apologize.
		Just do something to correct the record.
		And to her credit, Congresswoman Omar, who usually has no problem saying anything under God's green earth, she did.
		She did it within an hour.
		But she only did it because Roll Call covered my story.
unidentified		Right.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		So his roll call covered my story, he's like, oh, maybe I can get sued.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, took it down.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and by the way, right before that, she had sent out a tweet linking them to white supremacists and a whole bunch of other stuff.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		And a whole bunch of false information.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		She libeled them in whole new unique ways.
unidentified		Yeah.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		You know, leave it to her to figure out a way to do that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		This is a member of Congress, by the way.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Then you have Senator Warren, who's running for the presidency of the United States, repeating false statements about these kids.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's because she's Native American.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yes, yes, exactly.
		She has to stand up for her tribe.
		They portrayed him as a Native American elder.
		Well, I clerked for Native American tribes.
		I worked for one of these old-school lefty, one of the best tribal lawyers in the country.
		And I was like, I don't think he's an elder of that particular tribe.
		Then I realized they were just confusing the terms.
		Because he's Elder Lee, they were gonna call him an elder.
		I was like, that's an insult.
		Most Native American elders are very carefully selected.
		They take their job very seriously.
		In fact, their court system, if we had an ideal court system in the world, it would be the Native American elder system.
		I'd be all for it.
		Because there's 12 people sit around, you come in, you tell them your dispute, and they try to find a remedy that will satisfy everybody.
		And they try not to be too punitive.
		They try not to be too involved.
		They just try to say, okay, what's caused this problem?
		How can we address the cause of it?
		And they're focused on reconciliation.
		How can we bring people together so it doesn't happen again, and people don't feel bad at the end of it?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Not great for your profession, but that's... Oh, exactly.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		A much better system.
		I'd be all for it.
		I'd happily forfeit my law degree to see that system put in place.
		Have the 12 members of your community get to decide these kind of disputes and find ways to put people back together and protect all the things that matter to us, rather than deepening the division and the bitterness that exists.
		And the legal system often creates that.
		People often leave it, even when they win, unsatisfied.
		And so they put this guy in that context, just like he was a Vietnam War veteran, was really not really being accurate.
		They're trying to script a narrative, trying to tell a story.
		But doing it to these kids, and included the message was, if we can destroy them, we can destroy you.
		It was an ultimate exemplar mechanism of media narrative structuring.
		And that's why I volunteered to help them out.
		And so now I represent 14 families in Covington.
		About 90% of the people, I went on Fox and said, 48 hours notice, just clean it up and we'll be done.
		And even after that, I've given people additional opportunities and additional opportunities.
		Please take it down.
		Please correct.
		None of the family members want to sue.
		They don't want to deal with the nightmares of the legal system.
		They don't want to go through all that hassle, hurdle.
		But they want the record corrected and they don't want it to happen to anyone else.
		That's it.
		And so I was like, let's set a record, let's set a pattern, let's set a precedent here that this can get corrected and remedied, that you can't do this to these kids, you can't do this to these people, that you do have standards, you have to be bound by those standards, you have to be governed by those standards, and you have to act according to those standards.
		For those that refuse to do anything about it, they're going to be sued.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so some of them still left the tweets up or didn't apologize.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Kathy Griffin, Matthew Dowd, oddly enough Maggie Haberman, Senator Warren, Congresswoman Howland.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Those are the five highest profile examples of people who refuse to correct.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		When you see a mob descend, It's a little hard to figure out how coordinated it is, whether it's groupthink, is this coming from the top, is this organic?
		As much as you've had to deal with these things, and especially since you dealt with the most recent one that's still unfolding right now, what's your take?
		Is it a little bit of everything?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Two different things.
		One is they've started to green light mob culture.
		That's what was scary here, because this started out with a bot account who was spreading it through sort of liberal ideological culture, who was trying to create an online mob.
		But the reality is that online mob would have never reached critical mass, at least as it related to these kids, without the blue checkmark crowd saying, yay.
		Yeah, yeah, and that's the problem.
		They're the green light for online mob behavior.
		And that's why they have to be stopped and they have to correct their actions or they have to be remedied in court because they are the ones that are permitting it and expanding it.
