May 24, 2024 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
53:25
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Corruption is a cancer. | ||
| A cancer that eats away at a citizen's faith in democracy. | ||
| It saps the collective strength and resolve of a nation. | ||
| Corruption is just another form of tyranny. | ||
| When politicians can be bought, I was ready to prostitute myself. | ||
| When courts can be manipulated, When the media becomes a tool of propaganda, there you will find a society that is susceptible to manipulation. | ||
| There you'll find a society that loses control of its own destiny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
[Music] | |
| I'm Dave Rubin, and it is time for another Friday Roundtable extravaganza here on The Rubin Report. | ||
| We've got two first-time guests for you. | ||
| Joining me today are columnist at Fox News David Marcus and a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon Aaron Sebarium. | ||
| Gentlemen, welcome to the show. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| I have to say, guys, before we dive into this, it's very rare we put two first-time guests on the show, but both of you are on the very short list of people that, when I read their Twitter feeds, I don't think are completely insane, which is pretty much the highest compliment I can give anybody. | ||
| Why don't I let each one of you just say a word or two about the type of work you do before we dive into this week's story? | ||
| And I know that everyone on the internet is wondering why one of you is smoking a cigarette right now, which I thought was, Illegal and immoral and everything else. | ||
| So Marcus, I'll start with you. | ||
| Yeah, Dave Marcus. | ||
| I am a smoker. | ||
| I am a columnist for Fox News, Daily Mail, Human Events. | ||
| I've written in a lot of places. | ||
| I used to write a lot for the New York Post. | ||
| Author of the book, Charade, The COVID Lies That Crushed The Nation. | ||
| frequently on morning wire as well. | ||
| So yeah, you know, I basically kind of watch what's going on, | ||
| go talk to voters, go around the country and write what I think Americans | ||
| are thinking about and feeling. | ||
| Aaron. | ||
| I'm a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon. | ||
| I investigate institutional capture. | ||
| That's how I describe my beat, especially of law, medicine, and universities, although not only those. | ||
| And it has been a very busy beat since October 7th of last year in particular, unfortunately. | ||
| Indeed, indeed. | ||
| And you did get the coveted Elon Musk retweet on one of your tweets this morning. | ||
| We'll throw to that as I'm speaking. | ||
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| And now back to me. | ||
| All right, guys, let's dive into it. | ||
| The big story of the week and sort of the cancel culture or what might be the crumbling cancel culture situation. | ||
| is that Kansas City Chiefs' Harrison Butker gave a commencement speech, basically said, hey, women, maybe you want to think about being a mom. | ||
| That could be kind of good. | ||
| And then the machine went after him, but he did not collapse. | ||
| Here is a portion of the speech. | ||
| I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. | ||
| How many of you are sitting here now, about to cross this stage, and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? | ||
| Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. | ||
| I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabel, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. | ||
| I'm on this stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. | ||
| I'm beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all, Holemaker. | ||
| She's the primary educator to our children. | ||
| She's the one who ensures I never let football or my business become a distraction from that of a husband and father. | ||
| She's the person that knows me best at my core, and it is through our marriage that, Lord willing, we will both attain salvation. | ||
| I say all of this to you because I have seen it firsthand, how much happier someone can be when they disregard the outside noise and move closer and closer to God's will in their life. | ||
| Isabel's dream of having a career might not have come true, but if you asked her today if she has any regrets on her decision, she would laugh out loud, without hesitation, and say, heck no. | ||
| So we'll get to some of the reaction on that in just a second, but you can see why it would obviously trigger a certain set of people. | ||
| He's talking about God, he's talking about faith, he's talking about family, he's talking about having kids. | ||
| David, I suspect you were not triggered in any way by that speech, but were you surprised at the way this thing caught fire? | ||
| You know, I actually wasn't. | ||
| I wasn't triggered, but I was one of the very few conservatives, I think, who understood why so many people disagreed. | ||
| Like, I didn't really understand, like, why you'd be upset with him, but I do understand why there were women who sort of, like, pushed back. | ||
| I think especially in regard to the diabolical lie line, because it could come off as insulting. | ||
| Like, you know, you've bought this diabolical line and now you're a cat lady drinking a bottle of wine, right? | ||
| So, like, I got it. | ||
| Um, like why they were upset. | ||
| But yeah, I mean, the NFL had no business distancing themselves from this, right? | ||
| And thankfully, you know, he's not losing his job. | ||
| It's not 2012 anymore. | ||
| But yeah, I was glad to see him stand his ground, and I'm glad to see so many people support him and his free speech. | ||
| Yeah, Aaron, do you think this shows because he still got his job and so many people came out in support of him, and we'll show you a video in just a moment of his coach and quarterback supporting him, do you think it shows that the cancel culture thing does seem to be melting away to some extent? | ||
| I think it shows that the most extreme and obvious accesses of cancel culture are melting away. | ||
| I'm not really sure if that means the broader phenomenon is melting away because so much of cancel culture really happens behind the scenes through bureaucracy, often not even through explicit sanction or firing, right? | ||
| Just someone doesn't get a promotion and a contract's not renewed. | ||
| Someone's quietly pushed out of a job. | ||
| You know, is that stuff waning? | ||
| Maybe, but I would be wary about generalizing from high-profile people surviving cancellation to the conclusion. | ||
| I'd be careful about inferring from that that across the board there's been a reduction, right? | ||
