Nov. 4, 2021 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
17:29
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[MUSIC] | |
| All right, we are live exclusively on Locals. | ||
| There's been a lot going on with Locals. | ||
| We'll get into that in just a minute. | ||
| We are at the National Conservatism Conference 2021. | ||
| Peter Thiel just kicked off the entire conference. | ||
| I am here, joined by the host of the Liz Wheeler Show, Liz Wheeler. | ||
| We've never met in person before. | ||
| This is very bizarre. | ||
| It's so weird. | ||
| It's actually weirder that we haven't met in person because we've been friends for such a long time. | ||
| Should we touch? | ||
| I feel we should touch somehow. | ||
| You're a real person. | ||
| In the era of COVID, are we allowed? | ||
| I know, not only are we only two and a half feet apart, but we actually touched just now. | ||
| We're in the land of sunshine and science. | ||
| This is the place for all of that. | ||
| So this conference is just kicking off. | ||
| We're seeing each other for the first time. | ||
| Is it possible that the world is maybe coming back? | ||
| Oh, if you walk around Florida, I mean, I actually observed, we've been traveling so much recently. | ||
| I was on the road with Ted Cruz with Verdict. | ||
| We're traveling around doing a YAF tour at college campuses for me. | ||
| And I've been observing in different cities, seeing how people react to masks, not just the mask mandates, but whether they're still in their sheep mentality. | ||
| It seems like there are fewer and fewer people who are complying. | ||
| Yeah, but still too many. | ||
| Still too many. | ||
| Although here, actually. | ||
| Even one is too many. | ||
| There was one guy in the conference. | ||
| I don't know, there's probably about a thousand people in there. | ||
| I saw one guy with a mask, and I wanted to say something to him, like, are you okay, sir? | ||
| Have you read the latest reports? | ||
| But I just figured, let him be. | ||
| Let's follow up with him in three days at the end of the conference and see how many people have given him a hard time for it. | ||
| Or tried to offer him scientific evidence. | ||
| You know, we're a little different than the lefties, so we will not harass him. | ||
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No! | |
| We will, from a distance, wonder about him. | ||
| And then we'll print the studies and hand them to them. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Like, sir, there's scientific evidence that this is not the thing to be doing. | ||
| So what brings you to this thing, this sort of new blend of conservative with some libertarian bent and old school libs like me? | ||
| Like, they're trying to blend something here. | ||
| Yeah, and it's fantastic. | ||
| I mean, I actually can't think of a conference Maybe in the last two years where so many intellectual thought leaders have, and I guess that's a little redundant, but so many thought leaders, so many intellectuals have all gathered in one place to discuss policy. | ||
| This is what we need to be doing as a Republican party. | ||
| I mean, the red meat stuff is fun. | ||
| There's a place for it to galvanize voters, but we really need to understand the direction of our party, especially as it pertains to the question of what is liberty and how do we codify that into policy in our nation. | ||
| Yeah, and Teal, so he just gave a great talk, and he said that he hopes for the next three days that there will be rigorous debate. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He said the more disagreement, the better. | ||
| Like, let's do this. | ||
| And that's the intention, really, of everything here. | ||
| And when you talk about intellectual powerhouses, I mean, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Teal, obviously, Chris Ruffo's here, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Douglas Murray, Liz Wheeler, all of these people that we have some disagreements on some stuff, but it's like, we would like America to continue. | ||
| Wouldn't that be nice? | ||
| Oh yeah, I mean, this is the difference between Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| When Democrats have a disagreement, they try to expel that person from the party. | ||
| You can see that right now in Congress with the Pelosi faction versus the Progressive Caucus. | ||
| I never thought I'd agree with the Progressive Caucus, but I do, by the way, love how they're, you know, sticking their stick in the spoke of Nancy Pelosi's bicycle right now. | ||
| So you kind of like that the squad is just like destroying the entire party. | ||
| I mean, it is sort of, at some level it is sort of nice, I guess. | ||
| Oh yes, it's delightful. | ||
| I mean, I obviously don't agree with what they ultimately want, but I do like that they're destroying Pelosi's agenda right now. | ||
