Jesse Kelly urges the GOP to abandon power avoidance and aggressively wield government authority against a "communist movement" targeting transgender children and Black communities. He equates modern Democrats with socialism, citing Joe Biden's alleged celebration of school shootings and criticizing Trump's incompetence while mocking Senator Tom Carper as "Senator Cucumber." Describing society as a fracturing ball of Play-Doh, Kelly argues the US is splitting into two nations based on values, positioning his book The Anti-Communist Manifesto as a practical manual for this existential cultural war rather than mere complaint. [Automatically generated summary]
Before we get into the specifics of the book and the political machinations and all of the lunacy of the day, I want to talk about your height, because you're like eight foot seven or something, and every time I see you in real life, despite the fact that I've seen you, I don't know, probably a dozen times in reality, because you're in a small box right now, you seem normal size.
But in reality, you're 6'8", right?
Like, you're huge, man.
You should be in the NBA, and instead you're babbling about politics with schmucks like me.
Well, beyond your height, one of the reasons I love doing your show and that, you know, we're kind of in the same circles these days is because I think we both have a similar attitude about politics.
It's like we talk about politics, we're passionate about it, but we're also trying to have fun.
We're trying to make our audience laugh and not, you know, so many people are just riling these people up and then send them out into the world.
When did you get involved in politics or interested in politics or any version of like what that was about you that made you want to do this the way that you do it?
Well, Dave, there's beer and there's girls, and as long as there's plenty of that around, you don't ever end up in class.
I figured out that no one's there to make you go.
So it was a very fun semester, but not the most productive one in the world.
Anyway, but I didn't get political until late in life.
I grew up in a construction family.
That's my background.
Joined the Marines.
Got out of the Marines, started going to community college, right back to construction.
That's just what I was going to do.
And then Obama ran for office and I ended up running for Congress because I was so mad
about him running for office a couple times in Arizona.
Ended up staying in the fight, going back to the private sector, selling RVs.
So I've only been doing TV and radio four or five years.
But you're right, I'm on the same philosophy.
I did it in the book too.
I do it on my radio show.
I do it on my TV show just like you do.
I don't like to scream and yell all day long.
There's enough bad news out there, and we talk about that very frankly, but screaming and yelling and my blood pressure's going through the roof that I'm upset and you're upset, and there's way too much of that.
So since the book is called the Anti-Communist Manifesto, and I'm sure many people are familiar with the Communist Manifesto, first off, do you make a distinction at this point?
Yeah, there's no difference in any of them, so there's no need, there's no point in making any distinctions at all, because this is what we do, and this is actually what they do very, very well to us, and then we oblige.
We stress, because you have a moral code, Dave.
Now, I don't have much of one, but I have some.
But because of that, there are things we don't want to be, and things we don't want to do.
Like, I don't want to be a hypocrite, or a liar.
I'm a bad person, but I don't want to be accused of those things, right?
So what they will always do is they'll always have you, the communists these days, will have you define things.
He'll never define anything for you.
Hey, what is social justice?
Hey, what does it mean?
How do we know we'll have gotten to equity?
That's surely the goal, right?
He'll never define anything for you, you can't get those definitions, but he'll demand you define everything.
Well, it's actually not socialism, because if you look at the dictionary definition, that's how he gets you every single time.
None of that matters.
Communism is just a religion.
That's all it is.
Communism, socialism, now modern Democrats.
It's the religion of the malcontent.
That's why it's taken a different form every country it's ever been put into place.
From the Soviets, it was the urban poor.
They tried to do that in China, and Mao said, nope, you're stupid.
Our urban poor are actually pretty happy here.
We have really miserable rural poor, so it's the rural poor in China.
In America, it's not any of that at all.
It's all cultural now, because our urban poor and our rural poor had a great life.
And they couldn't get traction here, so they switched with the Frankfurt School and all this cultural Marxism stuff, where are you gay and oppressed in this country?
Are you black and oppressed?
Are you a feminist and oppressed?
Are you just trying to find whatever malcontented group they could find out there to try to burn the place down?
That because we have some code of ethics, let's say, and some principles, and they might be somewhat different, but we're acting against a bunch of people whose, it seems to me their mission is either only to burn it down, maybe with a dash of replace it with something, but I'm actually not even sure of that.
I think it's just a burn it down.
And that we somehow, in some ways it feels like we can't win because they're all in on destruction and it's much easier to destroy than to create.
Good can defeat evil, but only if good understands it's fighting evil.
