Sept. 27, 2023 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
33:48
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
|
Alright, people. | |
| We are live here at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. | ||
| About an hour outside of Los Angeles. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Dave Rubin has returned to the scene. | ||
| Returned to California. | ||
| Commie Callie. | ||
| And I have to tell you, the place is an absolute dump. | ||
| Simi Valley, absolutely beautiful. | ||
| The Reagan Library, absolutely beautiful. | ||
| I haven't been inside yet, but I've been here before. | ||
| It's a truly gorgeous day out. | ||
| LA itself, which is where we're staying, and we spent a couple hours this afternoon between the homeless and the grotesque amount of dirt and garbage on the streets and all that stuff. | ||
| You get it, but that's not what I want to really talk about today. | ||
| I actually am glad to be here. | ||
| Obviously, Republican debate number two is tonight. | ||
| The shadow that I suppose looms large is that Donald Trump is not here. | ||
| Once again, I'll talk a little bit about that in a few minutes. | ||
| And I kind of want to go through just like some pregame thoughts on each one of the candidates, kind of what they have to do. | ||
| If anyone else actually has a chance here and kind of grade what people have done, what they're going to do going ahead. | ||
| Interestingly, so we're doing this really obviously all on the fly from the Rumble booth right here, but all of the mainstream media booths. | ||
| We're the only online media booth here. | ||
| So this is this is really the future, right? | ||
| Like everyone knows it. | ||
| Everyone gets it. | ||
| It's why Rumble has been under assault for the last week. | ||
| Some of the Russell Brand stuff and everything else. | ||
| It's like, I can say whatever I want here. | ||
| Well, you guys can't quite see it. | ||
| You know, we'll post some pictures of it and we'll take some video. | ||
| But there's about 20 booths just about 15 feet away from me on the other side of the street right here of all the mainstream media outlets. | ||
| And of course, you're getting very overly prepared people. | ||
| We just scribble a couple things down on a piece of paper and Phoenix says to me, Dave, have at it and we see what happens, right? | ||
| But you're going to get an honest assessment, as honest as I can possibly be, Uh, relative to what's going on here today and what to expect and all that. | ||
| But interestingly, you might just find some of this interesting. | ||
| So all the main, uh, mainstream outlets are right here. | ||
| Kellyanne Conway is right over there. | ||
| I'm not sure who she's working for right now, but Karl Rove is just about 15 feet away right now. | ||
| probably can hear me right now. | ||
| Uh, he, maybe he's working for Fox, I guess, these days. | ||
| I would love to know, uh, we turned a little bit, maybe, maybe, uh, I would | ||
| love to know, you know, Donald Trump often says that Ron DeSantis is in it | ||
| with Karl Rove, Ron DeSantis has said that he met Karl Rove once, uh, Donald | ||
| Trump did work for, or Karl Rove did work for Donald Trump. | ||
| Maybe we can get Karl over here. | ||
| If Karl wants to swing by, Brock or one of you guys, looks like Karl's wrapping up. | ||
| If Karl wants to swing by and say hi, that would be great. | ||
| Let's see if we can snag him and come on by. | ||
| We'll see what happens. | ||
| Phoenix, go for it. | ||
| Let's see what happens. | ||
| If he wants to jump on here, we can settle this. | ||
| Once and for all, whether Karl Rove is more in it with Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. | ||
| But anyway, tonight, while Phoenix is working on that, he's going right now, so we will see if we can grab Karl Rove right now. | ||
| But while we're doing that, the guys that are here tonight, so first off, I just found this out a second ago. | ||
| Doug Burgram is here again. | ||
| Remember Doug from the last debate, who actually was pretty decent, but he had hurt himself playing basketball like the night before? | ||
| He's here again. | ||
| Who knew? | ||
| Very exciting. | ||
| So we'll see what happens with him. | ||
| Then we've got the usual suspects. | ||
| Chris Christie, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ron DeSantis, and Tim Scott. | ||
| And we will see how everybody does. | ||
| Did we get Karl Rove? | ||
| We got the no. | ||
| We got the no from Karl. | ||
| What did he say? | ||
| What did he say? | ||
| Oh, he's a Fox News contributor. | ||
| He can't do the Rubin Report on the free internet. | ||
| But, oh, that's nice to hear. | ||
| He did give Phoenix a strong, solid handshake. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| He's contractually obligated. | ||
| But in some respects, you guys get it. | ||
| That sort of, even that little moment right there, and that was obviously completely unscripted, that's sort of the problem right now between mainstream media and what's happening online. | ||
| Like, we can do things on the fly. | ||
| It's not scripted. | ||
| I'm not looking at a teleprompter or anything else. | ||
| I'm just talking to you. | ||
| As I always do. | ||