| But conservatives don't dislike each other when we have disagreements. | ||
| We want to understand why we think the way that we think. | ||
| So if you and I had a disagreement, I wouldn't say, get out. | ||
| Leave right now. | ||
| You're horrible. | ||
| Let me subtweet nasty things about you. | ||
| I would say, oh, why do you think that? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I would just, I would, I would challenge you. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But I'd be interested to know why you came to the conclusion that you came to. | ||
| And that's good for our party because it makes, what does it say? | ||
| What do they say? | ||
| Steel sharpens steel. | ||
| We want to sharpen each other's policy beliefs and make sure that we are recommending or advocating for, or the elected officials are voting in favor of the best policies that will secure our liberty. | ||
| Well it's funny because I was thinking if there was something called the National Liberalism Conference... | ||
| You would have no diversity of thought, truly. | ||
| I mean, well, first off, they'd be arguing nonstop about the gender pronouns on the name tags, right? | ||
| So you'd have that, and then you'd basically have, oh, the progressive wing saying that if anyone showed up, if Bill Maher walked in and said, guys, you know, we're not doing the free speech thing right, they'd be kicking him out. | ||
| If Barry Weiss walked in, or anyone that considers themselves a liberal, they would obviously be shouted down, while here, Jerome Harzoni, who's running it, at one of the initial talks said something about how he wants the secular group that's here to talk to the religious group. | ||
| And not to make anyone believe anything that they don't believe, but like, let's talk about it. | ||
| Talk about what the commonality is, because that's the thing about the conservative movement. | ||
| We call ourselves a movement because what that means is you join forces with other people on the issues that you both feel the same way, because then there's strength in numbers. | ||
| It doesn't mean that you have to be ideologically identical. | ||
| I mean, you and I are not ideologically identical. | ||
| You mean you disagree with me on something? | ||
| A couple things, and vice versa. | ||
| I mean, we're an example, actually, of the secular group and the religious group, in a sense, and look at us. | ||
| Look at how delighted we are. | ||
| We're so delighted to meet each other that we are actually doing it on camera. | ||
| It's like normal people do this on camera, right? | ||
| They always do it on camera. | ||
| Wait, let's figure out something that we have a real disagreement on. | ||
| I think that would be good in the spirit world. | ||
| Well, religion, right? | ||
| Well, I don't know about religion in the broad sense, but I think probably on abortion. | ||
| You're 100% pro-life, period. | ||
| Yes, pro-life. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| So I always describe myself as begrudgingly pro-choice, and without doing an hour on abortion. | ||
| We should sometime, though. | ||
| Which we should do, but maybe not for this right this second, but I'd be happy to do that with you. | ||
| Yeah, that'd be fun. | ||
| But I think you have to have some room, although I don't deny when the sperm meets the egg, it's a life. | ||
| As you know, we're in the middle of surrogacy right now, and literally with genetic testing, the day after, basically, after the sperm meets the egg, they can tell you the sex. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, which in a normal pregnancy, obviously you don't know for quite some time. | ||
| Yeah, with my daughter, actually, we did the blood test where I tested my blood | ||
| and it was as early as eight weeks. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And eight weeks, by the way, is actually six weeks past conception | ||
| because OBGYNs are weird and think that women don't know their own cycles. | ||
| So they count pregnancy from your last period instead of actually ovulation. | ||
| You're in the middle of all of this, so I can speak-- | ||
| Yeah, well as a non-woman, I know that what you're telling me is true though, | ||
| So six weeks after conception, I tested my blood, and you can actually find the baby's DNA in the woman's blood when she's pregnant, and if you find male DNA, then you're having a boy, and if you find an absence of that, then it's a girl. | ||
| Right, so I know more about that than I'd like to know, honestly, but... | ||
| Like, something like that. | ||
| Like, to me, I don't deny that it's life. | ||
| And I just think in a pluralistic society of 350 million people, there has to be a little bit of room in the early stages. | ||
| I would say 12 weeks max. | ||