That's another reason I wrote the book.
It's part of the, it's what we've never done before.
Again, because you have some sort of a moral code, and especially because you used to be on the left and you used to run in those circles, you undoubtedly will think about individual friends you have.
A Democrat here, a liberal there, who you can talk to.
To this day, you may talk to them.
You may break bread with them and think to yourself, well that's...
This person may be misguided, but he's certainly not my enemy.
And that's fine when you think about individuals, but we're not dealing with bad overall.
When we deal with the movement, this communist movement here in America, really globally, we're not dealing with bad, we're dealing with evil.
But we approach it like we're dealing with bad.
Like if we just talk to them enough, if I'm just understanding enough, hey, we both want school shootings to stop, so let's come to a compromise.
But what we've never understood is they don't want school shootings to stop.
I know that sounds extreme to people, but when Dave Rubin wakes up and sees a school shooting, his freaking heart breaks.
And he's calling family and friends, and did you see the kids and how sad this is?
The communist doesn't think like that at all.
Joe Biden gets together with his staff on the day of a school shooting, and there's not a single tear.
In fact, most of them are happy.
Hey, this is great!
Who died?
Oh, nice, it was black people?
Oh, good.
Tell me the shooter was white?
Oh, yes!
Shooter is white.
Let's do a statement out there.
We'll visit.
Everything's an opportunity to somebody without any values at all.
Everything.
And it's hard to accept that about your fellow man, that that's what you're dealing with.
Is that the beauty of what's going on here with Target and Bud Light right now, that it seems like, and again, when I say conservative, I just mean sort of the broad, like, roughly sane people, people who are somehow connected to reality, let's say, that bottom up, they were like, all right, no more Bud Light, no more Target, and it's actually working, meaning they weren't fully waiting for the top-down version of all of this.
Yeah, I think the target stuff, honestly, I think the trans stuff, specifically the trans kids stuff, I've made this argument, I believe it might save the United States of America, and I really mean that, because I just mentioned how outnumbered the communists are, and they are, but they've been much more committed and they've been involved.
So you have all these people on the right, just kind of normal people, I had to catch the game last night, but didn't really ever get involved.
And that lasted forever, for the most part.
For the most part, people don't care what other people do with their lives.
They really just don't.
And then all of a sudden, normal person woke up one day and he found out, wait a minute, we're chopping off boys' penises?
That's something that's happening in regular, that's happening in the country?
Wait, Disney wants kids to do this?
Normal guy woke up one day and all of a sudden there's a tranny on his bed light and now you woke him up.
And that was really what we needed all along.
We needed that guy who shares our values to wake up and realize we're dealing with a whole different animal here.
And the second you start attacking kids, I'm hopeful that maybe a line has been crossed that now we're going to really start fighting back with some teeth.
That's why you see Target boycotts and Bud Light boycotts work for the history and right-wing boycotts.
So now that we're seeing it from the people, what do you make of the set of Republicans who've been pushing back against some of this stuff?
So, you know, say Chris Christie, Mike Pence, the Republicans who are against DeSantis going after Disney, Nikki Haley.
I was on Megyn Kelly's show, who I absolutely adore.
She was kind of against it.
You know, that there's this set of people who are now like, oh, we don't want to ever use government to do things, even when, in my view, it's extremely just and certainly within the purview of government.
Yeah, well, I don't care for Chris Christie or Mike Pence.
I adore Megyn Kelly just like you do.
But I'll say this.
I sympathize with that, Dave.
And this is why I sympathize with it.
I'm 41.
I'm not ancient.
I know I'm going bald, but I'm only 41.
But my entire life... You're a kid, man.
Conservatism, or being on the right, or whatever that may be, it has always been, hey, this is all the power we won't use.
Hey, this is how limited our power is.
Hey, we won't use our power.
They will, because they're the bad guys, but we won't.
And so that mentality, that mentality's been ingrained, it's been beaten into people on the right for most of their lives.
If you're 60 years old watching Dave Rubin right now, That's all you've ever known.
If you read or paid attention to right-wing news and sources, that's all it's ever been.
Bragging about not using power.
So when you wake up one day and you walk into that person's office and you tell them, no, we must use all the power we have or we're going to lose to some subhuman savages.
It's hard for that person to just wake up one day and realize, oh my goodness, we need to use power.
It'll be too far for many people.
I understand that.
It's hard to change a mentality, but the right needs an entire mentality change.