		And for them, I don't know how often it's deliberate and how often it's a cultural mindset.
		I used to call it cotton ball culture.
		So in the South, people used to go to the cotton ball.
		They're part of the privileged classes when they're 16 and 17, and they're sort of incorporated and acculturated to a certain mindset.
		So it's not that they all get together and conspire, but that they have a certain point of view that's been created by the culture they share.
		And I think there's some of the online mob culture that's been festering over the past half decade, decade, and the worst part of it is it continued to be green light by institutional people or people with big platforms and big power.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Are you shocked also how the racial element has become so blatant?
		So it was like, these kids are white, so they have punchable faces.
		Or excusing the black Israelites because they're black, so they can call these kids faggots, and that's okay.
		Even though you're supposed to defend gay people, but I guess if it's black people, they create this oppression.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		It's the intersectional term.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, this intersexual lunacy.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So are you just shocked how Solidified, that is, in so many people's brains?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's extraordinary for, like, two different reasons.
		One, whenever I see people do it or raise it, my instinctual view is, I was like, well, what has that person actually done for civil rights?
		So, like, when I've been attacked, I'm like, well, I've done civil rights for 20 years.
		I've done very difficult cases in very difficult places advocating for civil rights.
		So is this person really out there trying to help protect people?
		Or is it somebody who wants a social brownie point and social prestige point for being on the right political side?
		And that's 95% of them.
		These are people that aren't actually doing anything to improve the well-being of African Americans and Latinos in this country.
		The second part of it is, It's become social prestige to out people that are a
		particular disfavored political class.
		And it happens to be that right now our disfavored political classes are white people, are men,
		are people of certain sort of parts of the country, certain political orientation.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Kids wearing MAGA hats.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly. I was like, that's the same sort of bigotry.
		Bigotry doesn't know color.
		Bigotry is bigotry.
		And this is just racial bigotry disguised as trying to protect people.
		They're not out to protect people.
		They're out to hurt and harm people, and they just want to feel morally justified when they do it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So when you now have to move forward on this lawsuit that you're saying you're going into, not really because you want to, you're giving these people a chance to go out, how does this even work logistically when you're going after people that have nothing to do with each other other than they all did it on the same platform?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		So we're going to bring it as a class claim.
		So all the plaintiffs will be combined.
		So all 14 kids will be one group of plaintiffs and all the defendants will be combined.
		So you can combine the defendants together when there's a common nucleus of facts and they're behaving in a coordinated way.
		Even if it doesn't rise to the level of, say, legal conspiracy or aiding and abetting, which it may in some of these instances, the effect of it is you can add them together because for judicial economy purposes, they're all part of the same event and it's easier for one judge to preside over all the cases combined than the cases differently.
		And so it's interesting, some of the left media's use of these kind of defamation claims has used this exact procedure.
		And it's time to use the exact procedure back the other way.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You gotta be careful what you wish for, huh?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So let's talk a little bit about what's going on with Tucker Carlson right now.
		Now, Tucker's been on this show.
		I go on his show every couple weeks.
		I find him to be a decent guy.
		We have political disagreements that we have expressed to each other publicly before, but I think he's on the right side, especially when it comes to the free speech stuff.
		Now, Media Matters, which you mentioned already, they're going after him.
		They're finding old audio clips on a shock jock, Bubba, what's his name?
		Bubba, Bubba Gump, Bubba.
		Yeah.
unidentified		I know it's got Bubba in it, Bubba the something.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, whatever it is.
		But in effect, a Howard Stern-like figure.
		Exactly.
		I tweeted something the other day that I wish Howard Stern was maybe a little more engaged these days than he is.
		I don't begrudge him, he's lived through a lot and he's been a great fighter on our side of the free speech thing.
		But it's like, if he was to take the 30 years of stuff that politicians, actors, comedians, authors, musicians, Everybody has said the crazy sexual acts that have been done in that city, all those things, and said, you know what?
		This is all part of life.
		We all say things, we get in atmospheres where you joke differently this way than you would that way.
		All of these things.
		I would love to have him aiding us right now in this fight.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Agreed.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So that's just one piece of this, but putting that aside.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Media matters is now digging into old things of Tucker's and you know, apparently he said faggot there were a couple other things and they're trying to make it sound like he's racist and he's for Abusing kids and all of these things.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And I wonder what his legal recourse is.