| These guys, it's scripted. | ||
| You can only talk to this person or that person. | ||
| There's Kellyanne Conway over there. | ||
| We'll see who else. | ||
| CNN is over there. | ||
| I don't know that guy's name. | ||
| Kind of pudgy, asexual guy. | ||
| Who is that? | ||
| The pudgy asexual guy. | ||
| It could be anyone on CNN. | ||
| Anyway, he's over there, but his producer's got a mask on, so that's exciting. | ||
| Anywho, I want to throw to two clips, actually, from things that happened over the last couple days before we get fully into the debate stuff. | ||
| Oh, and by the way, we will be live immediately after the debate. | ||
| That'll be 8 p.m. | ||
| Pacific Time, which is 11 a.m. | ||
| Eastern Time. | ||
| I'll be live right here with Patrick Bet-David and with Larry Elder. | ||
| And Larry Elder was hoping to be here. | ||
| He's actually in a lawsuit with the RNC because he believes that he actually qualified For the last debate, and they didn't let him in, so I thought he would be the perfect guest for this. | ||
| So the two of them will join me for a half hour, then PBD is heading back to the free state of Florida. | ||
| Carol Markowitz from the New York Post is going to join us, and we'll see who else shows up. | ||
| My God, it's Robert Barnes. | ||
| Robert Barnes from Viva Barn Law is here. | ||
| Robert, you want to wave to the camera? | ||
| You want to wave to... The camera's right there. | ||
| You can wave to the people on Rumble. | ||
| No, you have to get in the frame of the camera. | ||
| Look at this guy. | ||
| He's going to wave. | ||
| Wave to the people. | ||
| How you doing, brother? | ||
| Good to see you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good to see you. | |
| Wave to the people. | ||
| What do you think is going to happen tonight in under 30 seconds? | ||
| DeSantis needs a big win. | ||
| Are you in frame? | ||
| Are you in frame? | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Barnes is taking a seat. | ||
| My God, we do everything on the fly here. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Let me handle the... I'm going to handle the two clips that we were going to throw to, and then Barnes is going to join me for some analysis. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, and Viva's here too, and the whole crew. | ||
| Oh, and Viva. | ||
| Wow, Viva's live streaming on local as well. | ||
| We're live streaming on Roblox. | ||
| It's a lot. | ||
| All right, you know what? | ||
| Let me do the two clips real quick, and then we'll get to Robert over here. | ||
| So the two clips I wanted to show you, one of them is Fauci in the last day or two has really been going hard on DeSantis. | ||
| And basically, he has been saying that DeSantis, by criticizing him, and as you know, if you criticize DeSantis, that means you're criticizing science. | ||
| If you criticize DeSantis, you're basically calling for violence. | ||
|
unidentified
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You're being demonized, as I say, on the right, in a kind of unhinged, dangerous manner. | |
| I just want to play you something that Ron DeSantis said about you last year. | ||
| Have a listen. | ||
| Because, to me, it looks like he's inciting violence. | ||
| I wonder what your reaction is when you hear someone saying you should be attacked. | ||
| Well, you know, it's a complicated issue, but I have become By people who know nothing about me, who don't investigate what I've said I've been done, I become the symbol of what the far-right extremists feel that I'm the one who had to, in an uncomfortable way, I wasn't pleased with that, I wasn't happy to do it, that I had to publicly disagree with the President of the United States. | ||
| That was very painful for me because I have a great deal of respect for the Presidency of the United States. | ||
| But I felt in order to just maintain my own personal and professional integrity and my responsibility to the American public, I had to say it like it was and I had to do it publicly. | ||
| That triggered a degree of negativity towards me on the part of the far right that all of a sudden, when you have anger, In some cases, maybe justifiable anger of one ideological group against the other. | ||
| You need a symbol like somebody has got to be the object of the anger. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But it's not just crazy. | |
| I mean, that's a man who wants to be president. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| But what I'm saying, I'm going to get to that. | ||
| What happens is that if you become the symbol of the object of people's anger, even people people who know nothing about you know the fact that in my | ||
| career I've been involved in saving literally millions of lives that people | ||
| hello forget that is that I become that symbol and then when they say something | ||
| like that you get somebody who doesn't know anything at all about me who's | ||
| crazy says wow I'm gonna go get that person or that person should be killed. | ||
| So I believe I said stoking violence against DeSantis Thank you. | ||
| My lawyer over here was correcting me on that. | ||
| But Fauci saying that DeSantis is stoking violence against him and that he saved millions of lives. | ||
