Jan. 1, 2023 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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| The Democrats are definitely not as screwy as we are. | ||
| And I think they're not screwy at all, actually, in the Democratic Party. | ||
| They raise money in a very disciplined way. | ||
| And, you know, they do have their little tiffs, personality tiffs between the squad and Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| But overall, I think they're very disciplined. | ||
| For the first couple of years I was at the RNC, we would be cheering rah-rah because we raise more money into the RNC than the DNC raises into the DNC. | ||
| And they're quietly laughing because they raise ten times as much money as we do. | ||
| But they raise it into the NAACP and the ACLU and the Michigan Welfare Rights Association and La Raza and La Familia Vota. | ||
| Those five organizations are organizations that I'm up against in court right now for election litigation. | ||
| It's not the DNC. | ||
| They have dark money organizations that influence our elections and help pick right-wing candidates in moderate districts. | ||
| And so that we just, like, we are cooked. | ||
| We're thinking, great, we selected this great conservative candidate. | ||
| That candidate can't win in that state. | ||
| And so we're just, like, not even talking about that. | ||
| their monetary ecosystem is far superior to ours, and they're very disciplined, and we are not, | ||
| and we need to get smart. | ||
|
unidentified
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♪♪ I'm Dave Rubin, and joining me today | |
| is the founder of Dillon Law Group, an absolute free speech warrior. | ||
| I'm talking first team, all free speech warrior, and now candidate for the Republican National Committee Chair, Harmeet Dhillon. | ||
| Harmeet, welcome back to the Rubin Report. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| I'm glad to have you, Harmeet. | ||
| We haven't spoken in a while, at least on air. | ||
| And I thought you would be the perfect guest to be our last guest of 2022, because one of the main messages that I'm always pushing on this show is that good people have to get involved. | ||
| And just in the last couple of weeks, you have thrown your hat in the ring and you're getting involved. | ||
| So my first question, I suppose, is are you nuts? | ||
| Yeah, this question has been asked of me by several people who love me. | ||
| And, you know, there come a few times, I'm sure, Dave, you've had them where you were like, hey, let me go start this new thing or let me leave this cozy thing I have and follow my dream. | ||
| I had that when I I've had that a few times in my life, and I kind of felt struck by that. | ||
| So I discussed it with my husband. | ||
| We prayed over it. | ||
| And, you know, we decided, yes, you feel in your heart you have to stand up and challenge what's going on at the RNC because you cannot stand by And just nod and have, you know, another shrimp cocktail and pretend like everything is going well when it's not. | ||
| And so that's really, I really felt compelled. | ||
| I've kind of felt that way for the last couple of years, in fact. | ||
| But, you know, after the 2020 election debacle, President Trump endorsed Ronna McDaniel for a third term. | ||
| And, you know, that itself was something that a lot of folks thought, well, maybe it was time for new leadership then. | ||
| Not that it was her fault. | ||
| But when you're in charge and perhaps you don't quite pivot and respond to changing election laws and other issues and messaging, maybe it's time for a fresh approach. | ||
| Well, you know, we didn't have that. | ||
| And so she did promise at her last run that she was going to have a third and final term. | ||
| And then suddenly, surprisingly, she said she's going to run for a fourth term. | ||
| And so I said, wait a minute, we have not won in what I call the definition of winning in three successive election cycles. | ||
| I mean, here in California, 2018 was a wipeout. | ||
| It was like we lost half of our delegation. | ||
| 2020, we lost the White House. | ||
| We lost the House. | ||
| We barely clung to the Senate. | ||
| 2022, we're barely clinging to the House such that there is a leadership race that has conservative members of Congress calling each other names on Twitter and airing their dirty laundry out in public. | ||
| And we're saying, yeah, let's sign up for another two years of this and another election cycle. | ||
| America can't afford for us to continue to be behind the eight ball and playing catch up with Democrats. | ||
| We just can't. | ||
| And so if nothing changes, we are going to expect the same thing. | ||
| And I, for one, don't want to be sitting here twiddling my thumbs while we're 10, 20 years behind the Democrats. | ||
| And we don't have to be because, you know, Dave, you know, there's so much energy in our movement. | ||
| There's so many smart, young and middle aged people outside D.C. | ||
| People who are social media savants, people who are fluent with the culture, people who get that the base of our party has shifted from neocon Cold War warriors and Chamber of Commerce messaging and tax cuts for the rich to blue-collar workers and young people who are energized about the future and want to have a home and a family. | ||
| We are out of touch and I don't think we need to be, so I'm here to bring us back into touch and have that Okay, so I want to unpack all that, including some of the Republican infighting and everything else that you touched on there. | ||
| But before we do all of that, for anyone in my audience that hasn't seen you on the show before or isn't that familiar, can we do a little Harmeet 101 real quick? | ||
| Why did I describe you as a free speech warrior? | ||
| Well, I've been doing free speech litigation literally since before I was a lawyer. | ||
| I went to Dartmouth at age 16. | ||
| I grew up in rural North Carolina. | ||
| And at Dartmouth, I became the editor-in-chief of the famous Dartmouth Review newspaper that Dinesh D'Souza, Laura Ingram and many, you know, now famous people on the right have been part of. | ||
| And during that time, three of my colleagues were actually kicked out of Dartmouth for something they wrote about a professor. | ||