| Because indeed, that was sort of the argument that pro-cancel culture people would make. | ||
| It's like, well, J.K. | ||
| Rowling is fine. | ||
| Yeah, but she has a billion dollars, so that's not really a good guide to what the average person is facing. | ||
| So yeah, I mean, look, it's good anytime someone survives something like this. | ||
| I just worry that people declare victory prematurely, let's say. | ||
| Right, the under-the-hood version of it that we can't see at these corporate structures because of DEI, so thus just passing over somebody or not hiring a certain person, etc. | ||
| That does jive. | ||
| Let me show you a video of Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid. | ||
| It's going to start with quarterback Patrick Mahomes and then the coach Andy Reid talking about Harrison Butker. | ||
|
unidentified
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I know Harrison. | |
| I've known him for seven years. | ||
| And I judge him by the character that he shows every single day. | ||
| And that's a good person. | ||
| That's someone who cares about the people around him, cares about his family, and wants to make a good impact in society. | ||
| When you're in the locker room, there's a lot of people from a lot of different areas of life, and they have a lot of different views on everything. | ||
| And we're not always going to agree, but there's certain things that he said that I don't necessarily agree with, but I understand the person that he is, and he's trying to do whatever he can to lead people in the right direction, and that might not be the same values as I have, but at the same time, I'm going to judge him by the character that he shows every single day, and that's a great person, and we'll continue to move along and try to help The guys are good with that. | ||
| They understand. | ||
| I mean, they understand how things work. | ||
| I mean, everybody's got their own opinion. | ||
| And that's what's so great about this country. | ||
| that will help out as well as eliminating those distractions outside the building as | ||
| well. | ||
| The guys are good with that. | ||
| They understand. | ||
| They understand how things work. | ||
| I mean, everybody's got their own opinion. | ||
| That's what's so great about this country. | ||
| You can share those things and you work through it. | ||
| That's what guys do. | ||
| I didn't talk to him about this. | ||
| I didn't think we needed to. | ||
| We're a microcosm of life here. | ||
| Everybody's from different areas, different religions, different races. | ||
| And so we all get along. | ||
| We all respect each other. | ||
| opinions, and not necessarily do we go by those, but we respect everybody to have a voice. | ||
| It's a great thing about America, man. | ||
| And we're just, like I said, a microcosm of that. | ||
| What do you tell them if they come to you with a concern about players speaking ill of women in | ||
| general? | ||
| Yeah, that hasn't happened. | ||
| I don't think he was speaking ill to women, but he has his opinions. | ||
| So, of course, right there, the reporter just making a comment that just simply didn't happen. | ||
| But the reason I wanted to show that clip is because there you have the quarterback and the coach both being like, hey, this is sports. | ||
| We're in a locker room. | ||
| People come from all walks of life, have all kinds of opinions. | ||
| It's all good. | ||
| And I think that we're now starting to maybe learn from athletes things that maybe some of our politicians and cultural tastemakers should have been telling us about for quite some time, dude. | ||
| Yeah, you know, aside from suddenly having the urge to By home and auto insurance, I thought that everything that, you know, they said there was obviously spot on. | ||
| And I agree with Aaron's point that this stuff does go on, as you said, under the hood. | ||
| But I do think that there has been a major change since, say, the height of cancel culture 2014, something like that. | ||
| And that change is that at that time, the lesson that corporations were learning was that if you offend the left, if you offend, quote unquote, oppressed groups, You're going to get protests. | ||
| There's going to be blowback. | ||
| It's going to be a problem. | ||
| It's going to hurt your bottom line. | ||
| So they just went completely in that direction. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But they didn't think that about Christians or white people or conservatives. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because that wasn't happening. | ||
| That's changed. | ||
| Bud Light learned that lesson. | ||
| Disney has learned that lesson. | ||
| And so now at least the rules are sort of being applied a little bit equally. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| I kind of wish it was none of it, right? | ||
| I kind of wish that I didn't have to think about politics when I buy breakfast cereal, | ||
| but at least it's a little more balanced now. | ||
| Right, Aaron, what do you-- - Yeah. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, no, I do agree with that. | ||
| I think that's right. | ||
| And the other thing I would say is that conservative institutions in particular have become less willing to cancel their own people, right? | ||
| There have been attempted kind of hits on conservatives in recent years that just haven't really worked because the institutions have kind of gotten tired of it. | ||
| They've realized this is all a game and they're just saying we're not going to play it anymore. | ||
| Now, I think you can I do think some amount of gatekeeping on both sides is | ||
| important. | ||
| And if we literally never canceled anyone, well, that would be a problem because you | ||
| don't want actual Nazis at mainstream think tanks or whatever. | ||
| But generally, look, I think people are learning. | ||
| And for better or worse, it's just harder to intimidate a kind of legacy conservative | ||
| institution into dropping someone than it used to be. | ||
| So that's another change. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Is the tricky part of that that we got so trigger happy or culture got so trigger happy | ||
| Canceling people that, you know, there's a difference between being, you know, deservedly losing your job because of something that you've done that's in due dereliction of your duty versus just taking some opinion that's a little bit outside of the norm or something to that effect. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I always define cancel culture as the disproportionate social and professional sanction for protected speech. | ||
| And the obvious next question is, well, what's disproportionate? | ||
