Sept. 6, 2023 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
22:08
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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| All right, I'm skipping the intro today and we're going to max out the time here. | ||
| This morning, President Trump was on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, and Hugh asked him about firing Fauci, and Trump's exact quote was, you're not allowed to fire him. | ||
| I suspect you probably have a different take on what you can do with these civil servants like Fauci. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, first of all, it's important to point out, for a long time, that was not his excuse. | ||
| His excuse had been that if you fired Fauci, both the Democrats and the media would have pitched a fit. | ||
| Which, of course, is 100% true, but that's the price of leadership. | ||
| You've got to stand up and do what's right. | ||
| Clearly, he could have been fired from the White House task force. | ||
| There was no obligation to run him out at press conference after press conference, have him doing media interviews. | ||
| You know, during the height of kind of the COVID stuff in 2020, Fauci would do local hits in Florida, media attacking me for having schools open and some of these other stuff. | ||
| So there was no obligation to do that. | ||
| I think you could have also fired him from NIH because He had basically committed misconduct with the gain of function. | ||
| You also had him saying that it was naturally occurring when they knew it was a lab leak. | ||
| All that stuff has come out now. | ||
| So I think, yes, you fire him. | ||
| And here's the thing, Dave. | ||
| If it's the right thing to do, you do it. | ||
| If they sue you, they sue you. | ||
| But you had the basis to do that, and you should have done it, and the country would have been better off had he done it. | ||
| So I wanna talk a bit more about Trump in a moment, but it does seem like in the last couple of days that COVID is coming back. | ||
| Somehow they're bringing COVID back or they want us to think COVID's back. | ||
| Whoopi on The View has COVID now. | ||
| Dr. Jill Biden has COVID. | ||
| Florida clearly is ground zero for protecting the people from government overreach. | ||
| What would you be doing right now for the rest of the country if you were president? | ||
| Cleaning out the CDC, NIH, FDA, all these agencies that failed us during COVID. | ||
| We need a reckoning for what they did to this country. | ||
| And yes, in Florida, we fought back against it. | ||
| There were other states like what Kim Reynolds did in Iowa to make sure kids were in school and to push back. | ||
| But there are parts of this country that were really, really harmed. | ||
| Because of the Fauci-ism. | ||
| And yet they were wrong about lockdowns. | ||
| They were wrong about forced masking. | ||
| They were wrong about school closures. | ||
| They were wrong about mRNA vaccines. | ||
| And yet nobody's been held accountable. | ||
| And it's my view that until there's accountability, they're gonna keep trying it again. | ||
| I mean the notion that you have a school district in the DC suburbs, I think Montgomery County, imposing masks In 2023 shows that you give these people an inch, they're going to take a mile. | ||
| So we need that accountability. | ||
| We are going to bring reckoning. | ||
| We are going to turn those agencies inside and out. | ||
| We need people. | ||
| We don't need Fauci's running around those agencies. | ||
| We need people like my Surgeon General in Florida, Dr. Joseph Latipo, who was right against the lockdowns. | ||
| He was right against the forced masking from day one. | ||
| That's what we need. | ||
| We need people like Dr. Bhattacharya from Stanford. | ||
| So I think they're going to keep trying this. | ||
| In Florida, we've enacted permanent protection. | ||
| So you can't force anybody to wear a mask. | ||
| You can't force kids to mask in school. | ||
| You can't close businesses. | ||
| None of that. | ||
| We saw that this would be something that would likely happen in the future. | ||
| And so we put in permanent protections. | ||
| But that should be the order of the day throughout this country. | ||
| So accountability for what happened. | ||
| And just think about it. | ||
| Not only did you infringe freedom, not only did you lie about things like vaccines, The federal government went an additional $6 trillion in debt over COVID with the response. | ||
| That's more debt than we racked up in like the first 200 years of this country. | ||
| And yet people don't want to talk about it. | ||
| The only person that stood up at the time was Congressman Thomas Massey. | ||
| And he was pilloried, but he was right. | ||
| So we are going to have a reckoning when I'm the president. | ||
| I know you've tried to take the high road when some of these Trump attacks are coming your way, but when he goes off on Florida and the COVID response and implies that somehow New York did a better job or something like that, I mean, do you want to hit him harder? | ||