| And so back in the day, the American Civil Liberties Union used to actually care about free speech. | ||
| And they sent us a lawyer who helped us sue Dartmouth. | ||
| So at the age of 19, I was on 60 Minutes talking about free speech issues on American campuses. | ||
| We won. | ||
| My friends got reinstated, sent me off of my pre-med course into a career in law. | ||
| And so ever since I graduated from law school, now almost 30 years ago, I've been working on Issues of liberty. | ||
| And since I started my own law firm, we have focused a lot on free speech issues in virtually every context, but we're well known for our work in social media censorship. | ||
| I've sued Twitter a couple of times, three times. | ||
| We're just representing half of conservative social media. | ||
| We represent reporters who are sued by politicians. | ||
| We represented the Daily Wire in litigation in the United States Supreme Court. | ||
| Project Veritas, we've stood up for their rights in court, and so it's a real honor because it's really the epitome for me. | ||
| The First Amendment is first for a reason, and it's something so special compared to the rest of the world, even the English-speaking world. | ||
| They don't have a First Amendment. | ||
| We have that, and so it's a passion to do that work, and probably a third of the lawyers at my 22-lawyer firm do that work, and it's really exciting. | ||
| Yeah, and I want to give you a little credit publicly that I've given you privately, which is that over the years when I've had a lot of crazy hit pieces written about me, I've called you a couple times, particularly the one with the New York Times when they basically on the cover said, I'm the head of the alt-right. | ||
| And I was like, you know, can I sue them and whatever? | ||
| And you calmly explained to me that, unfortunately, in the world we live in, even with our libel and slander laws, like, it's tough, it's tough, and it'll probably cost you way more than it'll cost this giant corporation. | ||
| So you've talked me off the ledge once or twice, so I owe you for that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, absolutely, and look, to step away- Now I don't care, for the record. | |
| They keep doing it, and it's like, now it's kind of funny to me, but years ago, yeah. | ||
| You're bigger than them, and so what? | ||
| Believe me. | ||
| In fact, the RNC has been peddling hit pieces about me, and it's very upsetting, but luckily I'm surrounded by calm people who are like, the truth is there, you'll prevail, and so it's all good. | ||
| To leave a job that I'm very passionate about, two jobs, I also started a non-profit, people who can't afford, or for other reasons, they need pro bono legal help for free, And that is a very active nonprofit center for American liberty. | ||
| We represent children who are targeted by transgender groomers. | ||
| We represent people in free speech issues. | ||
| We represent a host of other civil rights issues. | ||
| And to leave that in my law firm, which does the favorite part of law that most lawyers would kill to be able to do all day and get paid for it. | ||
| That's how passionate I feel about this RNC thing. | ||
| I mean, I love my job right now. | ||
| I love my jobs. | ||
| I love America more than that, and I think that we're just driving this thing off a cliff here, and we can't afford it. | ||
| So nobody else stepped up. | ||
| So I stepped up. | ||
| I mean, Lee Zeldin talked about it, but ultimately didn't want to take on the challenge, because it is a challenge. | ||
| And I stepped up, so I'm going to see it through. | ||
| All right, so before we get into all of that nitty gritty that you mentioned earlier, just a little bit more on the big tech stuff and free speech, because obviously we're seeing all of the Twitter files dumping right now. | ||
| At the same time, we're also seeing the mainstream media or the corporate press, whatever you want to call them, we're seeing them completely ignore it. | ||
| So our divergence between the people that believe one thing and the people that believe another thing is just getting wider and wider and wider. | ||
| Do you think anything will actually come out of these leaks? | ||
| I mean, beyond the fact that a certain amount of people will wake up, do you think that there will be legal action either against the U.S. | ||
| government or further action against Twitter? | ||
| And does that then push things down so that, you know, down the road so that YouTube and Google and Facebook and everybody else might start getting looked at in a different way as well? | ||
| Well, there is action against the U.S. | ||
| government. | ||
| Eric Schmidt, Attorney General, and some others are filing suit. | ||
| Before the Twitter files came out, my law firm and the Center for American Liberty sued Twitter and a host of other parties, including California's Secretary of State, for this very thing. | ||
| And it was revealed after the 2020 election that California, my government, which I pay a lot of taxes to, is using those tax dollars. | ||
| Among the enemies is our client Rogan O'Hanley, aka DC Drano, who was just reinstated on Twitter last week. | ||
| Our lawsuit is ongoing. | ||
| That kind of litigation is ongoing, but the courts are not receptive to it at this time. | ||
| We lost that case in the district court. | ||
| We argued in the Ninth Circuit. | ||
| You win or lose based on the perspective of the judges who are on the court, frankly. | ||
| So what is needed, in my opinion, to really reform this situation? | ||
| Is for Republicans to win elections. | ||
| Republicans have to win elections, and it has to be the right Republicans. | ||
| If you actually had the, you know, out-of-touch crew who's in the Republican Congress and Senate right now, those were the same people who were in the Republican Congress and Senate when we had the White House in 2017 and 2018. | ||
| Those were the leaders. | ||
| They did nothing to address social media censorship. | ||
| We need to elect new and better Republicans who get it. | ||
| We need to reform Communications Decency Act Section 230 to not allow Basically a free pass to all kinds of torts and contract violations that courts are ignoring under the aegis of 230. | ||