| And I think the answer is, it depends partly on the content of the speech, but also, as you allude to, the kind of job someone has and the context in which the speech is uttered. | ||
| So, you know, if someone is supposed to be, say, I don't know, like the civil rights coordinator for a university, and they make highly inflammatory statements about Israel-Palestine, they're probably not going to do a good job in the current environment of being a civil rights coordinator at the university if they made those exact same statements, you know, on social media when they're, say, you know, a cashier at a grocery store. | ||
| That's a very different story, right? | ||
| And yet the people that are running most of these DEI departments are probably the most sort of neo-racist people we have in society. | ||
| David, I'll give you a last word on this one. | ||
| Again, I think the most important thing right now is that the rules apply to everybody. | ||
| Last month, there were three white employees of the Department of Education in New York City who won a multi-million dollar lawsuit because they were Uh, not given promotions because they were white. | ||
| So that's the first step. | ||
| Like wherever we are on this stuff, the first step is like, if we're going to have these things, they just have to be treated equally on all sides. | ||
| Mutually assured destruction. | ||
| 2024 is on its way. | ||
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| And now back to me. | ||
| All right, so let's jump over to some of the stuff going on in the Middle East. | ||
| There was an interesting video that was put out by Project Veritas, where they had, | ||
| they caught in essence, a Biden National Security Council advisor | ||
| saying some strange things as it pertains to Israel Apparently, this guy was caught. | ||
| He thought he was on a date with another dude and said some stuff that I'm fairly certain the Biden administration would not want out there. | ||
| Whether it's all true or he was just kind of, you know, pumping himself up, we don't know, but take a look. | ||
|
unidentified
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You're not going to continue to lie and bomb and kill all these people without facing serious consequences. | |
| But that is a second term decision to defend, not a first term, you know. | ||
| So we can't say now he'll probably do support. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| From the Jews. | ||
| Enough support that we can't get 270 electoral votes. | ||
| There are political calculations that are being made that I'm not making. | ||
| You know, whether, how do you, in like, I didn't want to go, but he could be much more forthright about saying no. | ||
| It's such a political risk to even say goodbye to him earlier this week. | ||
| We're not going to give him our bombs. | ||
| Are you under Jake Sullivan? | ||
| Like right under him? | ||
| So he's the National Security Advisor. | ||
| My boss is the Deputy National Security Advisor. | ||
| But she's the Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber. | ||
| Cyber has become so important now that we have a deputy who's like, you know, I'm under a curse. | ||
| If I didn't win again, he could be much more forthright about saying, "No, you had that terrorist attack October 7th, | ||
| and it was f***ing behind my back. | ||
| But we can come get you, and you're doing it." | ||
| We can't even really say that because it's all classified. | ||
| So he has to keep things quiet for now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm a little out of the game but first dates are not like they used to | ||
| Aaron, let me start with you here. | ||
| Used to be. | ||
| Let me start with you, Aaron. | ||
| The key part here is that he's implying that the administration will be much harsher against Israel if they win again. | ||
| But I think many Democrats thought Biden was the bulwark against the crazies in his own party. | ||
| Whether it's true or not what he's saying, it seems to me that that's turned out not to be true. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, there's sort of a divide, I think, among pundits, right, between those who believe that Biden's attempts to pressure Israel are coming from a fear of losing Michigan and other swing states, on the one hand, and those on the other who think it's primarily due to internal pressure from Democratic staffers and people in the national security bureaucracy. | ||
| I tend to lean towards the second explanation. | ||
| I'm sure both are involved, but generally, Biden is how old? | ||
| He's 81. | ||
| Yeah, he's 81. | ||
| On all these other cultural issues, put Israel aside for a minute, like trans or whatever, Does the guy have, like, sincere, genuine belief in all of the far-left intersectionality stuff? | ||
| He might not consciously think it's wrong, but I don't necessarily think he's a true believer, but he's very influenced by his staffers, and so I think that's where a lot of the left-wing tilt is coming from. | ||
| I don't necessarily think it's voters, although maybe in this case, voting pressures play a bigger role. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| I don't think we know, but David, isn't that the point? | ||
| Isn't that really the problem? | ||
| That we have no concept as to what Joe Biden believes, or at least can functionally speak about freely, or he's always worried that he's gonna get in trouble if he speaks extemporaneously, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| So whether this guy's pumping himself up or not, making it seem like he knows more than he knows, it's sort of irrelevant, because it's still hitting the broader point. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, well, we don't know that in regard to Joe Biden personally, but we know it about it is his administration and his administration is the Obama administration, right? | ||
| I mean, 90 of his top 100 picks were from the Obama administration. | ||
| I always think remember that picture when the when the Obamas were moving out of the White House and there's that photo and like Jen Psaki's in there. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| We'll throw it up right now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Remember that? | ||
| That is the Biden administration. | ||
| That is those people saying, we are going to fucking be back. | ||
| And when we get back, watch out. | ||
| And that's what we're seeing. | ||
| I've thought a lot about it. | ||
| Back during the Obama administration, there was a wonderful essay in commentary magazine by Henry now called the chessboard and the jigsaw puzzle. | ||
| And he basically argued that prior to Obama, American foreign policy was a chess game, right? | ||
| We had an opponent. | ||
| We used our pieces to control territory or to you know, influence territory, whatever it was, he argued | ||