| I understand you're running a campaign and you're running a state. | ||
| But what do you think the policy should be on this sort of thing? | ||
| Because in some ways it seems like a no-win situation with the base to some extent. | ||
| No, look, I think honestly, I think he hurts himself. | ||
| Nobody in the Republican base thinks New York handled COVID better than Florida. | ||
| Nobody believes that. | ||
| It's not believable. | ||
| And in fact, he doesn't believe it because he said for years How good Florida did. | ||
| He said I was one of the great governors in America. | ||
| All of this stuff was kind of gospel. | ||
| Nobody ever questioned it until about three days before the midterm elections. | ||
| He saw that I was fixing to win a landslide. | ||
| That's the only reason he's saying this. | ||
| If he didn't believe that, he wouldn't be saying any of it. | ||
| So it's obviously bogus. | ||
| I mean, half the country visited Florida over COVID, and you're trying to say California, New York, and Illinois. | ||
| Handled it better? | ||
| Give me a break. | ||
| So sometimes I think, you know, you should be responding. | ||
| But I think sometimes, like, the more he does that, I think it helps me. | ||
| Because I kind of wish, like, he had broader reach with some of his social media. | ||
| Because I think just putting that stuff out there, I think it hurts his credibility more than anything. | ||
| Especially because he's on the record saying how good a job we've done in Florida in the past. | ||
| And especially because his entire family moved to Florida under my governorship. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What's your message to the ride or die Trump people? | ||
| Like the hardcore MAGA base that before all of this, they loved you, but they're just going with Trump. | ||
| But you know that you have to get some of those people to win this thing. | ||
| Well, nobody in the United States, in the Republican Party, has delivered more on America First policies and principles than me. | ||
| If you look at immigration, illegal immigration, we've banned sanctuary cities, we've cracked down on human smuggling, we even sent illegal aliens to beautiful Martha's Vineyard. | ||
| And so we've put our money where our mouth is. | ||
| You talk about things like China, We've banned the purchase of land by the CCP and its affiliates in our state. | ||
| We got rid of things like Confucius Institutes and we cracked down on their influence of universities. | ||
| You look at what we've done for expand Second Amendment rights with constitutional carry. | ||
| Look at what we've done to fight against the woke agenda, whether it's fighting Disney involving education or fighting this ESG movement, which is really bad for our economy and for American families the way they're going after domestic energy production. | ||
| You want to talk about draining the swamp? | ||
| There's one guy in this entire country that's ever taken action against Soros-backed prosecutors, and that's me. | ||
| And we've removed two of them from office in the last year, year and a half, who were not following the law and were putting their political agenda over public safety. | ||
| I cleared out the election supervisors in South Florida when I became governor. | ||
| We've banned Zuckerbucks. | ||
| We've banned ballot harvesting. | ||
| We have universal voter ID. | ||
| And we even have an election crimes task force, police force, in state government, which prosecutes voter fraud. | ||
| So we have the best election integrity in the entire country. | ||
| So I think in terms of delivering on these things, nobody's delivered more than I have. | ||
| And everything I promised the voters I would do, I've delivered on and exceeded those promises. | ||
| And so you've got a guy like me going in there. | ||
| You'll have two terms of somebody that the people in Washington do not want to see up there. | ||
| The corporate press does not want to see me up there. | ||
| And the Democrats don't want to see me up there because they realize I don't just say this stuff in a campaign season. | ||
| When I tell you I'm going to do something, I follow through and I do it. | ||
| Is that the weird thing about your campaign at the moment, that in some ways Trump and the mainstream media are on the same side when it comes to you? | ||
| And that is some seriously strange bedfellows stuff. | ||
| Yeah, well, I mean, you know, you were in Milwaukee for that debate. | ||
| The night before the debate, Trump's main campaign operatives were whining and dining corporate journalists from NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, all these outlets, That he had always said we're the enemy of the American people and yet they're colluding to basically try to put dirt out on me and I think that they've developed a really unhealthy symbiotic relationship because the corporate press wants Trump to be the nominee. | ||