| Robert, you're a pretty factual guy. | ||
| I don't think there's any evidence. | ||
| that Fauci actually saved millions of lives. | ||
| Is there? | ||
| Have you seen that study? | ||
| And especially now that we're finding out today that he was secretly in cahoots with the CIA | ||
| to cover up the fact that he was complicit in the origin of this virus to begin with | ||
| that took millions of lives. | ||
| So either took or, I mean, just talk to all the people that are vaccine injured. | ||
| The reason I really wanted to show you that clip, you guys know my feelings about Fauci, obviously, but I wanted to show you that clip because it's this constant ratcheting up of the rhetoric. | ||
| And we're going to hear a lot of rhetoric in the building behind me tonight. | ||
| And although I did not have a plan on having you on the show, I mean, rhetoric, you're a showman type. | ||
| I always think you're like the lawyer showman. | ||
| That's how I sort of frame you in my mind. | ||
| What do you think has to happen tonight in terms of rhetoric with these guys to change? | ||
| Or what do you think is generally about Fauci first on the rhetoric? | ||
| Fauci is a criminal who wants to escape the responsibilities and accountability. | ||
| I mean, he's a criminal at every level. | ||
| He was a criminal because he's responsible for why COVID-19 ever existed, because of his complicity in continuing to do illicit bioweapon research through China, and then covering it up and lying to the world about it. | ||
| Now we know the CIA whistleblowers are disclosing this. | ||
| Then he compounded that with all of his erratic, sporadic orders, do a mask, don't do a mask, do a mask, don't do a mask, dance Milgram, live Milgram experiment routine, which millions of people are injured and died around the world. | ||
| On top of the depression, on top of the lost wages. | ||
| On top of all the disaster he did with AIDS. | ||
| This guy's been one disaster after the other after the other. | ||
| And it's probably, you know, we're here at Reagan Library, Reagan's greatest regret is seeing what Fauci turned out to be. | ||
| Instead of being the good Italian-American boy from New York, he ended up being a corrupt Hollywood-style... | ||
| You know, I'm very sympathetic to the Brooklyn accent. | ||
| I am from Brooklyn. | ||
| I'm sympathetic to the old school Brooklyn accent, but all right, you know, before we get into what's going to happen behind us in a couple hours, let me throw to one other clip. | ||
| Cause there was this viral moment a couple of days ago on the Patrick, bad David podcast. | ||
| And as I mentioned, Patrick will be joining me for the post game. | ||
| After this, but he had Carrie Lake on and she was criticizing DeSantis over locking down beaches and forcing mandates and masks and vaxes and this thing really, really went viral. | ||
| We then edited a little something that she's probably not thrilled with. | ||
| It's a quick hit. | ||
| You'll see. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let us not forget that DeSantis also shut the beaches down. | |
| DeSantis took a page out of Gavin Newsom's playbook. | ||
| Despite what he says, he shut the beaches down. | ||
| Hold up. | ||
| Wait a minute. | ||
| Something ain't right. | ||
| We don't want them gathering, and I see they do gather, including on beaches and including in restaurants. | ||
| All right, so we obviously added in Trump calling for DeSantis to close beaches as Carrie Lake was saying that DeSantis closed beaches. | ||
| DeSantis is not denying that the first few weeks he did some things that he regrets. | ||
| So this is actually perfect that we have you here because we actually like each other. | ||
| We have no problem doing shows together but you're on the Trump side of this thing. | ||
| I'm on the DeSantis side of this thing. | ||
| My frustration, I know that Trump was a very good president and if he's the nominee I'm gonna vote for him. | ||
| My frustration Has been the lying around COVID and Florida, what Carrie was doing there, that somehow DeSantis wasn't the best governor in the nation. | ||
| I guess some people could say maybe it was Kristi Noem, but like that, that what we know to be true from two years ago seems to be flipped on its head. | ||
| Do you think that's a fair criticism coming from someone that the Trump guy? | ||
| I mean, I think as a whole, everybody, I was unsatisfied with everybody's response to COVID. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Some were better or worse at key junctures. | ||
| And DeSantis was particularly good in 2021 forward. | ||
| I thought he was good midway through 2020 to the end. | ||
| And then 2021 forward, when he brought in a great insurgent general, that's when I thought he really, he did well. | ||
| And what I would love, like if I was in DeSantis' camp, I'm the governor. | ||
| I got, I got control. | ||
| Other people don't. | ||
| He's opened up a state grand jury into whether Pfizer lied to the people of Florida, whether Moderna lied to the people of Florida. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I agree with you that his best argument is how he handled COVID. | ||
| Go in and do that grand jury. | ||
| Expose Pfizer for the criminals that they are. | ||