| that Obama turned it into a jigsaw puzzle. | ||
| You know, Jake Sullivan and Blinken, they believe that every nation has a piece of this jigsaw puzzle. | ||
| And if we all just put it down on the table, there'll be peace and prosperity. The problem is, | ||
| obviously, that when we look at the picture of the jigsaw puzzle, | ||
| we see a democracy with free markets and free speech. | ||
| When Iran looks at it, they see a Muslim theocracy. | ||
| When China looks at it, they see economic domination. | ||
| So it just doesn't work. | ||
| It's classic leading from behind. | ||
|
unidentified
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And obviously, it's been a complete disaster. | |
| Aaron, do you have any hope that the Democrats or Biden or whatever is left of sort of the | ||
| not radical wing of the party, that it will be able to stop the more radical part of the | ||
|
unidentified
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party? | |
| I don't think it will stop it in the near term. | ||
| Now, I do think that there may be some Some limitations, some course correction eventually. | ||
| I would say on the chessboard versus jigsaw puzzle thing, part of why I'm a little pessimistic is that I think that analogy is good for two reasons, right? | ||
| The one that you mentioned, but the other is that you think about chess, right? | ||
| You can win in a lot of different ways in chess, and you can also play a chess game better or worse. | ||
| A jigsaw puzzle, you either complete it, it's perfect, or it doesn't work at all. | ||
| And I think that that kind of binary thinking and that sort of utopian desire for perfection animates both a lot of Far left foreign policy critiques of Israel, but also even the more moderate kind of internationalist can't-we-all-get-along maybe spirit of the establishment Biden foreign policy hands. | ||
| And because they share that kind of utopian spirit in common, I think it can be hard for the moderates to push back against the utopians, especially on an issue like Israel-Palestine, where in my own opinion, It's not the kind of thing that admits of a neat jigsaw-like solution. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's just a terrible conflict. | |
| There has been Fetterman and Torres, right? | ||
| I mean, there have been a few Democrats. | ||
| There's a ton of Democrats who are pro-Israel, and there have been a few who are vocally anti-campus craziness, all that stuff. | ||
| But yeah, I mean, I guess it is pretty much Fetterman and Torres. | ||
| Well, let me just ask you, David, one other thing as it relates to that, because you and I were on the same trip post-October 7th to Israel, and we met with all sorts of officials and politicians. | ||
| You asked quite good questions. | ||
| Your piece that you wrote after, we'll link to down below. | ||
| I thought it was excellent. | ||
| But what do you make of the confusion that the younger generation has as it pertains to Israel. | ||
| I mean, this video that we just showed you, I only mentioned that the guy was dating a guy because there is this weird queers for Palestine thing, which is very different than Palestine for queers. | ||
| And the only place in the Middle East, obviously, that has anything remotely close to liberal progressive values is the place that the liberals and progressives of America hate the most, and obviously that's Israel. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, you know, Aaron's certainly a lot closer to that age demographic than I am. | ||
| So, I mean, he might be in a better position to say, but I mean, I would certainly put some of it down to the fact that in the post-Cold War America, right? | ||
| Like, I was a kid during the Cold War and we were fighting, not physically, but we were fighting, right? | ||
| Sometimes physically. | ||
| Post-Cold War America, we made this choice to be very magnanimous. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| We were going to put everybody else first. | ||
| And there was some good reason for that. | ||
| We were the world's only superpower. | ||
| We thought it was the end of history. | ||
| We thought, you know, if China comes into the free market, of course, they'll end up just like Japan. | ||
| Didn't work out. | ||
| And I think that sort of through that, kids of that generation did not learn the same kind of USA, USA pride in the country that I grew up with. | ||
| And I think that some of that probably bleeds over into our support of Israel. | ||
| Yeah, I think the simplest way to compare that is for someone our age, if you watch Rocky IV, you knew who the good guy was and the bad guy was pretty simply. | ||
| Let me jump over to one other thing that happened, the big news out of the Middle East this week, which of course is that the Iranian president died in a helicopter crash. | ||
| We'll take some info from the Washington Free Beacon in honor of you, Aaron. | ||
| The Biden administration on Monday sent official condolences to the Iranian regime following a weekend helicopter crash that claimed the lives of its hardline president and foreign minister. | ||
| The United States expresses its official condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir Abdullam and other members of their delegation in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran. | ||
| State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement, As Iran selects a new president, we reaffirm our support for the Iranian people and their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms. | ||
| Raisi, a long-time hardliner who was close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was known for leading chants of death to America during public events in Iran. | ||
| In February, during a rally in which onlookers burned American and Israeli flags, he slammed the U.S. | ||
| for supporting the Zionist regime's crimes against humanity in Gaza. | ||
| I say to the enemies, you want to hear the word of the people? | ||
| These are the great people of Iran, Raisi was quoted as saying as the crowd chanted, death to America and death to Israel. | ||
| Raisi, who is known as the Butcher of Tehran, was one of the main architects of a 1988 massacre in Iran that killed around 5,000 regime opponents. | ||
| Raisi at the time served on the hardline government's death committee that issued death sentences to scores of political opponents. | ||
| Raisi was sanctioned by the U.S. | ||
| government in 2019 for his role in committing mass human rights abuses over three decades. | ||
| Aaron, that doesn't sound worthy of condolences from the U.S. | ||
| government, but I'm old school. | ||