| And then we need to create, in my opinion, a social media users. | ||
| What do you say to the counter argument on the 230 argument? | ||
| We've discussed it a lot on the show that some people will say, well, if you take away some of those protections, that then you'll actually hamper free speech because the platforms will feel that they're more responsible and then they'll have to go after everybody to make sure everything's, you know, clean or okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't I'm not advocating the removal of 230. | ||
| I don't I don't agree with that. | ||
| There is a provision of it that says that Social media companies can remove content that is quote unquote otherwise objectionable. | ||
| So it isn't in an enumerated list. | ||
| They use that otherwise objectionable to say vaccine information that's contrary to what Fauci says. | ||
| They use that as an excuse to censor things that they, the social media company, want to suppress or manipulate. | ||
| Or worse, as we're learning through the Twitter files, they let our government do that without disclosing it. | ||
| No, I do not think that was the meaning of Section 230 at all. | ||
| And Congress can make that clear. | ||
| The law is old. | ||
| 1996 law passed to actually protect social media companies. | ||
| It's an out-of-control monster. | ||
| And one of the reasons that, Dave, that you say that, you know, there's sort of a lack of responsiveness by the mainstream media on these issues, the mainstream media has actually been crippled By dint of the social media companies having rights and privileges to say and do whatever they want, whereas the traditional media doesn't have those rights and privileges. | ||
| In a way, CDA 230 has really weaponized the growth of these, the unaccountability of these big social media companies. | ||
| And so I think there are some tweaks that could be done without empowering the government. | ||
| Empowering the users. | ||
| There should be a social media users bill of rights that says that. | ||
| If they change the terms on you, if they ban you or suppress you for reasons that they did not disclose in advance, you have a right to sue them. | ||
| We have rights like that with respect to pharmaceutical products, products that blow up, cars that don't work. | ||
| We have those rights with commercial products. | ||
| This is a commercial product. | ||
| I'm paying to use Twitter. | ||
| I should have some rights with respect to Twitter. | ||
| So what would you say? | ||
| I've actually I know you do some work, obviously, with Ron Coleman, who's been on the show many times. | ||
| And we discussed this once on air. | ||
| If I was to find out, for example, that the government directly had contacted Twitter to take down the tweet that I had back in July of 2021 saying that vaccine mandates were coming and vaccines were not working as they as promised, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| If I was to find out, through these Twitter files or whatever it might be, that actually it was because of a government agent telling Twitter to take it down, what is the reward for someone other than that maybe the government would acknowledge it? | ||
| Can you sue the government? | ||
| Like, can you be like, well, I want 10 million bucks because you guys infringe on my free speech, or is it just purely just, yeah, we screwed up, it's back up, and nobody gets fired, this is the government? | ||
| Well, we have been suing the government. | ||
| The case I just described is like that. | ||
| And in the Ninth Circuit, I think we ran into a, uh, let's just say we haven't received the ruling yet, but it was not a favorable reception in the Ninth Circuit. | ||
| I pray that in fact, at the end of the day, these Twitter files actually started to come out after the hearing. | ||
| And so maybe, you know, the clerks and the judges will see that way. | ||
| Whoa, this is actually a huge deal. | ||
| It isn't, this isn't a one-off. | ||
| This is actually a whole system that's been exposed. | ||
| A case like that filed in a different court, Might have succeeded, but actually under Twitter's terms of service, you have to file it here in California, you know, so it's, it's, it's been a challenge. | ||
| I'm confident that over time there will be a case that breaks through that says that this is a violation of the first amendment. | ||
| I do think it is. | ||
| There are some first amendment lawyers who say, Oh no, the companies can do whatever they want. | ||
| It was merely a strong suggestion from the government, but here in the files, Twitter was actually being paid by the FBI. | ||
| I mean, I don't know how you can deny that that's government action. | ||
| It's government action, obviously, so I'm sorry I'm very animated about it, but I'm shocked that judges aren't picking this up. | ||
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unidentified
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Right. | |
| Well, also, if the government was to call me, if I got a call from a government agent saying, Dave, we're not telling you to do anything, but just FYI, we've been watching the show and you've been saying a lot about that, I might take that as a threat or some sort of order. | ||
| That's why the gray area here, obviously, is where the real stuff is. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, or, you know, nice social media presence and show you have. | ||
| Shame if something were to happen to it or, you know, maybe there's an audit, you know, like literally the government has so much power over us. | ||
| We're seeing it with January 6th stuff. | ||
| I mean, they can make a crime and harass you. | ||
| And so this is not trivial to me. | ||
| And by the way, I, as a first amendment lawyer, I would stand up for the rights of some leftist to be able to say whatever they want on social media, short of threats of violence that are true threats or other violations of enumerated parts of 230 pornography and things like that. | ||
| Um, but that does not seem to be reciprocal. | ||
| The left has entirely abandoned the principle of Due process, equal protection for speech issues on the right. | ||
| The ACLU no longer supports free speech. | ||