| Maybe even expose Fauci for the criminals he is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And make and put it on broad scale. | ||
| That's what I think DeSantis is at his best. | ||
| So when you hear, though, Carrie Lake, who's obviously a surrogate, who was just here a moment ago, or you hear Trump saying that New York was better than Florida on COVID, which is obviously patently untrue, and Trump used to say it himself, do you just kind of let that go because that's Trump being Trump? | ||
| And I see that as politics of the campaign. | ||
| In other words, efforts to muddy the waters on each other's record concerning it. | ||
| And I think there's aspects of DeSantis' record that could have been a lot better on COVID. | ||
| I think there's aspects of Trump's record that could have been a lot better on COVID. | ||
| And that's where my advice to both camps has been focus on what you can do now. | ||
| Now, Trump is kind of a little bit of a buy. | ||
| He can only talk about what he's going to do. | ||
| So he can talk about different aspects of vaccine mandates and reinstatement and so on and so forth. | ||
| But DeSantis has an edge that very few candidates have. | ||
| He's the actual governor. | ||
| Use that. | ||
| Rather than re-litigate 2020, go in and say, here's what I'm going to do right now. | ||
| Things that will universally be appealing to the Republicans and Independents. | ||
| Yeah, why don't we do like 20 seconds on each of the guys. | ||
| So I think we have your assessment of DeSantis. | ||
| Trump isn't here. | ||
| Would you have liked to have seen Trump here to defend the record? | ||
| Putting aside that I get what the polls say, I had Jordan Peterson on after the last debate and what he said is in a healthy democracy you would be debating these ideas. | ||
| Meaning Biden would debate JFK and Trump would debate DeSantis and the rest of them. | ||
| I agree with that. | ||
| Well, in fact, the one person I think, I get Trump, he's ahead, so he sees no utility to it, and he's got a personal grief with Fox at the current time. | ||
| So that's really how I take that. | ||
| But a guy that they should invite is the guy that Democrats won't allow debate. | ||
| Invite Robert Kennedy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why not? | |
| I mean, I get to Republican debate, but add Robert Kennedy highlighting how Joe Biden is scared to debate him. | ||
| Put him up there. | ||
| I have said many times, I think I said it to RFK's face himself, like, he'll basically be a moderate Republican by the end of this. | ||
| In essence, he is. | ||
| Well, his father was, his uncle was. | ||
| He's an old school Democrat. | ||
| Let's give you, I'm going to give you 20 seconds on each of these guys. | ||
| Did you, I did not know that Doug Berggren was even going to be here, but he's back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you believe it? | |
| What are you making of it? | ||
| 20 seconds. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, these candidates are going nowhere fast. | ||
| In other words, if you're going to go from 1% to 5% and somehow be relevant, be significant the way Vivek has, you need a marketing campaign like Vivek. | ||
| None of these guys have. | ||
| That's why they're going nowhere. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So what do you, what do you make of Vivek? | ||
| I think Vivek needs to continue, like Vivek's in one advantage over everyone else. | ||
| He doesn't have to worry about donors. | ||
| So consequently he can use tonight solely to talk to voters. | ||
| He needs to boost his poll ratings. | ||
| He did okay in the first debate. | ||
| He held his own, which is more than what they expected for a guy doing his first ever debate, but he needs to step it up. | ||
| If he wants to be that sort of Trump substitute vote, if you will, for those people, he needs to ramp it up. | ||
| What do you make of the idea that he's kind of just running as celebrity apprentice contestant, like? | ||
| I think his goal is to one, I think he got ticked off about the wokesters coming after him. | ||
| The reality is he'd probably be chilling out doing making money on the beach if they wouldn't have harassed him. | ||
| They harassed him so he decided screw you guys and now he's gonna see how much he can get in politics and he's trying to leverage this campaign into some future long term. | ||
| I think that's a fair assessment. | ||
| Chris Christie. | ||
| Uh, Christie's, he's got such a low ceiling. | ||
| I mean, Christie's whole thing is, I hate Trump more than anybody. | ||
| I hate Trump more than anybody. | ||
| I hate Trump more than anybody. | ||
| And it's like, okay, we get it. | ||
| But that gets you to 10 points. | ||
| It can't get you above 10 points. | ||
| I think he'd be happy at 10 pence. | ||
| Pence, you know, did better, I thought, tactically speaking. | ||
| In other words, he was aggressive, he was impassioned, he was—but, you know, how is he going to outdo Nikki Haley and DeSantis? | ||
| That's who he's competing with for the non-Trump vote. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's—because there's a portion of the vote that's the anti-Trump vote, that's who Chris Christie's trying to monopolize, but that's a very small constituency. | ||