What do we do about the set of people, and it might be half the country, it might be more than half the country, that are brainwashed and are not gonna come around to this.
So, you know, like, I see you on Twitter.
I'm kind of in this camp, too.
It's like, we need some separation from these people.
To me, if the DeSantis thing doesn't work, at what point are we the United States of America if Cali wants to go down that road and Florida wants to go down the Freedom Road?
Again, I don't want to be too jaded, but I don't want to be too pie-in-the-sky either.
We're not one country anymore, and we won't be one country 100 years from now.
And we shouldn't be.
I say that and people get mad, especially people on the right, because people on the right are actually patriotic.
Well, understand, I love my country too, but we shouldn't be a nation.
The only point in coming together and living as a people, whether you're a tiny tribe or a big country, Is for the protection and prosperity that living around each other provide, and you only get that if you share some common values.
If I believe in being left alone, Dave, and you're my next-door neighbor in the tribe I live in, and you believe every day you should wake up and come poop in my living room, We shouldn't be next-door neighbors.
It doesn't mean you're wrong, I'm wrong.
We just have different values.
We need to be a part.
That's where we are now.
We are two different countries, at least.
And we're already separating.
People are migrating.
They're leaving California.
They're leaving New York.
They're going to Texas.
They're going to Florida.
They're going to Idaho.
People are separating as the blue states descend into hell.
And they will.
The people don't even realize how bad it'll get in blue states.
Red states.
People who want to live normal lives will move to red states.
How that final separation comes, I'm worried about that, but it's coming at some point.
Do you think there is a rock bottom for the blue states?
I mean, I was in San Francisco last week, and no matter how many times I go there, and trust me, I don't want to go, so it basically takes a lot to get me there.
It is unbelievably horrible.
It is not an American city.
It should be the lead story on every cable news channel every night.
You know, that actually breaks my heart, Dave, because unlike many people, I love cities.
I love the country, too.
I grew up in Montana.
I love them all, but I love a city.
And I've heard, I never got to go in its prime.
I heard San Francisco was at one point the most beautiful city in this country.
I've just heard it was stunning.
And so I don't celebrate when that stuff happens.
But to answer your question, I view this as being a spiritual war as much as anything else.
I've told many people, I don't care what you believe, it's not my business.
But you have to look at them and understand you're dealing with evil forces.
And evil doesn't have a bottom, Dave, to answer your question.
I mean, bad does.
If you're a bad guy, if I'm a bank robber for a living, I may wake up tomorrow morning, I very well may, and say, dude, I've robbed enough, it's too dangerous, I don't feel right about it, I'm gonna go get an accounting job somewhere.
Bad might do that, but a demon never wakes up one day and says, man, you know, I'm done with all this evil stuff.
I think we've gone too far, guys.
The kid stuff is too far.
I think we should sit it out.
It only goes down from here in those places, sadly.
Well, I think they're going to have a very hard awakening on their own.
And very sadly, Dave, they're not going to listen to you.
They're going to listen to the misery that comes one day.
If they would listen to you now, they would wake up and come out of it.
But that's not generally how it's gone.
There are many, many, many, many, many communists in the Soviet Union who found themselves slowly dying in the gulag system, who woke up and realized that they had served some seriously evil people.
And that's kind of what it takes to wake up a lot of people who get seduced by that.
It's easy for young people to think they're being tolerant or nice or I want to be loving or something like that.
And then one day you wake up and you're stepping on heroin needles and slipping on poop as you walk down the sidewalk in San Francisco and you realize that maybe my life that I was hoping for, maybe I was sold a bill of goods.
And it's going to take that level of misery for people.
That's why, look, as much as it saddens me that San Francisco's like that, that New York's going this way, Philly, these places, as much as it saddens me, in a way I celebrate it, not that I want anyone to be hurt and raped and murdered or anything like that, but clearly people who still vote Democrat, they have not experienced enough pain from their voting choices yet.
And I don't want them to experience more pain, but obviously they're going to have to experience more pain before they wake up and start changing their behavior.
Let's hit a couple of the other big topics of the day right now.
Are you, I would say, let's say generally pleased the way the mainstream media seems to be collapsing?
It's pretty good for guys like us.
I do think there's a certain risk involved when nobody believes the same thing, but it seems inevitable to me that these guys are gonna collapse at this point.
Yeah, well, I'd like to think that there's a whole slew of us, but nonetheless, it's like I would... That's the funny thing I always say about the mainstream media.
It's like, you guys don't have to be good, just don't be endlessly horrible.