| I watched Rocky IV. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, part of this is just that the Biden, because it's all Obama people, they still have this ridiculous idea that we're going to be buddy-buddy with Iran. | ||
| I mean, I think that's implicit in a lot of this. | ||
| The other thing I would say, it goes back to the point about young people, right? | ||
| You were asking earlier, you know, can they, can Fetterman et. | ||
| co. | ||
| put a stop to this? | ||
| The reason that the Israel stuff and the Iran stuff and all of that is happening is in part because there's just a younger generation of Democrats. | ||
| And frankly, it's not only Democrats. | ||
| It's also a lot of people, you know, in the middle and even on the right who just are not as pro-Israel or philo-semitic as they used to be for lots of reasons. | ||
| But just the culture is shifting. | ||
| There's kind of a demographic title wave coming. | ||
| And I just, you know, we're not going to be As pro-Israel in a generation, because young people just aren't as pro-Israel. | ||
| And that's just that's just going to happen. | ||
| I know, I disagree. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I fundamentally disagree. | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I don't I don't see that happening at all. | ||
| I mean, I understand the groups that you're talking about. | ||
| And I think as far as the right goes, look, these are some very online people who are not making calls in the halls of power. | ||
| But but no, I think we'll have to see how this plays out. | ||
| But when you look at the overall polling, we're still at like 80 20 in favor of Israel. | ||
| I don't I don't think that's going to turn on its head. | ||
| And I do think that young people get a little my hope. | ||
| I mean, maybe I didn't, but I think most people get a little smarter as they as they get older. | ||
| And so, yeah, at least I hope you're wrong, man. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, I hope I'm wrong too. | ||
| I mean, the thing I've seen is that even among evangelicals who have traditionally been the strongest block of support for Israel, you see among the younger generation that it's not as strong as it used to be. | ||
| It's still obviously stronger among evangelicals than it is, you know, among other groups. | ||
| But like, just the moment you set the age filter to below 30, I think you get a different picture. | ||
| Now what could help with this is that because the woke left has so tied itself to the Palestinian cause, I mean, you know, I think that helps, right? | ||
| Anyone who's opposed to the woke left, like, is kind of almost de facto opposed to the really crazy Israel stuff. | ||
| That's probably one countervailing force. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I would also say that if you think that disconnecting the Jews from Israel is going to work out, then just wait till part two, which is obviously disconnecting Americans from America. | ||
| And then we have a real big problem on our hands. | ||
| But let's jump into some of the racehorse politics of the last week, because the numbers are looking quite good for a certain orange man at the moment. | ||
| We'll even go to MSNBC, because if they're showing it, then something must be pretty worrisome. | ||
| for Joe Biden right now. | ||
| Take a look at this. | ||
| These are the most recent numbers, April numbers. | ||
| Trump is up seven in Arizona. | ||
| Trump is up six in Georgia. | ||
| No, I'm sorry. | ||
| Sorry, my screen is a little screwy here. | ||
| Up six in Georgia. | ||
| Biden's up two in Michigan. | ||
| We talked about Michigan a moment ago. | ||
| Trump's up eight in Nevada. | ||
| Trump's up 10 in North Carolina. | ||
| What is he at? | ||
| He's up one in Pennsylvania. | ||
| And four in Wisconsin. | ||
| Look guys, I don't think I've shown these on the Rubin Report before, but in my advanced age I should be wearing these when I'm trying to read small numbers off the screen. | ||
| It's very depressing. | ||
| Dave, what do you make of this? | ||
| I mean, it seems like, oh, there you go. | ||
| Now you look like a real hack journalist. | ||
| I mean, it seems like all of the momentum's there. | ||
| I've been talking on the show about how all sorts of people in sports and culture seem to be breaking towards Trump, or at least breaking away from the Democrats. | ||
| My big fear is that there's gonna be no support for Biden the day before the election, and we're all gonna wake up the day after the election, and somehow he will have won again. | ||
| Well, somehow he will have won again if that happens. | ||
| We'll be owing to the fact that in those six states that you just listed, only about one-sixth or one-fifth of those votes are really in play. | ||
| So we're talking about a very small group of people. | ||
| And Democrats are very, very good, even by legal means, of going in and targeting those types of voters with the get-out-the-vote effort. | ||
| That having been said. | ||
| Trump is absolutely in the in the poll position here. | ||
| And Biden's completely collapsing. | ||
| I mean, Biden's only two messages are Trump is Hitler and don't look at your grocery bill. | ||
| I mean, that's that's all that the man has. | ||
| And you know, it's clearly not working. | ||
| I ran a column yesterday at Fox in which I argued that Yes. | ||
| If the GOP can attract Trump voters, Nikki Haley voters, and Larry Hogan voters, | ||
| not only can they have a very good 2024, but they can really have some generational power, | ||
| like we saw the Democrats have at the end of the 20th century, | ||
| because that's a big enough voting block A, and you're depriving Democrats of the oxygen that they need | ||
| of hegemonic control of the black vote, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| So I was very glad to see Haley make the endorsement yesterday. | ||
| Yunkin made the endorsement. | ||
| I'd like to see Larry Hogan, you know, not bend the knee, but just say, look, the guy's our | ||
| nominee. | ||
| So I'm very hopeful that we're going to get to the convention and it's going to be one big happy family and that there's a lot to be optimistic about. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| I think that's what I've been hitting on for the last two, three weeks here. | ||
| I think there is an opportunity for the widest political tent, probably in the last 30 years right now. | ||
| Trump's going to have to play it right and bring on the right people, especially the VP thing. | ||
| But I'm with you on that. | ||
| Aaron, what do you think? | ||
| Yeah, it's true that if the GOP were able to attract all those groups, it would have generational power. | ||
| I'm skeptical they're going to be able to pull that off. | ||
| But I do think, look, Trump's in a pretty good position. | ||