| There's more of a non-Trump vote. | ||
| About half the Republican Party is open to voting for someone else. | ||
| And that's who they're competing for, and that's who Pence really needs to do a lot better with. | ||
| Coming out with how you hate populism I don't think is the best way to get. | ||
| Last couple real quick. | ||
| Nikki, she's still my dark horse in that she's a pro, was a great governor, was a great ambassador under Trump at the U.N., U.S. | ||
| ambassador, and I think people kind of generally like her, even though I know a lot of the Trump people really seem to hate her on foreign policy, even though he was her She was his ambassador. | ||
| I mean, I call her Neocon Nikki, so I'm not a fan. | ||
| But from a tactical perspective, she did the best of the first debate. | ||
| Got the most confidence of voters that were looking for an alternative to Trump. | ||
| Got the most confidence of donors that are looking for the alternative to Trump. | ||
| I see tonight's debate as really DeSantis versus Nikki Haley in terms of establishing that next food. | ||
| Who deserves that second level? | ||
| DeSantis had it. | ||
| He's kind of lost it a little bit. | ||
| Nikki Haley grabbed it. | ||
| Can she continue that momentum or does she sink backwards? | ||
| And, uh, Tim Scott, will his girlfriend be here? | ||
| Yeah, that, and can he talk louder? | ||
| I mean, the thing is, I mean... And my God, Patrick, Matt, David, the whole internet is here. | ||
| He'll be with us in a couple hours. | ||
| Holy cow. | ||
| The, I mean, it, you know, someone just to be at least a little bit more entertaining and engaging. | ||
| I mean, that, that look, uh, you know, that, you can't do that in a debate. | ||
| Who else? | ||
| Did I get through everybody? | ||
| That's, uh... Is Asa Hutchinson here? | ||
| No, Asa's gone. | ||
| Asa's gone. | ||
| What a lame-o. | ||
| God bless teachers. | ||
| God bless teachers. | ||
| You come to a Republican debate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're talking about teachers. | |
| No, I know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Teachers! | |
| We're Republicans. | ||
| We hate teachers. | ||
| Yeah, public school teachers suck. | ||
| They're terrible. | ||
| It's a problem in America. | ||
| Robert Barnes, what can we pimp out? | ||
| Viva Barnes Law. | ||
| VivaBarnesLaw.locals.com. | ||
| All right, thank you, my friend. | ||
| Absolutely, great to be here. | ||
| Good to see you. | ||
| Good to see you. | ||
| All right, that's what we do on the fly. | ||
| You can walk across the camera. | ||
| Yeah, this isn't network news. | ||
| Like Biden stumbling after an interview and he doesn't know that he's supposed to sit there, that's what you get. | ||
| So look, obviously Barnes and I don't see eye to eye on this Trump-DeSantis thing, for sure, for sure. | ||
| I do concede, by the way, that Trump is way ahead. | ||
| If polls have any meaning whatsoever at this point, and it's really hard to gauge whether they do, remember, A big red wave is coming, and then obviously that didn't happen. | ||
| But Trump is in essence the incumbent here. | ||
| Putting aside numbers for a second, I do agree with the notion that I mentioned from Jordan Peterson after the last debate, which is that in a healthy democracy, Put aside, I'm winning, you're losing, I don't have to talk to number two, I was the president, they stole it from me, I'm being indicted. | ||
| Put aside all of that, right? | ||
| Put aside every personality here, put aside Trump and DeSantis, everything else. | ||
| To me, in a healthy democracy, The only way we will actually ever truly understand what we are, who we are, where we're going, what a healthy civilization should look like, would in essence be to really talk about those ideas. | ||
| And unfortunately right now, because of the nature of the polls, because maybe of the nature of just how Trump wants to act in this whole thing, or I think to some degree he's a little afraid to defend some of his record, particularly against DeSantis, we're not doing that. | ||
| And again, it doesn't have anything to do with them. | ||
| You could do the same version of this on the Democrat side, right? | ||
| Joe Biden has a real challenger right now in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | ||
| He's polling basically at 20% within the party and for all the problems Of the Republicans, and the Republicans have a whole bunch of problems, and the RNC has a whole bunch of problems, and everything else. | ||
| The DNC is fully rigging this thing. | ||
| Now, Biden, obviously, if he's alive and walking and they can get him out there, Weekend at Bernie style, he's going to be the nominee. | ||
| Although I absolutely am convinced they're figuring out a way to make it be Newsom. | ||
| And Newsom is supposed to be here, by the way, today. | ||
| And I swear to you, if he is anywhere near me, I will try To talk to him on camera because I think he is the devil incarnate. | ||
| But anyway, the point is with the DNC... | ||
| They are changing the rules as this whole primary process is going on so that Robert F. Kennedy basically can't get any votes. | ||