| They don't support you being able to talk about gun use. | ||
| I mean, it is a 180, and it is just wholly a woke endeavor now. | ||
| And so we, the right, have become the engine of free speech, and even on our side, people don't get it. | ||
| So I'd love to see a whole revolution on our side about these issues. | ||
| Okay, so speaking of a revolution, now let's talk about what your plans are to do with the Republicans. | ||
| One of the lines that I say on this show all the time is, you don't have to be a Republican, but you cannot be a Democrat. | ||
| And I think that's really resonated with an awful lot of people, that the Democrats have lost their mind. | ||
| The Republicans, it's messy. | ||
| They're going to fail you sometimes, but at least there's something there to work with. | ||
| So what would your vision be of what the Republican Party would truly stand for? | ||
| You hit on a little bit of it earlier, but what's the real vision that you want to sell to the party? | ||
| Well, first of all, you should be a Republican if you're not a Democrat. | ||
| Let me just put that on the table. | ||
| It is a zero-sum game. | ||
| There are two parties that are relevant in this country, and if you're not winning, you're losing. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's the fact of politics. | |
| With respect to what I would do differently, I mean, we probably don't even have time here, but look, the party has evolved in a certain direction. | ||
| It's really been the same two people running it for the last 12 years. | ||
| The base of the party has changed in a revolutionary way during those 12 years. | ||
| Some of the same staff. | ||
| from the Reince Priebus era of six years are still running the show at the RNC today. | ||
| And guess what those staff are doing? | ||
| They're negotiating contracts that are self-interested. | ||
| Hundreds of millions of dollars has flown into the pockets of consultants over the last few years, and we haven't won elections. | ||
| The Democrats don't operate that way. | ||
| The Democrats smartened up after losing elections and paying a bunch of money to consultants almost 20 years ago. | ||
| And they said, no, no, no, we're not going to do that anymore. | ||
| The party will only do the stuff that only the party can do. | ||
| And the party plays a very important role. | ||
| They have a certain role with respect to sharing data with state parties, with respect to fundraising, with respect to, you know, they have a certain role. | ||
| But a lot of the stuff the Democrats do is outside the party. | ||
| They do it in nonprofits, pseudo nonprofits, PACs and whatever. | ||
| But still, the messaging is led by a party apparatus that is disciplined, focused on messaging and on their goals. | ||
| You know, have little disputes with each other in the press and members of Congress attacking each other. | ||
| That just doesn't happen on that party discipline. | ||
| And they ruthlessly collect money and dump it into our races. | ||
| And we sit here and say, as a Republican Party, oh, sorry, our rules say we can't do anything about that. | ||
| I'm not saying that the party should be picking candidates in a primary. | ||
| But what I am saying is you're foolish if you let the Democrats pick your candidates in the primary. | ||
| We have no plan for that. | ||
| The election laws were changed on a wholesale basis in 2020, but we were increasingly incrementing | ||
| for that. | ||
| Our party was not raising or spending money on election litigation. | ||
| We were like, oh, oh, there's an election. | ||
| Let's have some itinerant, you know, temp lawyers put down their laptops and work like a lawyer militia and work for free to save elections for two weeks and then go back to their jobs. | ||
| It doesn't work that way. | ||
| We have jobs. | ||
| We have commitments. | ||
| You can't just like make me work for free for two weeks. | ||
| So we have to have been investing like the Democrats did in lawyers like Mark Elias. | ||
| Who is funded to the tune of whatever he wants and files frivolous lawsuits sometimes and just spams the courts with nonsense lawsuits. | ||
| But they get through and they win if there's no opposition. | ||
| We have not been doing that until the last two years. | ||
| I will say the chair listened to me jumping up and down and screaming about it. | ||
| We began to invest in that issue. | ||
| We're still way behind. | ||
| Our cost of fundraising, Dave, is out of control. | ||
| It's like 40 percent. | ||
| OK. | ||
| I just came from a Turning Point USA event. | ||
| Turning Point's cost of fundraising. | ||
| Now it's a nonprofit. | ||
| 7% or so. | ||
| They raise hundreds of millions of dollars over the same time period that we have. | ||
| Where's that other 30% going? | ||
| What's going on there? | ||
| It's going into the pockets of people who are not helping us win elections. | ||
| I'm very passionate about this. | ||
| Little donors, mom and pops, people like my parents and my, you know, other relatives, they say, oh, Lindsey Graham needs money, you know, let's give him some money. | ||
| I like him. | ||
| I saw him on television. | ||
| And suddenly they're like signed up forever to keep getting emails from every Republican in the universe and they can't stop it. | ||
| The puppy will die. | ||
| Your mom will be held hostage. | ||
| The messages are so abusive. | ||
| And then big-dollar donors are really sick of giving their $5 million, $10 million, $50 million checks, and we don't win elections. | ||
| I mean, that's not what they're there for. | ||
| So pretty much nobody is satisfied with the status quo except a significant percentage of the members of the Republican National Committee who have their power, their privilege, their title, their prestige, their photographs with politicians. | ||
| I'm not there for that. | ||
| I'm here to win elections so I can go back and enjoy my life. | ||
| We would be making one of the things that really ratcheted up the ugliness in this race, Dave. | ||
| It'll be very interesting to know that I think on day three of my campaign, I tweeted that I would initiate a top to bottom audit of every consulting and vendor contract at the RNC. | ||