		Now he's not apologizing, that's one thing, which I think that's pretty good for the,
		if you're gonna stand against the mob, don't apologize.
		But also, 'cause their goal is just to destroy this man.
		Their goal isn't some sort of legal justice, right?
		Their goal isn't to help anyone.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right?
		Unless there's doing something that I can't figure out.
		Their goal is to destroy a man.
		And if you can destroy a man, you can destroy an idea, and you can get all sorts of other people to shut up.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Precisely.
		What the hell do we do?
		It's very much a censorship shaming campaign designed to marginalize his audience and marginalize him from having access to his audience and to be an example to future people so that they won't, hey, you better not come after big tech, which is really what distinguishes Tucker from anyone else on Fox or anyone else in the political conservative space.
		He's probably the lead high profile person taking on big tech in this country.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		One of the leading guys saying, I think you're telling me I should have you on retainer.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Is that where?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		I mean, that's what's happening.
		It's systematic, it's institutional, and it's deliberate, and it's obvious.
		So, like, I first got familiar with this aspect of it in the context of representing Alex Jones because I was trying to figure out why do people think he said a bunch of stuff that he actually didn't say, or did things that he actually didn't do, or think 90% of what he said was this as opposed to that?
		And then I found out watching Joe Rogan that it was actually a Media Matters thing that Joe Rogan himself watched.
		He's like, oh no, I saw this Media Matters thing.
		I was like, who would trust Media Matters?
		It's like they're politically motivated, they're partisan oriented, they take various forms of, like people complain about secret corporate cash and dark money.
		Media Matters has tons of secret corporate cash and dark money.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Is that a big problem right here that the non-profits now are probably, I don't know all the laws related to non-profits, but they're probably, in almost every political case, stepping beyond their boundaries?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		They definitely are.
		And then what's happening is they're becoming, clearly, they're partisan organizations.
		So here, nobody would think Media Matters is non-partisan.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm pretty sure they didn't go after Joy Reid on cable news when her whole thing went down about the anti-gay blog posts.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		They've defended all kinds of people on the left who have said all far worse things.
		And at least are politically ideologically aligned with the left are supposed to be in the first instance.
		And this is the left set of standards that something you say 20 years ago somehow means you can never have a public platform ever again for the rest of your human existence.
		This is not an American standard.
		This is not a conservative standard.
		This is very much a left standard.
		But they don't apply it to their own people ever at all.
		I mean, some of the things Joe Biden has said over the years.
		He's the leading Democratic candidate for the presidency.
		And then that guy opened his mouth and crazy stuff came out.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, half the things that Trump says now, although he says them sloppily,
		are the exact same things that Obama said about immigration and Clinton said about immigration
		and Dianne Feinstein and the rest of them.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Precisely.
		So it's extraordinary for the sort of one-sided application.
		But clearly Tucker's a target because Tucker's willing to take on big tech.
		And the goal is, they're testing, when can we use something in the person's past?
		What's extraordinary about all of this, what unites all of it, whether it's the Covington case or the Alex Jones case, is that you have people who are unwilling to debate ideas.
		It's all about if you disagree with them, then they're going to target you as an individual.
		They're going to make your life difficult as an individual.
		They're going to harass you as an individual, stalk you as an individual.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		They've already been to Tucker's house, by the way.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Precisely.
		When his wife was there, and had no clue what was going on.
		And they're banging on the door.
		And that was the reason why Fox went off Twitter for an extended time period, because Twitter would do nothing about it.
		I mean, the extraordinary discrepancy and disparity everybody can witness.
		And people like Tim Pool, who's on the left, can say, this is problematic.
		This is kind of obvious what you guys are doing.
		And recognize how problematic it is, because they're not going to stop there.
		It's like Alex Jones.
		They're not going to stop with Alex Jones.
		They're going to use it as an example to try to go after everyone else, to scare and intimidate everyone else.
		You better not be in the independent press.
		You better not be in the independent speech.
		You better not be sharing a dissonant narrative, or we're going to be able to demonetize you, deplatform you, debank you, or defame you routinely and regularly, and get away with it.