| Partially because he's better for ratings, but partially because they think that means the Democrats will win. | ||
| And they don't want me to be the nominee because they know I will run Biden ragged around this country, beat him. | ||
| But more importantly than that, they know I will actually convert on all this stuff. | ||
| They want to see America continue to decline. | ||
| I mean, that's what they want. | ||
| They don't want to see a guy like me come in, reverse that decline, and put us on a better path, so they're doing everything they can to try to shape the battlefield accordingly, but they work very closely with some of Trump's henchmen to put out as much dirt on me as they can. | ||
| Now, the stuff they put out is ridiculous, but they do it, and they do it a lot, and it just shows you, you know, who they perceive as the threat. | ||
| Is it tough for you personally to hear some of the nonsense? | ||
| I mean, from, I feel like I've gotten to know you fairly well and it seems like it just kind of | ||
| rolls off your back. | ||
| But when you see the really crazy stuff that he's throwing at you, does it ever bother you | ||
| or the first lady or anything? | ||
| I think we both just understand, one, it goes with the territory. | ||
| Two, they're shooting at you because you're over the target. | ||
| That's just the nature of it. | ||
| And then three, I think some of it's so ridiculous that I just think people are smart enough to know that it's a bunch of bull, and I think that they just discount it. | ||
| They understand this is political silly season. | ||
| I mean, you just do it. | ||
| Now, look, I mean, I think, you know, there's, there are some folks out there online or whatnot | ||
| that kind of excuse some of the nonsense. | ||
| Whereas if the shoe were on the other foot, they'd be singing a different tune, but that's fine. | ||
| We get that. | ||
| But at the end of the day, what are we gonna do? | ||
| We're not going to fight the good fight because we're worried about someone may say something mean about us? | ||
| I mean, what I always tell people is, in this day and age, when you're standing for what's right, it's not going to be cost-free. | ||
| Our country wouldn't be in the state it's in if doing what was right was easy. | ||
| You go out there. | ||
| I mean, you have moms going to school board meetings. | ||
| They're getting attacked by the media. | ||
| They're being surveilled by the FBI. | ||
| So leadership comes with a cost. | ||
| There is a cost to standing for what's right in this day and age. | ||
| And the way I view it is, whatever I'm having to do in terms of taking that type of incoming, that's not even in the same universe as what people in prior generations have had to do to preserve our freedom. | ||
| And you can just see that. | ||
| Just try visiting Arlington National Cemetery. | ||
| You see people that gave the last full measure of devotion for service of the country. | ||
| So you're not going to see me whining about somebody calling me names. | ||
| Let's try to hit as many big topics as we can in the time remaining. | ||
| One thing that I keep hearing from people, and when I was in Milwaukee, a few people did say it to me, they want to hear you expand on the Ukraine situation more. | ||
| That it at first sounded like you gave that statement to Tucker, that felt more isolationist, then maybe you pulled back on that a little bit. | ||
| I know we have only a certain amount of time here, but do you want to lay that out a bit more? | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| I mean, what they said was, I was asked after that whether I thought Putin was a good guy, and I said, of course not. | ||
| But that doesn't mean that we should be writing a blank check with no concept of what our interests are or what the victory is. | ||
| So we've been pretty consistent, actually, on all this. | ||
| We need to end this war. | ||
| No blank check. | ||
| Europe needs to step up and anything we do should be in America's national interest. | ||
| You don't subcontract out your national interest to other countries and I don't think it's been in our interest to be sending money to pay pensions for Ukrainian Just think with Biden. | ||
| and salaries for Ukrainian bureaucrats. | ||
| So what I would do as president, I would use the leverage that we have available to us | ||
| to bring the conflict to an end in a way that this isn't going to continue to be an issue | ||
| for the next 50 or 60 years. | ||
| I mean, just think with Biden. | ||
| His energy policy is benefiting Russia. | ||
| It's fueling their ability to wage war in the first place. | ||
| It's benefiting Iran. | ||
| He just gave Iran six billion. | ||
| What is Iran doing with that money? | ||
| Partially, they're sending to Russia to help Russia. | ||
| China, he wants us to be more dependent on China. | ||