| If any of the candidates, this is a rule that they put into place, RFK has talked about it, if any of the candidates even go to the early primary states like Iowa, for example, then the votes will go to the incumbent, go to Joe Biden, because they know Joe Biden doesn't have to campaign. | ||
| So if RFK goes there to make his case to the Democrat voter of Iowa, they will actually give Those votes to Biden. | ||
| That's how deeply corrupt that side is. | ||
| And I suppose what my point would be is, those of us who are not crazy leftists, those of us who are walking away from the Democrat Party, those of us who are maybe Democrats like RFK's uncle, JFK, and those of us that care about America, those of us who are completely apolitical and everything else, we have a chance to be a little bit better, right? | ||
| To actually debate ideas. | ||
| And that would be my challenge, I suppose, to Donald Trump. | ||
| He should be here today. | ||
| It's as simple as that. | ||
| It does not matter whether I happen to think DeSantis is the better choice at this moment or not, or whatever you think about the specific people. | ||
| Like, if you are making your case, I'm going to be the guy that's going to go against Chinese President Xi, and I'm going to be the guy that stands up to Putin and Kim Jong Un and all of these things. | ||
| That's what I'm going to be, right? | ||
| I want to be the leader of this nation. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And defend your constitutional rights and the Bill of Rights and all that stuff. | ||
| I think it's incumbent on you. | ||
| I think that you have a duty, actually, to get up there and defend your ideas and not just, you know, occasionally show up at a pizza shop or whatever he's been doing lately. | ||
| That's my personal take on it. | ||
| But I want to just go through some of the other candidates, give you my take myself. | ||
| How long do we have, guys? | ||
| I've got about 13 minutes, so I'll try to do two or three minutes on each of them. | ||
| I'll hold DeSantis to the end. | ||
| So, Nikki, I really think, is the dark horse right now. | ||
| Now, I've interviewed her several times. | ||
| I like her personally. | ||
| I disagree with her on the foreign policy stuff. | ||
| I do believe that you have to speak softly and carry a big stick, but this idea of really just endlessly pouring more money into Ukraine and keeping this war non-war going and funding it like the average American is just over it. | ||
| We did a story on the show the other day we've given them at last check it was something like 116 billion for now all sorts of other things that have nothing to do with military For buying grain and working with their farmers and infrastructure and funding all housing projects like a whole bunch of stuff and it's like if we are at war then declare war but I don't want to be at war and by the way if we were at war with them you know Putin's got nukes. | ||
| And do you want to be at war with a guy with nukes? | ||
| Because then we're basically in World War III. | ||
| So I think she has to clean up some of the foreign policy stuff to get any sort of inroad with the base. | ||
| But I think the average voter looks at her and says, there's a pretty successful governor of South Carolina. | ||
| She was U.S. | ||
| ambassador to the U.N. | ||
| under Trump. | ||
| She's well-spoken, she's bright, she has a clear vision. | ||
| Like, I think a lot of that plays, even if it doesn't play for like the internet portion of this. | ||
| So we'll see what she does tonight. | ||
| I would say Pence, the problem with Pence is that it's a little bit hard to figure out what year he's running in, right? | ||
| I always say he comes across as a caricature on the Simpsons of a generic Republican in 1994. | ||
| It seems to me he's running sort of to disassociate himself from Trump and January 6th and everything else. | ||
| Like to maybe clean up his image and his legacy a little bit but truly I have never in all these events that I go to and all the people that I talk to and hear from on the show and all sorts of I've never said heard from anyone who has said I I'm supporting Mike Pence. | ||
| He has the vision that I believe in for the future. | ||
| So I think he's maybe got one or two more debates in him just maybe because of you know, some level of institutional money or something | ||
| like that. | ||
| But I just don't see any real support there. | ||
| Uh, Chris Christie, I think, I think Barnes's take on Christie was right. | ||
| I mean, he's running just to bash Trump, right? | ||
| Chris Christie, nobody thinks he already tried this, right. | ||
| And he lost last time. | ||
| Again, it's a little bit of the Pence thing. | ||
| There's no group of people that are like, Chris Christie has the vision for the country and the future. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| There's no real support there. | ||
| And by the way, this is how politics works. | ||
| You get people on these stages who are there for a series of other reasons, which would bring me to someone like Vivek. | ||
| And I think Barnes actually, that was a Pretty freaking brutally honest answer right there. | ||
| That Vivek, in essence, is not really running for president right now. | ||