		And that's why we need to equalize the playing field.
		But for Tucker's case, what he could do is he could potentially go after media matters for misrepresenting and mischaracterizing the set of events.
		They have a habit of putting out a video that decontextualizes what happened.
		They did it to Alex Jones.
		They would take him where he's talking about this subject, put in a minute where it looks like he's talking about Sandy Hook and he's actually not, he's talking about something else, and they would say these are all of his statements.
		So they've likely done the same thing to him, but there's limited remedies.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I also saw one of, I think it was one of the directors of Media Matters, I actually retweeted it saying, if you think this is bad, we've got a lot more or something to that effect.
		And I thought, they're telling you how evil they are.
		Because they're saying, we are releasing this information in a calculated way to destroy a man.
		We're not just doing it for public good, like we found all this stuff and we're just going to put it all out there on day one because people should know about his past.
		It's like we're going to keep the monster being fed so that it can keep feeding on him.
unidentified		Correct.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		And it's why are they so scared of ideas?
		If they think Tucker's wrong on ideas, debate his ideas.
		Why attack him?
		Especially why attack him on something he said 20 years ago on a shock jock show?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		There's also something crazy you could do.
		You could actually pick up the remote.
		You're not going to believe this.
		There's a button on that thing that allows you to scroll up or down.
		Have you seen this thing?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		I mean, if you don't like what you're hearing, you don't have to listen to it.
		If you think it's wrong, you should engage it.
		Years ago, Professor Lash, great historian, passed away some years ago.
		He said the reason why we expose our ideas and debate other people isn't necessarily to persuade them.
		It's because they're going to expose ideas that there are weaknesses in our own argument.
		And we often research a topic when somebody says, oh, that must be wrong.
		We go and find out about it.
		We become more informed by engaging in the public debate process.
		And that's good.
		That's healthy.
		But these are people who fundamentally don't believe in free thought, free expression, and free speech.
		Fundamentally, they believe that you should have the right thought, not that you should have free thought.
		You should have the right expression, not that you should have free expression.
		They've combined sort of the inquisitional Catholic Church with like 1920s communists.
		And they've integrated the two in their approach, and they're using our legal system and using our political system and their superior power in the cultural areas of influence, whether it's Hollywood, whether it's big media, whether it's big tech, to suppress and oppress those people who have different or dissident views than them, including people on parts of the left.
		So, I mean, people like Tim Poole is being called a Nazi just because he appears on Joe Rogan and asks a few questions on Twitter.
unidentified		Yeah.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		I mean, this is insanity.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So, that's actually, I was going to go somewhere else, but let's jump there for a second.
		So, like, for example, when I had Tim Pool on last week, there were verified people on Twitter calling Tim a Nazi and me a fascist, or me a Nazi and Tim a fascist.
		I've mentioned this before.
		I grew up around Holocaust survivors.
		I lost family on both my mom and my dad's side.
		Now, again, I'm the free speech guy, so I don't want to sue these people.
		But is there some legal remedy for this, if I was someone different than I am?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
		Yeah, there is.
		Because, for example, I took a couple of years ago the Cassandra Fairbanks case against Emma Rollins.
		And one of the reasons I took it is... Cassandra, former lefty, by the way.
unidentified		Absolutely.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		She's now all Trump, but former lefty.
		I had drinks with her one night.
		She gave me her full-on lefty, lefty, lefty, lefty.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Exactly.
		Part Puerto Rican.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		And she was accused by Emma Roller of flashing a white power jester.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		And this was the universal case.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Some others became a white power jester.
		I was like, what the...
		So she was on Twitter.
		She's like, I got to stop this.
		Can somebody help me?
		I said, I'll help for free because I like the area of the case and thought needed to stop this because they're used to being able to say, I'll call someone a Nazi.
		I'll call someone a racist.
		And that's not actionable at law.
		And I wanted to change that.
		I wanted to say, when you make very specific statements about someone's belief structure, That someone can interpret and a jury can objectively verify as either true or false.
		That I think that should be something you can sue over.
		So I brought the case in D.C.
		and we couldn't meet the actual malice standard, but the court said, yes, saying someone is a racist in a particular way, like saying it's a white power gesture, you can be sued for in the United States for libel and lies.