| And one reason why, which I think has often gone unremarked, is that because he's mired in all these indictments and there's gag orders, and because he was kicked off Twitter, I think the characteristics about Trump that most repel moderates, which is namely his just kind of habit to shoot from the hip and say crazy stuff, that's been kind of blunted. | ||
| And without that, and when that's less salient, and when there's no constant reminder of that, it's much easier for the public to focus on Biden's infirmity and the state of the economy and things like that. | ||
| So in some ways, I think kind of the push to censor Trump, both from the legal officials who've gone after him and from the big tech companies, Uh has really probably backfired spectacularly and if he wins in 2024 it's going to be one of the greatest cell phones for liberals of all time. | ||
| Yeah, it has fueled the fire. | ||
| To your point about some of these groups that traditionally don't vote Republican that are now, I want to show you a clip of Charlemagne Tha God. | ||
| I just call him Lenny. | ||
| I don't know what his last name is, but I can't call this guy Charlemagne Tha God with straight face, but he's very influential. | ||
| He went on The View. | ||
| He hates Trump, but listen to the struggle session as it pertains to whether he will vote for Biden or not. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why not endorse Biden? | |
| Because if I'm sitting here telling my listeners that, you know, you have somebody out there who is a threat to democracy, you have somebody out there who said they want to, you know, suspend the Constitution to overthrow the results of an election, you saw this person, you know, try to lead an attempted coup of this country, and I'm telling people that this guy is a threat to democracy. | ||
| Have you ever read Project 25? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's only two candidates out there. | |
| So if I'm saying that about this individual, the choice is clear, right? | ||
| And I've seen y'all do this on The View before. | ||
| Why do y'all need us to say this, if we don't feel comfortable saying it? | ||
| No, no, it's not that we need you to say it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think other folks need to hear. | |
| Because, you know, one of the things you... I'm sorry, I just jumped you. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| But one of the things that we've been talking about is the fact that getting facts I feel like I just spewed some facts! | ||
|
unidentified
|
difficult. I feel like I just viewed some facts. Yes, but we need you to do it on your show. | |
| Well, I think, well, the reality is I think both candidates are trash. So, because I'm, | ||
| but I am going to vote in November and I'm going to vote my best interest and I'm going to vote | ||
| who I think, you know, can preserve democracy. So if I think both candidates are trash and I don't | ||
| feel like, you know, endorsing one, would you rather me endorse an individual or endorse the | ||
| fact that, hey, we need to go out here and protect democracy? There's so many layers of how the view | ||
| is coming from another planet, but putting most of it aside for a second, David, I think he really | ||
| made your point quite well. He. | ||
| He couldn't say anything good about Joe Biden. | ||
| All he said are what I think are some confusions largely about Donald Trump, but then still refusing to do it even at that table. | ||
| I don't even think he said Biden's name once there. | ||
| No, he called him trash instead. | ||
| I mean, literally, right? | ||
| I mean, yeah, I mean, that is, That's that's if if that's an endorsement at all, I guess it's not. | ||
| But I mean, my goodness, if that if those are the people who are voting for Biden and who want him to win, then Joe Biden is in an awful lot of trouble. | ||
| And, you know, to go back to Aaron's point, especially about the lawfare, the other thing that the lawfare is really undermining is this whole notion that Donald Trump is the great threat to democracy, because Trump can turn around and say, you're putting your political enemies on trial. | ||
| And trying to send them to jail. | ||
| And the American people look at that and they go, that makes some sense. | ||
| So there's recent polling that shows there's a very, you know, what, like 53% of Americans say Trump's the greater threat. | ||
| 44 or 45% say Biden's the greater threat. | ||
| And the MSNBC cats are like, oh, my goodness, how can this be? | ||
| Well, this is how it can be. | ||
| Let's keep talking about the VP situation for just a second, because that does seem to be where if this wide tent thing's gonna happen, or if Trump is gonna be able to just grab some of the disaffected liberals, it seems like it's going to go through the VP. | ||
| Here he is at a town hall talking about Tim Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When Biden ran, he pledged he was going to pick a female vice president in 2020. | |
| What qualities are you looking for in your vice presidential pick? | ||
| Well, always the first quality has to be somebody that you think will be a good president. | ||
| Because if something should happen, you have to have somebody that's going to be a great president. | ||
| A lot of people are talking about that gentleman right over there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
[Applause] | |
| And he's been so great. | ||
| He's been such a great advocate. | ||
| I have to say, this is in a very positive way, Tim Scott, he has been much better for me than he was for himself. | ||
| I watched his campaign, and he doesn't like talking about himself, but boy does he talk about Trump. | ||
| And I said, you know, I called him, I said, Tim, you're better for me than you were for yourself. | ||
| But he's fantastic, and he's a fantastic person. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So someone who can step into the role. | |
| Most importantly, you have to view that. | ||
| Aaron, I feel like that's like the perfect Trump clip because he's saying something true, right? | ||
| You need someone that can step into the role. | ||
| And then of course he makes it about the fact that Tim Scott loves talking about him. | ||
| So it's just kind of like Trump 101 right there. | ||
| A lot of people seem to think it could be Tim Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's interesting. | ||
| On the one hand, if it were Tim Scott, that would, I think, signal a move away from the kind of aggressive populist policy platform that people associate with Trump's 2016 campaign. | ||
| Because I think Scott, you know, he's strong on the border and stuff like that, but he's pretty, you know, he's more pro free market, kind of a more of an old school Reagan, Republican on a lot of policy issues. | ||