| And before that, it was a very genteel exchange of ideas. | ||
| And isn't it cute that Harmeet's running? | ||
| Suddenly, every political consultant in D.C. | ||
| is out for my blood, placing hit pieces. | ||
| But it's all going to come out. | ||
| It's all going to come out what's been going on there. | ||
| And then we can talk about what we do about it, because the Democrats don't have this rotten, corrupt system like we do. | ||
| And look, a lot of people in our RNC, most of them are well-meaning, but they don't control what's going on there. | ||
| And so I think I've had some conversations with members who've been shocked to hear what I've said. | ||
| And I think I changed their minds because, you know, it's a very top down organization. | ||
| The RNC tells the states, if you want us to subsidize a particular walk app or method of fundraising, win red, you have to use our system. | ||
| No choice. | ||
| We don't give you a choice as to what works better in your state. | ||
| That's not Republican. | ||
| The Republican is pushing power down to the people. | ||
| It's respecting the people. | ||
| It's not calling them names. | ||
| Some of my fellow members of the RNC have called voters low information bitchers for daring to contact them about this leadership race. | ||
| I love hearing from those Voters. | ||
| I don't call them names like that. | ||
| They're voters. | ||
| They may be angry. | ||
| Sometimes they are. | ||
| But they're angry for a good reason, because they're Republicans and we don't win elections. | ||
| So of course they're angry. | ||
| I'm angry. | ||
| So I think it's with a relatively simple platform that I've been laying out as I'm talking to the 168, 167 other voters. | ||
| But I'm also sharing that with the public. | ||
| And there is virtually no support for the current leadership outside the RNC. | ||
| And the consultant class who feed off of us. | ||
| And so that's been heartening. | ||
| And so one way or the other, we're going to see change at the RNC. | ||
| Right, I mean, I agree with the premise there. | ||
| It doesn't seem like there's a lot of support there, but for whatever reason, and people can call it the swamp or the deep state or whatever the hell it is, it does keep going. | ||
| So the outsider's like, you always have that uphill battle. | ||
| I see sort of two parts of this. | ||
| You're talking about sort of the under the hood technical stuff like that, that are the problems in terms of voting and what's going on with fundraising. | ||
| But I think there's also the ideal level that it seems like there's a real problem brewing just in the last couple of days. | ||
| I heard Mitch McConnell say that the number one issue on Republicans' minds is defending Ukraine from Russia. | ||
| And I thought, man, you know, for the first time in my life since I moved to Florida, I registered as a Republican. | ||
| But I think the ideas I talk about resonate with a lot of people on both sides. | ||
| It's like, that's not in my top 20. | ||
| And the way he said it, I thought, man, I can now see why Republican, you know, the OG Republicans have just had it with you guys. | ||
| What do you do about the messaging part that seems very disconnected when he could be talking about, I don't know, the economy, the border, free speech, et cetera? | ||
| Well, I can't do anything about Mitch McConnell. | ||
| If I, if I were in the United States Senate, I'd be voting for a different leader. | ||
| I can't do anything about the leadership race in the house where, because we didn't do that well, there was no red wave. | ||
| You have this infighting that's just awful. | ||
| Friends of mine are throwing stones at each other. | ||
| Unfortunate. | ||
| But I can do something about the RNC and the RNC does set the messaging. | ||
| And unfortunately, we've been kind of hostage to whatever happened recently, whatever the Democrats said recently. | ||
| We're always like reacting to that. | ||
| We don't seem to be going back to our platform or our basic values or frankly, even taking a poll and then talking about what Republicans actually care about. | ||
| We spend millions during this chair's tenure. | ||
| There have been millions of dollars spent on consultants on messaging issues, believe it or not. | ||
| And what you see is the result of that. | ||
| It's not very good messaging. | ||
| I'm sorry to say. | ||
| Sorry to offend the people who are probably going to be very angry and set out more hit pieces about me because of that. | ||
| But it's true. | ||
| Our base does not like or appeal. | ||
| The messaging did not turn out voters. | ||
| The candidates did not turn out voters. | ||
| And we sat there like sitting ducks, spending a bunch of money on them. | ||
| And, you know, some of these, like I said, back to the It's true. | ||
| The left define our candidates. | ||
| We're letting that happen because we're not doing a good job of picking them and defining them. | ||
| There's no party. | ||
| Maybe there needs to be more of a like cabal situation where you get together and say, look, guys, we're not going to win in Georgia. | ||
| We're not going to win in Pennsylvania. | ||
| We're not going to win in this state or that state if we don't have a candidate who fits this profile. | ||
| That means our data has to be good. | ||
| Our our messaging has to be good. | ||
| We have to have enough money and we have to be doing litigation around the clock. | ||
| Election integrity is not a seasonal itinerant worker deal. | ||
| I mean, you know, RNC has laid off most of its election integrity staff after the election, as if they're like, we picked the crop and now we're done. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| We are so far behind the left. | ||
| We need to be doing this for a decade or two until we reverse the tide. | ||
| And we need to be spending 10x what we're spending on it. | ||
| Does it seem sort of too black-pilled to you when people say, well, look, you've got California, the most populous state in the union, and it's one party at this point, and it's over, and it's corrupt. | ||
| We know. | ||
| Just kind of let it be. | ||
| I mean, I tried. | ||
| I tried. | ||
| I could not take it anymore. | ||
| I don't know if you know this, by the way, Harmeet. | ||