| Because if he was running, if you were running for president right now, if you were any of these guys on this stage and you're running for president, you gotta go after Trump. | ||
| You have to become the nominee. | ||
| And Vivek is always defending Trump and he's always going after DeSantis. | ||
| So it doesn't quite make sense there. | ||
| But I think what he's doing is brand building. | ||
| A lot of people say he wants to be a senator from Ohio. | ||
| I have no idea what his intentions are in that regard, but I think he's built himself into something that people know, and I think it's been quite effective online, so I absolutely give him credit for that, for whatever differences we might have. | ||
| Tim Scott, also I would put in that Pence bucket, that Christie bucket. | ||
| Where's the real support? | ||
| I've interviewed him. | ||
| I think he's a decent human being, and I think he's a good senator, and I think he really loves this country. | ||
| I don't think the tone quite works. | ||
| I think it's a little too soft and preachery, perhaps. | ||
| But either way, I just don't see the support. | ||
| Then we got Doug Bergrum. | ||
| Is it Bergrum? | ||
| It's Bergrum. | ||
| Bergman? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bergum! | |
| Bergum. | ||
| The fact that I don't know how to pronounce his name, and I just asked three other people in the biz, and nobody was quite sure. | ||
| God bless the guy. | ||
| Oh, and his leg is better than last time, so that's fantastic. | ||
| I mean, he hurt himself playing basketball. | ||
| I'm sympathetic to that. | ||
| But like, and I actually thought he did a pretty decent job. | ||
| He actually defended the Constitution. | ||
| He defended limited government. | ||
| He had one or two bad moments related to teachers unions, but like, this thing ain't happening. | ||
| Doug, I'm sorry. | ||
| And I'd be happy to sit down with you, maybe afterwards, because I think this thing is wrapping up tonight. | ||
| Who else did I miss? | ||
| Did I miss anyone else besides DeSantis? | ||
| Got everybody but DeSantis, I think. | ||
| I got Christie, we got Vivek, we got Pence, we got Nikki, we got Burgum. | ||
| Alright, so DeSantis. | ||
| So here's the deal with DeSantis. | ||
| Oh, and we just did Tim Scott? | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Okay, so look, here's the deal with DeSantis. | ||
| Guys, I've obviously, as a Floridian, as someone that moved two companies, a dozen people, To Florida during COVID and has seen what this guy has done to the state of Florida and done in terms of our economic growth and the growth of law enforcement. | ||
| We bring in the best of the best now from NYPD in Chicago. | ||
| These officers who don't want to work there anymore. | ||
| We give them bonuses to move down to Florida. | ||
| The infrastructure that we're building in Florida, like no income tax, all of those things, a super majority that is making Florida the strongest nation in the country, right? | ||
| This was a state that was blue, that was purple, that was red, like it was kind of all over the place. | ||
| It is the reddest of the red right now, and everything's working there, right? | ||
| That's why there's so much fire on him. | ||
| It's not just Trump from one side. | ||
| It's the Democrats from the other side. | ||
| It's Newsom. | ||
| It's MSNBC. | ||
| It's Fauci. | ||
| Everybody, that's why this election is so bizarre. | ||
| Everyone in a weird way is going after DeSantis. | ||
| And yet, I don't deny that there is probably some validity to the polls, right? | ||
| Now, DeSantis is going to every county in Iowa, 99 counties. | ||
| So look, if the election, which the first primary, guys, don't forget, it's still about five months away, January. | ||
| That thing happens, that first primary in Iowa, that thing happens, and if it's not Trump, all the polls, everything that we've all been screaming about, it all disappears overnight, which is why I keep telling everybody, calm down, relax, take a breath, patience. | ||
| I believe in doing the work on the ground, and I do see DeSantis doing that. | ||
| That being said, I am not Pollyannish. | ||
| He's got to make some major moves. | ||
| I think one of the things that he's suffering from is something that I coined on the show a week or two ago. | ||
| I think he's suffering from Tim Duncan syndrome. | ||
| And Tim Duncan syndrome is, you guys, for those of you that are basketball players, Tim Duncan was an amazing power forward on the Spurs for about 15 years. | ||
| I think he was a 15-time All-Star, five-time NBA champion, Multiple MVPs, multiple finals MVPs, all NBA, all the time. | ||
| Nobody really remembers him. | ||
| You never see a highlight reel of Tim Duncan. | ||
| Nobody ever really talks about the guy. | ||
| He lived in a time of Kobe, of Shaq, of major, shiny Hollywood stars. | ||
| And doesn't that feel a little bit like DeSantis? | ||
| He's out there doing the work every single day. | ||
| What is the biggest, and I welcome this in the comments and anywhere else that you guys can get us, what would be the biggest criticism you have of him? | ||
| Now I see from the Trump people that he's running too early and he's not backing Trump. | ||
| OK, I suppose that is a type of criticism. | ||