		And under the defamation laws of D.C., which are more restrictive than a lot of other laws.
		So that's established the standards that all these people think, I can just say anything and never get sued.
		That's where we're going to make the point in the Covington case.
		No, you can't.
		If you say things that you know not to be true, that a jury can look at and say, I can objectively verify this.
		Juries make determinations about whether someone is involved in a hate crime every day.
		They make determinations whether someone has racially discriminatory animus or motivation every day.
		So if someone's accusing you of being a racist, that should be actionable in law, because a jury can make that determination as a matter of objective fact.
		And the Fairbanks case establishes precedent that you can, under certain circumstances, get legal remedy for that kind of thing.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		God, it will never cease to amaze me that the free speech crew are the people that have to do certain things through law.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Just to maintain free speech.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Precisely.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It sounds so counterintuitive, but it's so fascinating to me.
		So a couple times you've mentioned Fox.
		I think there's something interesting happening here.
		Now has CNN or MSNBC ever put you on?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		No.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Have they ever asked you to come on?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		CNN did way back about two years ago.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so CNN did two years ago.
		MSNBC has not.
		Fox puts you on.
		Correct.
		Now Fox only puts me on and they put me on with no... I go on live shows.
		They don't tell me to say anything.
		I can say whatever the hell I want.
		I often bring up liberal cred while I'm on there.
		But it seems also clear to me that partly what's going on with the Tucker thing is that they are really going for Fox.
		The plan is, alright, we'll take out Tucker, he's sort of the bravest or the most outspoken or whatever it is, but really then we'll make this about going for Fox's licensing and broadcast abilities and everything else.
		You're nodding so I suspect you agree with me, but I'm amazed because it's like there is so much lefty media, and you never saw the right trying to destroy all the lefty media.
		There's basically one Fox, and it doesn't mean I love everything they're doing.
		I don't, but you need some counterbalance, don't you?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		If you have the approach of the Inquisitional Catholic Church or Institutional Communism, of a statist variety, then what drives you crazy is the heresy.
		So you don't look at it and say, "Geez, how many fair balance expressions do we have on both sides?"
		To the Inquisitional Catholic Church, there's only the Catholic Church perspective,
		and everybody else needs to be burned at the stake.
		For the statist communist, same dynamic.
		There's one state channel.
		There's no alternative state channel.
		There's no anti-state channel.
		So when you come in from that perspective, what unites, say, Alex Jones, the Covington case, and Fox, is these are three institutions, and they represent different institutions, that are giving an independent narrative.
		So when I was at Yale, we did a history project that was actually about why African Americans and poor whites in the South were often treated or portrayed in very discriminatory ways in cultural medium between 1900 and 1970.
		And what you find is that historically, those communities have alternative narratives.
		Their grandparents and parents tell stories different than, say, the civics book version they learn in third grade in public school.
		And so consequently those groups were often shamed and censored and portrayed in a negative light so that the broader public audience wouldn't trust them to listen to them or react to them.
		So the same thing is here.
		Like you look at the Covington kids.
		They represent private Catholic education.
		What is private Catholic education?
		It's one of the last institutions of independent thought compared to say all the public state schools and public institutions.
		So it drives them crazy that they represent this institution that they can't control their thoughts and mind of.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Because they don't have access to that institution.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And then you even saw in the midst of all this, I'm sure you saw this, there was that guy from the New York Times who said, I want to know your stories.
		Remember, I forget what the hashtag he used was, but he wanted to know your Catholic, it was like hashtag Catholic school stories.
		Precisely.
		New York Times, let's go after them once we're done with this thing.
unidentified		Exactly.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Let's go after the whole Catholic Church.
		Let's go after the Catholic schools, because we need people to be afraid to be a part of those schools, to be ashamed if they're connected to those schools, parents worried that if those schools are listed on their kid's CV, their kid's futures will be impaired, and not have these schools being independent sources of thought outside of the sort of cultural liberal hegemonic view.
		And the same thing is true, like Alex Jones represents sort of an independent part of the press.
		Fox News represents an institutional part of the press that's independent, that expresses its own perspective, that's not part of the left majority.