| They're obviously benefiting Russia. | ||
| You can turn all of those leverage points on. | ||
| But then also use the leverage that we have with our European allies to say, guys, this is your continent. | ||
| You know, when this thing comes in, let's bring this in for a landing and then you guys have to step up and meet your security obligations. | ||
| And part of what animates that is, I think, our primary national security objective is to deter China. | ||
| And if we want to do that, we're going to have to do a lot more to project hard power in the Indo-Pacific than we've been doing. | ||
| I think Biden views the top challenge as Europe. | ||
| I think he views China as a client, not as an adversary. | ||
| I view China as an adversary, and I think they're the only ones in this world that could possibly compete with us on a global scale. | ||
| What do you make of the polling data right now? | ||
| I know you don't govern by polls, I've heard you say it many times, but if we're to believe the polls, you know, somehow Trump is at 50% or something like that. | ||
| Yeah, look, I think, I mean, I think that, you know, some of these primary polls are what they are. | ||
| I mean, you know, you followed my re-election race. | ||
| There were polls that had me up by one or two points and I won by You know, almost 20 points. | ||
| And so sometimes when you have this volume of polls, clearly polls are expensive. | ||
| And so if you're doing them every day, you know, either someone's funding that with an agenda or not. | ||
| But I also understand, you know, you're running against somebody who is 100% name identification, probably the most famous person in the modern history of politics. | ||
| But what I think that it shows, and I think we have data after the debate to show this, is that, you know, whatever he's at, he's got some that are very hard for him for sure, and then he's got a lot that are soft. | ||
| And those are people that, you know, they're willing to support somebody that's strong, that has a record of delivering on America's first principles, and that would be a a big time change agent as president. | ||
| They are not going to vote for somebody who's just going to go back and be a managed, declined | ||
| Republican. | ||
| So if it's a choice between Trump or that, they are going to go Trump. | ||
| But when they're presented with my bio, my family, my accomplishments, and our vision, | ||
| you know, we do convert those people. | ||
| Now, we're having to do this on the ground, going town to town in Iowa, town to town in New Hampshire, and we've actually had a huge amount of success in Iowa. | ||
| I mean, if you look back at previous election cycles and find where the Iowa caucus winner was in the summer, people like Ted Cruz and Santorum They were pulling at like five or six percent. | ||
| You know, we're clear second in Iowa under any metric. | ||
| Everybody else is in single digits. | ||
| And so I wouldn't trade places with anyone in Iowa right now. | ||
| I think we're doing what we need to do. | ||
| And we are going to outwork everybody in those early states. | ||
| But once that starts to happen, That's what's going to make the big difference. | ||
| So everything we're doing is geared towards accumulating delegates. | ||
| If we were trying to juice national polls, then, you know, we would try to advertise nationally and do some of those things. | ||
| And so it's a state-by-state thing. | ||
| That's what we're doing. | ||
| And we're happy with the progress we've made, particularly over the last, I think, four to six weeks. | ||
| I think we've, you know, we've solidified a lot of support and we're building. | ||
| Do you want Trump to show up to the next debate? | ||
| I mean, the last one was a little bizarre because you were clearly the frontrunner at the debate and nobody was going after you. | ||
| And I bumped into you in the hotel the next morning and you said, well, they knew I was going to hit back. | ||
| And it seems like they were sort of afraid, you know, Vivek a little bit, I suppose, but it seems like they didn't want to go after you. | ||
| So the dynamics are really bizarre right now. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, I think he owes it to the public to debate. | ||
| I think the idea that he's entitled to be nominated is absurd. | ||
| I think that there's a lot of questions that he needs to answer, both about how he would win the election, but also about some of the decisions that he made as president. | ||
| You pointed out the Fauci, and then there are others. | ||
| So I think he should do it. | ||
| He probably won't do it, and that's fine. | ||
| I'm going to be there regardless. | ||
| I do think you're going to see a smaller stage. | ||
| Because I think some of those folks aren't going to qualify for this next round. | ||
| And look, my thing is, as far be it for me to tell anyone who to run or not run, but you either have a path or you don't. | ||