| Three days after the recall election, that obviously I was helping Larry Elder with, I was audited by the state. | ||
| Coincidentally, the same day that I sold my house, or put my house for sale. | ||
| But what do you say to that? | ||
| Like the people that are just like, no, we just have to concede the ground of some of these states. | ||
| Cause it, the machinery is so entrenched. | ||
| Well, I can see the ocean from my home and that's why I live in California and can't do that. | ||
| We got an ocean here in Florida, you know, it's a different ocean, but it's pretty good. | ||
| You know, the Pacific is more beautiful. | ||
| Florida is great too, but I don't like those giant bugs you have over there. | ||
| But, but, But seriously, no, we cannot seat any part of America to the left. | ||
| And look, I mean, those of us who didn't get the memo were still fighting behind enemy lines here, like it was World War II and we were told the war was over. | ||
| Some of us are still fighting that war here. | ||
| We picked up seats in the House in California. | ||
| Old-fashioned work. | ||
| John Duarte, I raised $100,000 for John Duarte, our new member of Congress in California. | ||
| Hey, you know, he's from a farming community. | ||
| He's a farming. | ||
| He's a farmer. | ||
| Go figure. | ||
| You know, you picked a candidate who's like, like the district news, good communicator, who's authentic. | ||
| He had the money because people like me and others helped him raise the money that the RNC did invest in California to help in targeted districts. | ||
| And we, we, we, the party of California pulled that off. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So I think there are a lot of factors that contributed to that. | ||
| That's good because we went from 14 seats in 2016 to Seven seats in 2018. | ||
| My God, that was a wipeout. | ||
| And then we've slowly built back, even as we've lost a congressional seat. | ||
| So no, it's not hopeless, but I mean, the recall was kind of sad. | ||
| Larry Elder was a dynamic candidate and all of that. | ||
| Getting your campaign started at the last minute and never having run for office before. | ||
| And the first thing you run for, advocate for that. | ||
| I definitely think that people should learn the ropes. | ||
| We've been encouraging people here in California in this election cycle to step up and run for school board. | ||
| Are you a mom or a dad? | ||
| You're upset with what's going on? | ||
| School board is not very expensive to run for. | ||
| It's easy to campaign for. | ||
| It's a small universe of voters. | ||
| And we had some success in that regard. | ||
| We have to be training people to do that. | ||
| I've run for office twice. | ||
| Unlike the current chair, I actually know what it means to actually like stand out there, put your money where your mouth is and actually stand at the At the BART, the subway station, hand out cards, talk to hostile groups of people, raise money from strangers. | ||
| It's a skill set that you cannot just get because you have great ideas. | ||
| It is a, it is a craft. | ||
| So I think it, I think that we need to have, and we had a good, another good candidate, the mayor of San Diego. | ||
| And, you know, once Larry came in, it was very popular. | ||
| That was just, that race was just over, but I don't think Larry had, had built the team necessary to win. | ||
| And so George Gascon recall. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| In Los Angeles, that should have succeeded. | ||
| I believe it bungled because of consultants, consultants who did the signature gathering, did not do their jobs correctly. | ||
| And there was no transparency around that. | ||
| And now it's degenerated into investigations and all of that. | ||
| What a tragedy. | ||
| But here in San Francisco, in a liberal city, we got rid of the school board and we got rid of our district attorney. | ||
| So there is a point at which even liberals, even Even $12 avocado toast-eating liberals will say, no more. | ||
| I don't want feces in front of my hip loft condo. | ||
| I'm done. | ||
| So yes, I do think that they're persuadable. | ||
| Yeah, George Gascon, who you mentioned, just for people that don't know, he's the former D.A. | ||
| of San Francisco, who ruined San Francisco, then moved down to L.A., Bernie backed, of course, basically ruined L.A., and then the recall against him fell, but as you referenced, the recall of Boudin in San Francisco, that one actually worked. | ||
| Have you seen any changes in San Francisco? | ||
| Is there any chance that because they got rid of some of these guys and have, I suppose, slightly less crazed lefties, that things are gonna get better? | ||
| I would call, I would describe it as a marginal change, but the rep from the DA is much better. | ||
| She's talking about prosecuting crimes. | ||
| She is prosecuting crimes. | ||
| I don't think we're going to, I mean, at the depth of earlier this year, Kesa Boudin's tenure, elderly Asians were regularly getting stabbed, assaulted, knocked over, killed, with no prosecution. | ||
| That's not happening anymore. | ||
| I haven't read a single story like that since Brooke Jenkins became the district attorney. | ||
| She's probably a Democrat. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's a nonpartisan race, but whatever. | ||
| I voted for her because, you know, she was the person who was most likely to succeed. | ||
| And I live here. | ||
| And so it matters to me. | ||
| I have to call the police sometimes over threats that are made to me. | ||
| I really want there to be a district attorney who cares about that stuff. | ||
| So I think she's an improvement. | ||
| Would I one day like to vote for a Republican for that race? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| But I'll take a better Democrat where that's the only choice. | ||
| So I think that's a good development. | ||
| We have to keep it up, but San Francisco has been absolutely not, that's not the point of your question, but this city is so hollowed out and decimated by the combination of COVID lockdowns, work from home, Twitter, and other big companies packing up and leaving. | ||
| It is, it is not the same city as it was. | ||