But let me ask you something else on just like the purely political side of things.
You seem to be sort of where I'm at in the in the DeSantis camp on what's going on with him and Trump right now.
I supported Trump every morning I wake up and I'm like, I hope he hasn't posted anything today because that way I won't have to go after him because I don't want to have to go after him.
But if you attack Florida, if you attack Kayleigh, if you attack the policy on COVID, like all of the stuff, It feels incumbent on me to do something.
My policy on it is that I don't fall in love with politicians.
I don't join anyone's team.
I'm not on Team Trump.
I'm not on Team DeSantis.
I want them both in the primary to beat each other up because I believe that will give us a better candidate.
What I've said is I'm leaning towards voting Ron DeSantis now because COVID lockdowns and COVID-backed stuff, it's my biggest issue.
Other people have issues they vote on, that's my issue.
I view that as being a crime perpetrated against the American people.
And right now I'm voting for Ron DeSantis in the primary because Donald Trump won't stop bragging about it.
He's either lying about it...
Or he's bragging about it.
We did everything perfectly.
The Vax saved millions of lives.
These things are not true.
And the American people are owed a reckoning.
I'm not saying he has to get on his knees and beg for forgiveness, but some sort of ownership.
Don't spit in my face.
Don't tell me it was great when it wasn't great.
Don't tell me you didn't do it when, yes, you did.
I was alive.
I wasn't born yesterday.
As far as the... I saw that Kayleigh McEnany stuff and stuff like that with Trump.
Look, this is the kind of thing where, you know what, you ever know anybody who really struggled with weight, Dave?
I know you have.
We all know someone who struggles with weight, and they're fat, and then they'll sleep in, and then they'll wake up, and their body will hurt, and they slept in, and they didn't sleep well because they're fat, so instead that turns into a fast food meal, and then instead of a workout, and then you feel like crap again, and later on you might as well just order a pizza, where things are bad, but because they're bad things snowball and get
worse and worse and worse.
This is what happens. This is what's happened to Trump for a long time. For four years,
it's happened to him. The people around him are really, really, really bad. He got first,
for whatever reason, the guy's policies are great. He's just cannot pick personnel at all.
The people around him are awful. They're losers and scumbags and idiots. But at the same time,
because they're losers and scumbags and idiots, and because Trump wakes up and does things like
give it to kayla mack in any both barrels he can't get good people
All the people that will want to work for him are losers and scumbags and idiots.
So you want Trump to have good people around him to implement good policy, but because of stuff like that, because just...
Yeah, there's definitely a self-fulfilling prophecy element to it.
What about the Democrats?
I mean, we're going to throw a guy with dementia back up there.
The woman behind him, you know, probably doesn't know what 2 plus 2 is, or would give you a very convoluted explanation on how there's multiple answers.
And then just beyond that, I mean, the benches, you know, you've got truly a communist in Gavin.
The rest of them, it's just such a freaking clown car, like, there's just nothing left.
There's nothing left, and that's kind of a sad place to be.
I don't know about you.
I would love the option of voting for a Democrat.
Of course!
I can't stand Republicans.
I yell at Republicans as much as I yell at Democrats, but I can't vote for that.
What am I supposed to vote for?
Child mutilation?
An open border?
I can't vote for that.
There's no reason there.
There's no nothing.
It's all just Marxists burn it all down crap now.
So I can't vote for that.
So I'm stuck voting for the friggin' Republicans.
But Dave, I mean, look.
It's time to address the voting in this country and the way it goes and the machine the Democrats have built over time, decades and decades and decades of building up government forces to aid them in this, where now you can run a president who has dementia from his basement, never holding a rally of any kind, never really doing any serious GOTV efforts, nothing like that, from his basement, couple media interviews.
Remember when he got caught with the prompt cards behind the thing?
And now he's President of the United States of America.
He can't talk.
He can't think.
He can't stay up past 5 in the evening.
The Senator from Pennsylvania is a friggin' vegetable.
Senator Cucumber, he can't talk.
He's brain damaged.
He had a major stroke.
His brain is damaged.
He should be resting and rehabbing.
He's the United States Senator.
Dianne Feinstein from California.
The truth is there's no more competency requirements in this country now that Democrats have figured out how to chase down the ballots they need, and now that Democrat voters cease any thought at all.
They just don't.
Like we brought up New York and San Francisco earlier.
These people will walk through all this squalor and, oh, look, there's a homeless guy doing heroin right there.