		I mean, CNN and MSNBC and ABC and NBC and CBS, even though they're using public airwaves, Overwhelmingly on one side.
		Same with PBS, same with NPR.
		And there's a lot of good value and I watch all of them at different times or listen to them at different times.
		But I want the other side expressed.
		And so it's this fear of free expression, this fear of free speech, that's leading to these censorship campaigns, these shame campaigns, these targeting campaigns.
		These privacy invasion campaigns.
		What I've told people is if you're ever to the point where you're attacking a person or trying to shame a person, trying to censor a person, trying to invade their privacy, then what you're really looking, you're doing is you're looking in the mirror and telling yourself, I've failed on the argument.
		I can't persuade on ideas.
		No audience would actually believe my ideas.
		So it's an admission of failure.
		And they're really resorting to these extreme tactics because they're recognizing they're losing in the public debate.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you think part of it also is that it's intentional not, now perhaps they're losing in the public debate, I think that's, probably you could debate that either way, on one hand I'm very enthused about sort of where we're at in this, on the other hand it's very scary too because you see this socialist whatever the hell that is rising, so, but putting that aside, do you think part of it is that they're in doing it intentionally because they just want to basically sow chaos all over the place, that partly what they need For whatever their political goals are, is they need this system that has been pretty freaking spectacular for 200 plus years to appear chaotic.
		So they, so they, what do they do?
		They sow chaos.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		It's very, what's amazing is how parallel it is to 1920 street violence in Europe.
		So you see like a lot of the communist tactics that were used back then, and the fascist tactics that were used back then, was in, were designed to sow distrust in the system.
		Sow distrust in the institutions that protected people.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's it, every day now, AOC doing another thing about how evil we are, and Reagan's evil, and capitalism, and Omar, yeah.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		I think what, like, the combination you're talking about, where there's these bad ideas that are spreading, and yet winning in the public debate, what unites them is, if both sides get presented, most people will take a humanitarian decision, or make a good choice, based on their common experience and their common sense.
		Whereas, and so that's why this side that wants to spread their ideas knows they can't allow that open, fair debate to happen or those institutions to be trusted and protected and respected.
		If they can get people to no longer, to not listen, to not hear independent voices, to be afraid to be a part of independent institutions, to feel ashamed if they're connected to it, to say, hey, if I'm a lawyer, I represent this person, I'm going to be attacked.
		If I'm in the public arena and I voice an independent view, I'm going to be targeted and harassed and stalked and the rest.
		They want people to be scared and intimidated to express their ideas, because I think they know that in a non-chaotic, open debate structure, they don't win.
		Because otherwise, you don't have to resort to these ridiculous tactics and techniques.
		If your ideas are great and popular, you don't have to use chaotic techniques.
		You don't have to try to censor people.
		You don't have to attack people.
		You don't have to say, what did Tucker say 20 years ago on a shock jock show?
		You can say, hey, I disagree with what he said yesterday on Fox, and I'm willing to debate him.
		And Tucker's one of the few people who says, hey, you can come on the show and we'll debate it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's quite literally what his statement said.
unidentified		Exactly.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		If you don't like my ideas, let's talk about it.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, so I want to ask you something that I think will sort of thread.
		Oh, you know what?
		I want to ask you one other little tech thing, and then something that I think that'll kind of bring us full circle here.
		So one of the things is, you know, you see me do this all the time, where I have to publicly shame YouTube into either monetizing my video or making sure people aren't being unsubscribed to the rest of it.
		Then a certain amount of people will say, but Dave, you're a libertarian or whatever.
		You're not allowed to complain because you don't want the government involved, which is so idiotic because of course I'm using my voice as a citizen.
		That's what you're supposed to do.
		Okay.
		Putting that aside.
		Do you think there is some interesting legal mechanism if it was to be found out That they were treating traffic differently.
		So that's a little bit different than what we talked about earlier was talking about content specifically.
		So you're saying this or that, but what if they're actually turning the screws just based on not something you said, but they have a general sort of a broad sense that they don't want certain ideas getting out there.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		I think there are contractual principles, equitable principles, and consumer protection principles that are in play.
		So once you induce someone to participate in your platform and then you monetize their participation, to me, you have contractual obligations, equitable obligations.