| And so yes, in a, in a Detroit type situation where people are leaving abandoned houses and stuff, and yes, you do see a certain level of, you know, The most unfortunate of society wandering the streets, and some of them are mentally ill, many of them are using drugs, and it is dangerous. | ||
| I don't walk to work anymore like I used to in San Francisco, so how long I'm able to put up with this is an open question in our household. | ||
| Yeah, the last time I was in San Francisco was literally the day they were announcing lockdowns for the first time. | ||
| I was there to raise money for locals on the day that the market was crashing, and I felt being in San Francisco was sort of a metaphor for that. | ||
| But all right, so let's move then from that coast to where I am in Florida, where now, obviously, DeSantis wins by 20 points. | ||
| He's got a... Republicans have super majority. | ||
| Basically, everything is working here. | ||
| Do you view what's going on here, election integrity, which is working, do you view this experiment here in Florida as sort of the blueprint of what you could export throughout the country? | ||
| Well, I mean, I certainly am very impressed with what's happened in Florida. | ||
| It is truly impressive. | ||
| And even with early voting, they mastered it. | ||
| You know, the RNC really has not. | ||
| I saw the chair yesterday claiming credit for, oh, we did this, we did that. | ||
| Um, and, and in fact, you know, it's, it's really state leadership that, that makes it happen. | ||
| RNC may provide financial resources, but it hasn't really provided the training to do that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I wish I could live in a utopian, you know, Republican paradise like Florida with the tax rates and the, you know, the wonderful non lockdown situation, but I wish that was California. | ||
| Um, but yes, I think it's very impressive and leadership does matter. | ||
| And, um, and so, Republicans can efficiently run a state and bring it back. | ||
| It's been very impressive. | ||
| Where do the presidential or potential presidential candidates of 24, what kind of role do they play in, I guess, what you're doing now and what you would be doing if you actually win this thing? | ||
| Because obviously there's really two things happening here. | ||
| There's the Trump portion of this, and then there's this either maybe DeSantis thing or just something that is not Trump. | ||
| How does that factor in to what you're doing right now and then what you would do as the potential head of this thing? | ||
| So President Trump selected Ronna Romney McDaniel to become the chair in 2016 when Reince Priebus went to the White House as his chief of staff. | ||
| Some of the White House, some of the RNC staff went to the White House and then some of them were let go for various reasons and they went back to the RNC. | ||
| So it's basically been the same folks running the show over there. | ||
| President Trump endorsed Ronna in 2018 after we had a disastrous election and again in 2020 after he lost the White House. | ||
| So, um, he has not weighed in on this election cycle as yet. | ||
| Um, although I saw a report in the Associated Press a couple of days ago that, you know, one of his top advisors is quietly telling people he's supporting the current leadership for a fourth term. | ||
| So, I mean, I'm one of president Trump's lawyers and my law firm represents, my partners represent him in several other matters besides what I've done. | ||
| So, um, I'm not going to change what I'm doing based on that. | ||
| It's this is something that comes from my heart to do. | ||
| It isn't based on a particular candidate telling me what to do. | ||
| So I don't think it's appropriate for a candidate for this position to seek the endorsement of a presidential candidate because the RNC is meant to be neutral on these issues. | ||
| So that is my commitment to voters because we have people on both sides in the RNC. | ||
| We have a lot of Trump supporters. | ||
| I was a two time Trump voter. | ||
| And then we have some people who are also two-time voters who want to see something different. | ||
| And so, you know, the voters in America are going to decide that. | ||
| I'm not going to decide it. | ||
| So I don't think any of the other candidates have weighed in formally, and that's OK, because I think that, you know, we really need to see what Republicans in the grassroots want. | ||
| This isn't a top-down party. | ||
| In my opinion, it should not be. | ||
| And so I very much hope that we have a grassroots-oriented outcome to this election. | ||
| What's the technical part of how you get elected, actually? | ||
| How does the leader actually get elected? | ||
| Yeah, we have a winter meeting of the RNC in Dana Point, California, and there are 168 voters. | ||
| There are 50 states and six territories. | ||
| Each of them has three members, a national committee man, a national committee woman, and a chair of the party. | ||
| And so you have to lobby with each of those. | ||
| Now, if you're the chair, you can cut deals with people based on resources that you have. | ||
| That's just a fact. | ||
| Some members are very upset that I said that at the beginning of my campaign. | ||
| Hey, guess what? | ||
| Some of them are shocked. | ||
| Shocked to find out that politics is happening in this establishment. | ||
| Yeah, that's politics. | ||
| You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. | ||
| You change your vote from Bob to Sue, and I'll make sure you're the head of that committee. | ||
| That happens in the RNC since the beginning of time. | ||
| But I don't have that ability, right? | ||
| Because I'm not able to hand out goodies. | ||
| But I have my ideas. | ||
| I have millions of Republican voters who want to see a change at the RNC. | ||
| Ultimately, the members of the RNC are going to have to face re-election or election themselves. | ||
| And there's going to be a question as to who did you support in the 2022-2023 leadership race. | ||
| And so people are publicly committed to the current chair before I entered the race. | ||
| She had committed, as I mentioned, to running only for a third term. | ||
| And she said she was out after that. | ||