| But I guess, yeah, you know, if the goal is to create as wide a tent as possible, it kind of may make some sense to pick a VP candidate who is not quite as populist, but who also importantly is not going to kind of alienate the populist constituency that Trump taps into. | ||
| And on that score, I don't know if Him or Haley would be better, although I tend to think Tim Scott would be a little better for not alienating the more populous types. | ||
| Well, since you mentioned Haley, let me throw to this other clip. | ||
| Nikki Haley just this week finally did announce that she is going to support Donald Trump. | ||
| She's been getting about 20% of the Republican primary vote, even though, in essence, Trump is the presumptive nominee at this point. | ||
| So she clearly represents some portion of the party. | ||
| Let's take a look. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So on these issues, these national security critical issues that you've described today, | |
| who do you think would do a better job in the White House, Joe Biden or Donald Trump? | ||
| As a voter, I put my priorities on a president who's going to have the backs of our allies | ||
| and hold our enemies to account. | ||
| Who would secure the border, no more excuses. | ||
| A president who would support capitalism and freedom. | ||
| A president who understands we need less debt, not more debt. | ||
| Trump has not been perfect on these policies. | ||
| I've made that clear many, many times. | ||
| But Biden has been a catastrophe. | ||
| So I will be voting for Trump. | ||
| Having said that, I stand by what I said in my suspension speech. | ||
| Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they're just going to be with him. | ||
| And I genuinely hope he does that. | ||
| So she did officially endorse him, and I think she's making a point there. | ||
| I know the base seems to hate her, at least the very online base seems to hate her, but she does represent some portion of the party. | ||
| Does that seem like the right move to you, David? | ||
| Yeah, she absolutely does. | ||
| I remember being on the ground in New Hampshire, and I had all these people posting at me, The Nikki Haley voters aren't real. | ||
| They're all Democrats. | ||
| And I'm literally talking to the Nikki Haley voters. | ||
| And I'm like, can I touch you? | ||
| Like, are you? | ||
| Like, they're real, right? | ||
| And they are significant. | ||
| You know, 15, 20 percent. | ||
| Note the very first thing that she brought up was foreign policy. | ||
| I think that Donald Trump has, in fact, been reaching out to her voters. | ||
| Not only has Donald Trump been much stronger in support of Israel, obviously, than Biden, who's consistently thrown them under the bus. | ||
| But look at Ukraine, right? | ||
| Trump was under incredible pressure from MAGA World and very online MAGA World to throw Ukraine under the bus. | ||
| He didn't. | ||
| He didn't. | ||
| He said to Johnson, hey, maybe we do it as a loan that maybe doesn't get, you know, and that was Trump. | ||
| Giving an olive leaf on the one issue where there is a lot of disagreement within the GOP, which is these foreign policy questions. | ||
| So I think Trump's doing that. | ||
| I don't think it'll be Haley. | ||
| I think Marco Rubio would probably be the more logical choice if he wants a hawk. | ||
| But yeah, I do think it probably rules out J.D. | ||
| Vance because I don't think that's where Trump wants to be on these foreign policy issues. | ||
| I just also think you can't go right to the base again. | ||
| You have to bring in these new people. | ||
| So I personally like JD. | ||
| I think he's been a fine senator, but I just don't see how that works. | ||
| Let me ask you one other thing, and then we're gonna end on some positive stuff, a little outside of racehorse politics. | ||
| Where do you guys stand on Tulsi Gabbard? | ||
| Because to me, that seems like the fairly obvious answer. | ||
| It doesn't mean it will be the answer, but it kind of seems like the right answer to me. | ||
| Aaron? | ||
| On VP, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I think, again, she would have the, if you want to extend an olive branch to the Haley voters, that is not who you would pick, right? | ||
| I think on foreign policy, she would just be alienating to anyone who's not kind of a hardcore isolationist populist. | ||
| I, look, I don't dislike her per se. | ||
| I, you know, she doesn't trigger me as much as some people, but just tactically, I'm skeptical that that would make sense. | ||
| Veteran, minority, female, ex-Democrat, currently in the military. | ||
| I think there's, and just her temperament, I just think there's a lot there. | ||
| You might be right though. | ||
| David, give me a couple sentences on that and then we'll jump. | ||
| Yeah, I just, I think that Gabbard having been a Democrat and sort of having the unique background that she has is sort of a novelty pick, | ||
| almost in the way that Palin was. | ||
| And you don't go with a novelty pick when you're in the lead. | ||
| You go with a novelty pick when you're not winning and you need to shake things up. | ||
| And I don't think Trump needs to shake things up that way right now. | ||
| All right, we shall see. | ||
| That's why I bring on other guests on the show to hear other perspectives. | ||
| I want to finish up with two clips. | ||
| One is from Alex Karp. | ||
| He's the current CEO of Palantir. | ||
| We've showed a couple clips of him lately, but I thought he just gave an excellent defense of the West and sort of just what freedom actually means and much more. | ||
| And he also looks like, I watched Ready Player One a couple days ago, and he looks like the guy who created the Oasis. | ||
| So he's just kind of fun to watch and listen to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There are lots of questions about why we are so active in defending the values of the West. | |
| Our belief that the West is a superior way to live and our ways of organizing around that are the reason why our products are transformative, the reason why we have the best people in the world, the reason why a Palantir degree, as it were, is much more valuable than an Ivy League degree. | ||
| Before the Ivy Leagues even, you know, embraced The thin, new, woke religion otherwise viewed as an intellectual cause, but in fact is a way of organizing things so that the greatest institutions of our time disappear and turn into discriminatory dysfunction. | ||
| Palantir is a counter-example, and I'm super proud of the results. | ||
| We are going to continue to execute, especially in the U.S. | ||
| Aaron, it's not just that he's got kind of fun hair. | ||