| And I get it. | ||
| And we don't have to do, like, a whole abortion breakdown. | ||
| But the point is we're going to walk out of here and be okay. | ||
| Oh yeah, we're going to be friends. | ||
| Of course, let me ask you one question about abortion. | ||
| We won't get off track, but what prevents us as a society if we label certain people, because that's what it is, a person, a human life begins at conception, what prevents us as a society from taking that a step further and marginalizing different demographics of people based on characteristics, based on, you know, in this case, just an age, a gestational age. | ||
| What prevents us as a society from choosing other people that are not worthy of their rights if we choose one group? | ||
| I fully get it, and in a dysfunctional society like we have now, where everyone's looking for the government to make all decisions, I get why it's a slippery slope, I do. | ||
| And I also understand why, you know, I've talked about this with Shapiro and Dennis Prager and Glenn Beck, and it's like, even though they make great pro-life arguments, I always say, you know, it's not quite you guys that have shifted me on this, because I used to be at 20 weeks, I'm at 12, and I'm honestly not thrilled with that. | ||
| It's not the great arguments of the pro-life community that have moved me, it's the bananas craziness of the left. | ||
| left and by the way I've gotten out there's a lot I'm sure you would agree | ||
| with this there's a lot of conservatives that are a hundred percent pro-life | ||
| publicly but know that there are certain circumstances privately that they would | ||
| do something depending on the the long-term life of the child rape like a | ||
| few other things but this is one of one of those things where public and private become so | ||
| complex and I don't want the government having anything to do with it. | ||
| Yeah, I found it opposite. | ||
| That a lot of people who say that they're pro-abortion will privately say, "Well, I | ||
| think abortion's grotesque. | ||
| I don't support it, but I don't think that I should." | ||
| It's kind of a false argument, but I don't think I should be the one that says what a | ||
| woman should do with her body. | ||
| And the reason it's a false argument is because it's not her body, it's a baby's body, it's | ||
| separate. | ||
| But yeah, the point of all of this is we are going to have an hour-long discussion of this | ||
| Absolutely, absolutely. | ||
| That's the point. | ||
| But also, yeah, we're going to walk away friends. | ||
| We're going to both be thinking about each other's arguments and maybe thinking about what could change each other's minds, but mostly just thinking, what do we have in common and how can we fight for this? | ||
| Because the thing about even people who are very radically pro-abortion or who identify as pro-choice, most people who are pro-choice agree with people who are pro-life that there should be some limits on abortion. | ||
| What is it, like 80% of people think third trimester abortion should be illegal? | ||
| 60% think second trimester should be illegal? | ||
| So what we should do as a nation is we should ignore our politicians and we the people who agree on these things should make sure that we have laws that restrict abortion at those points that we all agree and then we can work towards the smaller and smaller disagreements. | ||
| Well said, Liz Wheeler. | ||
| I will have a drink with you after this. | ||
| Well, anyway, I didn't want to go too down that rabbit hole for now, but I thought we should talk a little bit about the big tech situation because you're on Locals and it was a big week for Locals. | ||
| It was. | ||
| First of all, congratulations for selling your company. | ||
| I should be the one buying you a drink. | ||
| I'll let you buy me a drink. | ||
| I'd be happy to. | ||
| This is an awesome thing. | ||
| I want to ask questions on behalf of all of my people at Locals, all the VIPs who are wondering what it means for me, what it means for them, what it means for the company. | ||
| So let's start with a big picture before we get into even smaller things. | ||
| What caused you to sell and why did you pick Rumble? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, you know, the thing is you can't do this stuff alone, right? | ||
| Like you can't really do much in life alone, like just in your own little universe. | ||
| And when we built this thing, we were trying to solve my problems. | ||
| How could I be less reliant on YouTube for video and for audio? | ||
| How could I communicate directly with my audience? | ||
| Let's build a slick app. | ||
| Let's get push notifications. | ||
| So people actually see your videos when you put them up, you know, all these things that YouTube has screwed us on, on news feeds and all of that stuff. | ||