| And if you don't have a path, then we should focus on the candidates that have a conceivable shot at this. | ||
| I will say, though, being on that stage, I think one of the reasons why I wasn't necessarily the target as much as people thought is I have a record of success. | ||
| I've done the things that people are talking about that we need to do for this country in Florida across the board. | ||
| And so I'm armed with the ability to say that I've done it and also to point out, you know, whatever shortcomings would be from somebody that's lobbying a grenade my way. | ||
| So I'm prepared to do however it shakes out. | ||
| But if it's just me and I get something, I want to look into the camera and tell people my vision of how to reverse this country's decline, beat Biden, and get us on a better path. | ||
| And I think we all know we need to do that. | ||
| I'm the one guy that has a record of showing how it can be done with how we've transformed Florida. | ||
| Let me ask you just two more. | ||
| As you know, I'll have you on this show anytime, but personally, I want to see you on The View. | ||
| I want to see you sit down with those ladies, have them repeat that hysterical nonsense. | ||
| Anna, what's her name, who lives in Florida and says crazy things about this state. | ||
| Do you plan on going for those fights a little bit more? | ||
| Because to me, that's where you shine, and I think that that's what people want to see out of you. | ||
| Yeah, we might. | ||
| I mean, I think we have done some of the more corporate press, you know, with, like, the NBCs and the CNNs. | ||
| So you may see. | ||
| I mean, look, I think, you know, the view, kind of the hysterical stuff that they've put out, it can be a little bit much at times, but who knows? | ||
| You know, we may end up doing that. | ||
| But, you know, I'm out and about. | ||
| When we do our campaign stuff, anyone can come and ask us questions. | ||
| We welcome that. | ||
| You know, we've got the typical corporate outlets that follow us around. | ||
| So my last question for you is going to be for my mom. | ||
| My mom, who is a lifelong Democrat, but she has woke up to the insanity of the Democrats. | ||
| She knows how I feel about Florida and that I've supported you, but the idea of voting for a Republican still in her mind is tough. | ||
| What would you say to that person who's about to break? | ||
| They've had it with the Democrats, they've had it with the woke, but the idea of really making that move, even though they part-time live in Florida, is a tough one. | ||
| What's the sales pitch right there? | ||
| Well, first, I would just say I kind of understand that. | ||
| You know, my grandmother lived till she was 91 in western Pennsylvania. | ||
| You know, her husband, my grandfather, was a steel worker, and she never voted for a Republican for any office in her entire life. | ||
| And basically, she was, you know, traditional, Catholic, had conservative views on a lot of things. | ||
| It's like she said, look, the Republicans are only for the rich, the Democrats are for the working people. | ||
| And I would just say that I think the parties are really changing in who they represent. | ||
| I think the Democratic Party, they're driven by an elite ideology. | ||
| I mean, woke ideology, ultimately, that's something that came out of places like Berkeley and these left-wing institutions. | ||
| This is not like salt-of-the-earth ideology. | ||
| These are elites trying to cram this down your throat. | ||
| Trying to tell, you know, your kindergartner daughter that she's actually a boy. | ||
| That is not anything that has ever sprung up from kind of the salt of the earth. | ||
| So I think what we're doing, at least me as a Republican, what I conceive of my role, is to represent common sense again. | ||
| A restoration of sanity in this country. | ||
| And to do like what we did in Florida. | ||
| You know, you can't please everyone, Dave. | ||
| But we took very strong stands and we won 60-40. | ||
| I can tell you 60% of the voters are not Republicans in Florida. | ||
| It's closer to like 36%. | ||
| So we had to get independents and some discerning Democrats to say, you know what? | ||
| We can't have an open border. | ||
| We have to have security. | ||
| We can't have crime running the streets. | ||
| We have to have the rule of law. | ||
| We need an economy so people can afford gas and afford a home and afford groceries again. | ||
| We need these core things of parents' rights to ensure parents are involved with education. | ||
| Those are things, I think, that span party lines and that I think we can build a strong movement behind. | ||
| And it's really just restoring the country to a sense of sanity. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| We're clipping that and sending it to my mom. | ||
| Thanks, Gov. | ||
| We'll see you on the trail. | ||
| All right. | ||
| God bless. | ||
| Take care. | ||
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