| He's just like laying out what we all know to be true. | ||
| These institutions have crumbled. | ||
| There is something worth defending in the West and we need more people to do it. | ||
| Isn't it just incredibly refreshing hearing a CEO of a big company, a big public company in this case, talk like that? | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| And I think that that kind of candid talk, it's not going to trigger a preference cascade on its own. | ||
| It's just from one CEO. | ||
| But I do think it's helpful. | ||
| And look, you know, I'm not optimistic that wokeness is going to be destroyed anytime soon. | ||
| But I do think that there is pushback. | ||
| We were talking about cancel culture earlier. | ||
| But, you know, this isn't just cancel culture. | ||
| On the DEI statements, for example, you're seeing David, the West. | ||
| It's not that bad, right? | ||
| No, it's great. | ||
| come out against them. | ||
| Now, I don't know if it's gonna make a huge difference on the ground. | ||
| Still, you start to see preference cascades. | ||
| So yeah, I welcome it anytime someone is willing to come out and potentially trigger one of those. | ||
| David, the West, it's not that bad, right? | ||
| No, it's great, but again, that was sort of, going back to this question of the '70s and the '80s | ||
| and when these perceptions started to change, when political correctness, | ||
| which was the precursor of wokeness, there's a few differences, | ||
| but it was basically the precursor of wokeness came to be, it was assumed that America was always gonna be | ||
| So it was really just sort of like being, well, we're going to be nice to everybody else. | ||
| We didn't really believe like, oh, the West is just as bad as Iraq. | ||
| And somehow this has turned into a relativism where, like, we are no better than Putin's Russia. | ||
| And it's crazy talk. | ||
| You know, it's just insane. | ||
| So that's ultimately what we have to get back to is the belief that America is a good place, the belief that America's values are good values, even the belief that America's values are not that they can be exported necessarily to the rest of the world, but that they are better. | ||
| And there's nothing wrong with saying that. | ||
| I was gonna have a little trouble getting to this next clip with the segue, but I think you got me there, because our values and our culture, when you talk about the 70s and the 80s, it was a little simpler and saner, and I guess safer. | ||
| So I saw this clip. | ||
| This is an odd way to end the week, but I think you'll see why we're doing it. | ||
| This is an 80s commercial that many of you that are, let's say, between probably 38 and 55, or maybe older if you were a parent, will remember quite well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's 10 p.m. | |
| Do you know where your children are? | ||
| It's 10 p.m. | ||
| Do you know where your children are? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's 10 p.m. | |
| Do you know where your children are? | ||
| It's 10 p.m. | ||
| Do you know where your children are? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's 10 p.m. | |
| Do you know where your children are? | ||
| It's 10 p.m. | ||
| Do you know where your children are? | ||
| Man, David, for guys that are about our age, like that's what we grew up with. | ||
| I'd get home from school, I'd get on my bike and my parents didn't know where I was for another seven hours. | ||
| It was like living the Goonies every single day. | ||
| And now kids are surveilled and they have iPhones and watches to make sure their parents literally know where they are with GPS and everything else. | ||
| And I just thought it was a fun way to end the week because things change and they change real freaking fast. | ||
| They sure do. | ||
| I didn't realize that Andy Warhol had done one of those. | ||
| I mean, my answer to that question is I hope my kid's not with Andy Warhol at 10 p.m. | ||
| The kid was just off camera. | ||
| I mean, not until he's older. | ||
| But yeah, no, you know, the other thing you always remember Homer Simpson saying to the TV, I told you last night, no. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| I mean, that was it. | ||
| In the summer, you left, you know, you ate breakfast, maybe you went home for lunch or your parents gave you a couple bucks to go to Burger King or whatever it was when Burger King was a couple bucks. | ||
| And yeah, when the streetlights came on, you went home. | ||
| That's not the world anymore. | ||
| And I don't know if it's because things are actually less safe or it's just that those parents didn't have that option. | ||
| You know, like, I'd rather know. | ||
| where my 13-year-old son is, 14-year-old son, sorry. | ||
| So I do, right? | ||
| My parents didn't really have that choice. | ||
| It's just funny to think that, you know, in 1986, there was a parent who at 10 o'clock saw that and was like, you know, I don't know where my kid is. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Aaron, I'll give you a last word on this since I think that's a little ahead of your time. | ||
| Are you jealous of when you could spend just a couple bucks on Burger King and have your parents have no freaking clue where you were? | ||
| I'm definitely jealous of the second part. | ||
| Uh, my parents were pretty, uh, pretty, you know, well, I thought they were pretty overprotective, but looking back, you know, compared to what some other kids deal with now, they, they, they moderated, I think, as I got older, uh, uh, it could have been much worse. | ||
| Um, some of the stories I hear from people just a few years younger, I'm like, Oh my God. | ||
| Uh, Horrible. | ||
| But yeah, no, I think I escaped the absolute worst of the helicopter parenting. | ||
| Gentlemen, I thank you for your time. | ||
| Have a great weekend. | ||
| For everybody else, no post-game show on Fridays going forward. | ||
| I'll explain more in the Locals community over the next couple days. | ||
| I thank you guys for watching. | ||
| And if you want to help keep us absolutely independent, as you know, it's RubinReport.Locals.com. | ||
| See you on Monday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've had to remove every single social tie. | |
| I had severe PTSD from this. | ||
| I contemplated suicide. | ||
| It got really bad. | ||
| You feel like any little piece of information That gets out on you and will be used by the worst people on the internet to destroy your life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it's so isolating. | |
| And terrifying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's horrifying. | |
| I'm so sorry. |
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