Dave Rubin, David Marcus, and Aaron Sibarium dissect the Harrison Butker controversy, where Patrick Mahomes' support for the controversial kicker suggests cancel culture may be fracturing despite lingering DEI bureaucracy. The trio analyzes shifting 2024 election polls in Arizona and Georgia, debating whether a "wide tent" Republican coalition can form if Trump avoids alienating moderates, while evaluating Tulsi Gabbard as an unsuitable VP pick. They further examine Biden's foreign policy shifts regarding Israel and conclude that modern parental surveillance and online isolation are eroding democratic faith, echoing Biden's own warnings about corruption. [Automatically generated summary]
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.