| But what is the criticism on policy? | ||
| Actually, if anything, if you're if you're a true conservative, if you're if you were, I would say more conservative than even me, I would have a criticism of him, which is that the 15 week abortion ban that we had in Florida, I think was just fine. | ||
| He's moved it to six weeks. | ||
| Now, that would work for the base that that wants that six week heartbeat bill. | ||
| That Trump is not. | ||
| Trump called it, I believe his quote was, he called it horrible, uh, just a week or so ago with Maria Bartiromo. | ||
| So these, was that, was it Maria or it might've been Brett Baier, that one. | ||
| There's a lot of interviews these days. | ||
| Anyway, all of the policy stuff aside and everything else, what clearly DeSantis needs is he needs some kind of zeitgeist moment. | ||
| He needs something to kind of capture the imaginations. | ||
| It's an unfortunate reality, I suppose. | ||
| We live in a time where competency and doing a good job and making sure that the security state | ||
| or the banks or big pharma, he's doing all the work to keep them out of your life | ||
| as much as possible, more than any other public official that I've ever seen. | ||
| But maybe that isn't enough. | ||
| You have to capture some level of imagination, right? | ||
| What is Trump better at doing than anyone? | ||
| Maybe literally in world history, he has captured the imagination of this base | ||
| that we always talk about. | ||
| And they think he is the savior. | ||
| Now, the question is, is he competent when he's doing it? | ||
| Well, he did a lot of good things, but the swamp did take him out in essence, and he believes the election was stolen. | ||
| Well, if you believe the election was stolen, even if you're up by 50 points, why wouldn't they steal it again? | ||
| You really have to think about that. | ||
| Like, these are all the things that I think you have to have an honest assessment, an honest look at. | ||
| You think, well, who could Trump surround himself with? | ||
| He's gone off on everybody that's ever worked for him. | ||
| So who can he bring in to drain the swamp this time? | ||
| DeSantis has shown, he has said, I mean, and again, correct me in the comments, give me one policy that DeSantis didn't set out to do. | ||
| Say, I'm going to do this. | ||
| I'm going to get woke out of schools. | ||
| I'm going to fight Disney. | ||
| We're going to get ESG out of our Florida institutions and banking, all of these things. | ||
| And he's done all of them. | ||
| So that's the calculation for everybody. | ||
| And I get it. | ||
| We may not live in a time When people want the most functional thing, they might want the show, right? | ||
| I, one of the phrases that I mentioned on the show all the time, kayfabe, right? | ||
| K-A-Y-F-A-B-E. | ||
| Kayfabe. | ||
| Kayfabe is the concept of professional wrestling. | ||
| Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, Jake the Snake Roberts, Jimmy Superfly, Snooka. | ||
| The idea that you would watch this fake reality and we'd all be watching and it was scripted, but we'd be having human emotions about it. | ||
| And we're sort of all in the show right now. | ||
| And I think we have a chance maybe to fix this thing with some competency and decency. | ||
| Uh, but all of that being said, I'm psyched to go in there. | ||
| I want to hear from these guys. | ||
| We'll see if I can get, if I can get any of them for some on the fly interviews. | ||
| And I would say more importantly than anything else, even if you would disagree with everything I've said here, uh, I, I hope that you guys can see, you know, there's, there's a lot of. | ||
| What one man called what one orange man used to call fake news over there, right? | ||
| There's a lot of like pre-packaged stuff with people that are just reading scripts for corporations and everything else. | ||
| But then there's this whole other thing happening online, whether it's because you watch me or you watch Crowder or Rogan or Russell Brand or Glenn Greenwald or whatever the equivalents on the other side are. | ||
| A bunch of people that are trying to roughly figure it out and figure out a way for a country of about 350 million people to be a little bit better than it is and stop this ever encroaching government from taking from some and giving to others and injecting you with things and everything else. | ||
| I think if we can all agree that maybe we have different ideas of who should be running that show or how we get there or anything else, then we can kind of fix some things. | ||
| So hopefully we'll hear some good ideas tonight about fixing some things. | ||
| That will be my goal. | ||
| And once again, we will be live immediately after with Patrick Bette David, with Larry Elder, who, as I said, is suing the RNC because they didn't let him at the last debate. | ||
| Carol Markowitz from the New York Post. | ||
| We'll see if any special guests come. | ||
| And you never know who's going to walk on. | ||
| at the Rubin Report. | ||
| Where's Karl? | ||
| There's Karl Rove again. | ||
| Rove is just one. | ||
| He's roving around. | ||
| You see what I did there? | ||
| Okay, guys. | ||
| We'll see you later. |
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