| And as we started doing it, you know, for every step that we move forward, we would always be like, well, there's still other security issues related to Amazon AWS, and should we have server farms? | ||
| And how do we decentralize? | ||
| Like all these things. | ||
| And we started just talking to different companies. | ||
| And we had all sorts of offers, like, I will be very clear on this, if I wanted to just take the cash and run, We had an all-cash offer that was completely life-changing money for me that we said no to about six months ago. | ||
| So I wanted to keep growing. | ||
| I mean, I have to ask, can you tell me who that was? | ||
| You got something you're looking to sell? | ||
| Oh, nice. | ||
| Good answer. | ||
| Good deflection. | ||
| I had to ask on behalf of everyone watching who's wondering the same thing. | ||
| It's a media company that everyone knows. | ||
| Oh, interesting. | ||
| Let's put it that way. | ||
| So, like, we could have done that, but I wanted to keep growing it, and I believe in it, obviously. | ||
| So then the Rumble guys started coming around, and we started a little partnership with them. | ||
| And then we started... Actually, it came from their end first. | ||
| We were at a dinner where we thought, Asaf, my partner in Locals, | ||
| we thought we were going to the dinner to just discuss how we could further some ties | ||
| and how we could work on some integrations together. | ||
| Yeah, integrating. Exactly. | ||
| And Chris, the CEO of Rumble, before the water was even poured, | ||
| the waitress had just come over to start pouring the water. | ||
| We had just sat down. | ||
| He's like, "Guys, look, I want to acquire you." | ||
| And then we started over, that was probably in like May or April, | ||
| and then we started talking about what it would look like and everything. | ||
| And we just felt that this was the best company to fight big tech. | ||
| I don't make Star Wars references that often anymore for many reasons, but you need an army. | ||
| You need an army to fight this Death Star that is big tech. | ||
| And they have incredible infrastructure. | ||
| We're not gonna be blown off the internet the way Parler was. | ||
| They've got... | ||
| Like the executive team is great, the investors, like I know these people now, and I'm not saying we have the answer for absolutely everything, but to also answer your earlier question of how will this affect you, it will, well first off, they're not controlling your community in any way that we weren't, you know what I mean? | ||
| Locals is remaining a separate company, still being run by a SOF, I'm still doing the public side, they're not looking to police you in any way. | ||
| If Liz Wheeler breaks the laws of the United States, Liz Wheeler has a bigger problem than Dave Rubin or Locals. | ||
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And Liz Wheeler won't be doing that unless it comes to mask mandates. | |
| I can't promise when it comes to mask mandates. | ||
| If the government comes for you, it will not be because of Locals. | ||
| That really is the truth. | ||
| And we just felt like we have to find all of the companies that can work together. | ||
| So we're working. | ||
| I can't say too much, but we're working on the payment processor stuff. | ||
| We're working on all sorts, on decentralized payments and crypto and all of those things. | ||
| But the thing is, and I saw a few people that were upset, like, Dave, this was your thing, you were supposed to just, like, take it and take it and take it forever. | ||
| The thing is, like, you need, like, why did Frodo get a bunch of other guys to work with on the mission? | ||
| Whatever the hell they were doing, you know, Frodo was the little guy, they went to the Matrix. | ||
| I know, I know that reference. | ||
| You got that one? | ||
| I at least read The Hobbit, I was homeschooled, even if I didn't watch all the movies. | ||
| Neo needed a couple other people in the Matrix. | ||
| You need to build something together and I'm always talking about building new things and like you just can't do everything yourself. | ||
| So we just we really felt this was right. | ||
| There's actually a strength I think in knowing when you've taken something to the capacity that you need basically that second apparatus to take it further. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's what I see with this acquisition. | ||
| I was very relieved. | ||
| I mean, you and I spoke almost right away. | ||
| Like, what does this mean for me? | ||
| What does this mean for my community? | ||
| But we really shouldn't see any difference in our experience except for an increase in what we can do. | ||
| Well, it'll get better. | ||
| It'll get better. | ||
| Because now we have their entire infrastructure behind us. | ||