		You can't have unjust enrichment.
		So you say, hey, if you participate, these are the rules.
		And as long as you abide by those rules, we'll make sure you share in the profits, for example, of monetizing your individual video.
		And if they don't do that, if they manipulate the algorithm, they misrepresent facts, they induce conduct and then only keep the profit for themselves, or use it for a politicized purpose that's different than what they said, those are all consumer protection violations, equitable law violations, and legal violations, sometimes remedied by statute, sometimes remedied by common law.
		There's no reason for big tech to be above the law.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		There might also be some legal thing related to their own board, right?
		I mean, if they're doing things that are not related, if they're not doing the most profitable thing, their board may, I don't know exactly the law.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		All the shareholders can take action.
		So there could be derivative suits by shareholders.
		They could go to the board, but they could also bring derivative legal claims against the institution saying they're not promoting the best profit.
		They're creating undue legal risk and liability.
		They're not behaving in a manner consistent with their professional obligations and their contractual obligations to their own investors.
		And so they can also bring bring action. And in fact, what I've told a lot of people
		is look at what the left has done between the 70s and 2000. You'll see a lot of legal
		roadmaps for how to go at what they're doing now. So they were on the apartheid campaigns
		in South Africa. They targeted different people using shareholder suits, using shareholder claims,
		using shareholder complaints to remedy that of people who are profiting from the apartheid system
		in South Africa. Why can't we do the same thing now based on the same legal theories,
		same factual predicates as what's taking place here, which is inconsistent with their
		obligations and promises to people.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I guess partly, and this brings me to the last question, it's partly about bravery.
		You need citizens who are brave enough, you need lawyers who are brave enough, and they've created a system where everyone is afraid.
		Because when I go out speaking to college campuses, or even I do Q&A when I'm doing stand-up, or wherever I go, The question I get more than anything else is I'm afraid to say what I think and what should I do and it's usually students that are saying I want to get a grade because I want to get out I want to get to grad school or whatever and I always think it's like man if everyone's thinking this if we all just stopped
		If we all just stopped acquiescing to it, we could actually change this thing like that.
		So my question to you is, and you mentioned your father before, but why are you willing to do this?
		Why are you willing to put your ass on the line?
		Where does this come from in you?
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		So it's two things.
		One, it's growing up.
		So grew up poor in the South, got a scholarship to private school, scholarship to Yale.
		When I was at Yale, they tried to get rid of poor students who were there, led a protest by leaving Yale in order to get them to reinstate their policies.
		And I saw there, I was like, I'm one kid, I'm 19 years old, I'm challenging all of Yale University, which wasn't exactly a small institution.
		And just by leaving the school and getting public attention for it, I got them to reverse their policies and protect poor students' same access that I had to rights to full financial aid, rights to be treated in a non-discriminatory manner in the application process.
		So at a young age, I learned one person can change the world.
		When I was a real little kid, I loved Medgar Evers.
		And Medgar Evers had this great quote where they asked him why he wasn't afraid to die.
		And he said, most men die a thousand deaths every day.
		I'm only going to die once.
		And as a little kid, I was like, I want to be Medgar Evers.
		It's like, that is so powerful.
		That is so important.
		That's so influential.
		And you realize one person can make a difference.
		And when you realize one person can make a difference, if they know it here and act on it here, then you realize that that that's the power, that's the passion.
		That's what leads you to want to change the world.
		Not be afraid.
		I've had rogue agents threaten me.
		IRS people put me under audit every other year whenever I win a case.
		I've had rogue judges threaten me.
		I've had people say that they're going to try to put me under bogus criminal investigation.
		I've had every smear campaign known to man.
		I've had bomb threats come in because of my Covington case representation.
		None of it concerns me because if you understand that you really have the power as one person to make a real difference in the world, Then other people will start to recognize that, and they'll act on their power, they'll voice their abilities, they'll use their capabilities to make a meaningful difference, and that's how the world changes, and that's how the world becomes a better place.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That is how you end an interview.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Can we smoke one of those cigars you brought here?
unidentified		Sure.
unidentified		All right.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		We're done here.
		Follow Robert.
		I have a feeling you'll be back here.
robert barnes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I have a feeling it's gonna happen.

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