| So it was kind of a shocker to see her come out with this long list of supporters. | ||
| Whatever, I'm not deterred. | ||
| I think it's going to go down to the wire. | ||
| We have major donors calling me, cold calling me. | ||
| I've never spoken to them before. | ||
| Members of Congress, United States senators, and certainly some members of the RNC who called me before I called them saying, thank God you're running. | ||
| We really need to change. | ||
| I support you. | ||
| How can I help you? | ||
| So it's been pretty encouraging. | ||
| Yeah, for the record, I'd be happy to have Rana on and I would treat her the exact same way I'm treating you and ask the same type of questions and all of that stuff. | ||
| What do you think the argument is? | ||
| What is her main argument? | ||
| I mean, because we all thought this red wave was coming and then it didn't come and they barely got the house. | ||
| So it's like, where's the argument that you should stick around for this as you described this fourth term that was never supposed to be? | ||
| I'm really making you be a lawyer now. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, I am an ethical person, so I will present what is being said by her team, which is she did a great job. | ||
| Four million more Republicans turned out than in the prior cycle. | ||
| We won back some seats in different states. | ||
| She's taking credit for that. | ||
| She's taking credit for the wins in Florida, New York and California. | ||
| I, you know, I think everyone who lives in those states can make up their own mind about that. | ||
| I will leave it at that. | ||
| Trying to be polite. | ||
| People like her personally, and I don't dislike her. | ||
| I'm not running against her because of her personality. | ||
| And, you know, quote unquote, I did a lot for your state. | ||
| That's really what I'm hearing back. | ||
| I transferred X dollars to your state. | ||
| I've offered to pay this. | ||
| I offered to pay that. | ||
| Some of it is transactional, some of it is relationship, and some of it is so-called loyalty. | ||
| Some of it is, I asked you first. | ||
| I mean, then one argument is we shouldn't change horses in the middle of the race. | ||
| I mean, what's the race here? | ||
| We're like racing off a cliff, as far as I can tell. | ||
| We should definitely change horses. | ||
| A sailing analogy is, I'm a sailor, is, you know, if you're heading for the rocks, you should definitely correct course. | ||
| Maybe you need to reef the sails if there's a storm happening and you need to like definitely You know, pull in some of those sales so you don't, you know, crash. | ||
| And I think that's, you know, so that's the counter argument. | ||
| But you asked me to say what she's saying. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Steady. | ||
| I've done a great job. | ||
| We should not change the course. | ||
| We're already planning for this convention. | ||
| And, you know, we're doing great. | ||
| That's the message. | ||
| Do you actually think that the DNC is not as screwed up, and all the stuff that you just expressed frustration with, and how deals get done, and all that stuff, that the DNC is not as screwy, or are they just better at the screwiness? | ||
| You know, like, if you were to look at the FTX situation, it's like, they got all the money, basically, I know he also gave some to Republicans, but he was the second, Sam Bankman Freed was the second largest donor to Democrats, and then, of course, two days after the election, it all comes crashing down, meaning that they're just somehow better At the public show and then we just move on and you forget about all the corruption, something like that. | ||
| So the Democrats are definitely not as screwy as we are, and I think they're not screwy at all, actually, in the Democratic Party. | ||
| They raise money in a very disciplined way. | ||
| And, you know, they do have their little tiffs, personality tiffs between the squad and Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| But overall, I think they're very disciplined. | ||
| For the first couple of years I was at the RNC, we would be cheering rah-rah because we raise more money into the RNC than the DNC raises into the DNC. | ||
| And they're quietly laughing because they raise ten times as much money as we do. | ||
| But they raise it into the NAACP and the ACLU and the Michigan Welfare Rights Association and La Raza and La Familia Vota. | ||
| Those five organizations are organizations that I'm up against in court right now, uh, for, for election litigation. | ||
| That's not the DNC. | ||
| They have dark money organizations that influence our elections and help pick right wing candidates in moderate districts. | ||
| And so that we just like, we are, we are cooked. | ||
| We're thinking great. | ||
| We, we selected this great conservative candidate. | ||
| That candidate can't win in that state. | ||
| And so we're just like not even talking about that. | ||
| So, Their monetary ecosystem is far superior to ours, and they're very disciplined, and we are not, and we need to get smart. | ||
| All right, give me your final pitch, and where do you wanna send people to find out more? | ||
| At P-N-J-A-B-A-N on Twitter is my handle, and then for my campaign, DylanforRNC.com, D-H-I-L-L-O-N-F-O-R-R-N-C.com. | ||
| And please, if you are interested in supporting us, Reach out politely to the three members of the RNC in your district. | ||
| Do not call them names. | ||
| Some of them are very shocked to hear from voters. | ||
| And importantly, if you're a precinct committee man or a state party delegate and you play a role in a state party, call for a vote of who should be the next leader of the RNC. | ||
| That happened in Texas and Arizona and a standing vote in Tennessee, and they all support change overwhelmingly. | ||
| And so that's been happening all over the country. | ||
| Harmeet, I obviously wish you a lot of luck. | ||
| I also wish you a Merry Christmas and we shall see. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Thanks for having me, Dave. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics, instead of mindless drivel, 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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