| So our livestream capabilities are going to get better. | ||
| are, you know, like the speed of everything is going to get better. | ||
| We're going to have more resources and like they're a bigger company than us. | ||
| So now they will give us resources to build more things. | ||
| So if you're sitting there one day and you're like, you know, I'm on locals | ||
| and really we should have this, that or the other, whatever it is that we that | ||
| I'm sure there's something that you want that we don't have yet. | ||
| It's like now we can help build it. | ||
| We have the team and the people and the money and all that to do it. | ||
| And I should say that the deal that we took was all stock. | ||
| So if I didn't believe that this was going to be good, I would have sold for cash. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And just walked. | ||
| But not only did I take an all stock deal, I'm also staying with them to help promote it. | ||
| So it's like, I'm putting my butt on the line here. | ||
| Like, if this thing doesn't go well, I get nothing. | ||
| Because stock that doesn't realize is nothing. | ||
| And isn't this the fun thing about Locals, this sort of behind-the-scenes glimpse, because this was what we were talking about right before we went live, because there was somebody who was on my Locals community, on the Liz Wheeler Show Locals community, who was asking, I wonder how much he made, and I asked you, I was like, oh, you should tell him! | ||
| No, and I don't mind telling people, because you know the other thing, and I know we gotta wrap, but the other thing is that I want The company to be more transparent. | ||
| It's like, we're all on Gmail, right? | ||
| And it's like, if you had a problem with Gmail, you cannot call anybody. | ||
| If you were on Twitter, you can't call anybody. | ||
| There's no, you can't even email anybody. | ||
| Like there's no communication with these big tech things. | ||
| And for those of us that don't like big, you know, we don't like big structures that have power over us. | ||
| It's like, I, you know, Dan Bongino obviously is involved in Rumble too. | ||
| And it's like, we want to lead the public facing side of this so that when people in the Liz Wheeler community are like, You know, did they sell out or why did this happen or what's next? | ||
| It's like, we'll do our best to answer those questions. | ||
| Honestly, you know, sometimes there are maybe legal reasons or technical reasons. | ||
| You can't answer everything that moment, but like, we're going to try. | ||
| It's a good faith effort. | ||
| Well, by the way, trying a little bit is a lot better than whatever YouTube's offering. | ||
| Let me tell you what Facebook just did to me. | ||
| The appeals process on Facebook is a perfect example of what you're talking about. | ||
| And recently I'd done a piece on, this was the Southwest pilots when they conducted what was obviously a strike. | ||
| But I thought that was just a weather event that only affected Southwest. | ||
| It's so funny how a thundercloud can just affect one airline, right? | ||
| Are you telling me CNN... This is literally what Facebook did. | ||
| They smacked one of those fake fact checks on my video when I was talking about how obviously it was a strike. | ||
| And they said, are you ready for this? | ||
| They said it was actually due to a staff shortage. | ||
| And I was like, a staff shortage due to what? | ||
| Dot dot dot. | ||
| Like, okay, finish the sentence. | ||
| We appealed this on Facebook because they demonetized my page over this disinformation that I was spreading, apparently. | ||
| You can't get a hold of anybody. | ||
| I mean, this is just something that we... I mean, you, I'm sure, deal with the same thing all the time. | ||
| You just appeal and appeal and appeal until you finally try to get a hold of some robot that'll put you on the proper pathway. | ||
| But thank goodness, with Rumble and with Locals, that that's not the case for creators anymore. | ||
| That's why we built this stuff. | ||
| That's why I'm very happy that you're at Liz Wheeler on Locals. | ||
| So if you're in my community, that's the camera I'm looking at. | ||
| If you're in my community, check out Liz at Liz Wheeler on Locals. | ||
| Thank you guys for watching. | ||
| Tomorrow we have like probably a dozen interviews, something like 10 or 12 interviews coming. | ||
| We're gonna just grab people after they speak and try to stream as many of them as possible. | ||
| Maybe we'll throw some on Rumble as well. | ||
| So thank you for watching. | ||
| Have a nice day and let's go branding. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics instead of nonstop yelling, check out our politics playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist all right over here. |
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