Dec. 5, 2024 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
58:16
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| I do think that all of that stuff backfired. | ||
| And I think the hysteria over it and the way that they—look, you're welcome to criticize whatever it is, but when you amplify it and take it to a level that everyone can look at and is like, I don't know, I saw a lot of Israeli flags there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It doesn't work for people, and I think that people start to—those are the moments where people almost get red-pilled, and they're like, well, let me investigate myself. | ||
| And then once you do just a little bit of digging, you actually start to learn that the things you've been told about Donald Trump or the Make America Great Again movement or all of it are all false. | ||
| And I think that that really made a lot of people take a second look at things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a crazy world, crazy world. | |
| Somebody's gotta have the same views. | ||
| It's a crazy world. | ||
| It's a crazy world. | ||
| Somebody's gotta have the same views. | ||
| Alright, Lara Trump. | ||
| I feel like I don't have to give you a proper intro that I need to read off a prompter, but I also am not exactly sure what to call you at this point. | ||
| You have like 20 hats, including a MAGA hat over there. | ||
| You're doing a lot of stuff. | ||
| But since this is my first, or this is my last interview before Thanksgiving, and then we're taking a little time off, I thought that would be an interesting place to start. | ||
| Are you ready to take a breath? | ||
| Because this has been quite a run, let's say, over the last couple of months. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The last couple of months, I would honestly say the last nine years, to be really honest with you. | ||
| And my current title is still co-chair of the RNC. You're right, I have a lot of other titles. | ||
| I'm a mom, a wife, a daughter-in-law, all of those things as well. | ||
| And kind of figuring out what the future holds and what my future title will ultimately be. | ||
| But yeah, we're all, I think, ready to take a breath. | ||
| But the interesting thing to me, I think, with all of this is that it really has felt like nine years of kind of just like trudging through and putting our heads down and working hard. | ||
| Because even the first four years that Donald Trump was in the White House, I think we all saw it was just constant fighting and constant, you know, trying to charge forward while having so much headwind. | ||
| And so we all felt like we were constantly fighting. | ||
| And I think what I felt the most on election night was really like a sense of relief that the country, I was like, oh, thank God people know this man's not a monster. | ||
| We're not horrible people. | ||
| That was the overwhelming feeling. | ||
| And so we've still been very busy, as it turns out. | ||
| But yeah, we could use a little holiday break. | ||
| So do you host Thanksgiving? | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Not Thanksgiving, Christmas. | ||
| We'll go to my family's house in North Carolina. | ||
| But we're going to be at Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| You may have heard of it. | ||
| Yes, I've been there once or twice. | ||
| Yeah, yes, we'll be there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, okay. | ||
| So, we'll do, obviously, some of the political stuff, but I do want to focus a little bit on the personal stuff that you just mentioned there about the never-ending part of this and the way the media has treated the family and all of you guys. | ||
| Now that it feels like the culture has shifted... | ||
| Do you think that the president and you and the family, that everyone's ready to ride that, that it's going to be very different culturally, where it was still counterculture to be for Trump the first four years, where now it feels like the culture is actually going to be with Trump? | ||
| That seems like a very different train, so to speak. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, it feels—you can feel it. | ||
| I think it's palpable out there. | ||
| And certainly the win made it very clear if anyone had any questions as to where the majority of the country stands. | ||
| But yeah, look, I think that— We're all kind of open to seeing what the future holds. | ||
| I think we've all been so entrenched in politics really for the past nine years, like I said, that I think now we almost kind of feel like most of us in the family, like, okay, well, our job is done here. | ||
| Like, we've actually made it to this point. | ||
| And, you know, my husband runs a Trump organization. | ||
| Don is still involved in that and my brother-in-law. | ||
| And kind of everybody has a bit of their own pursuits. | ||
| And so... | ||
| I kind of think it feels like now we have a chance to really see what else we can do out there in some kind of crazy way. | ||
| What's been the cost for you guys? | ||
| I mean, for Eric and for Donna, I guess, and for all of you in terms of the business part of this and everything else, because it's hard enough to run a campaign when your life is politics, but you guys don't come from that world. | ||
| Yeah, well, look, I think it was very swift and immediate. | ||
| Basically moments after my father-in-law came down the escalator in 2015 to announce he was running for president. | ||
| You know, you had Macy's jumping in to kind of cut off business with him. | ||
| You had a whole host of people who had been, you know, very much in line with what was happening at the Trump Organization, kind of pulling out and saying, oh, we can't be a part of this. | ||
| And that continued. | ||
| Really, over the past eight years or so, and I guess it kind of culminated in some ways in what we saw happen with all the lawfare, you know, against my father-in-law. | ||
| But it has been hard. | ||
| It's hard to run a company. | ||
| It's hard to have this last name. | ||
| You know, whether you're talking about losing money off your net worth, which certainly has happened to my father-in-law and, by and large, the Trump Organization and our family, Or just kind of feeling a little bit like an outcast sometimes. | ||
| That certainly has happened, but for every one of those instances, you get the beverage napkin on an airplane with a note written on it from some person who I'll probably never see again saying... | ||
| We appreciate your family. | ||
| Please thank your father-in-law. | ||
| And I feel like throughout the course of this, despite the actual monetary costs and really so much that has felt like it's against us, it really has been incredible to see the love that we've been shown out there. | ||
| And I think in many ways, that's what kept us all going throughout the course of all of this. | ||
| It should be noted that, if I'm not mistaken, you do fly coach when you're doing a lot of these things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I sure do. | |
| Or at least Sage was flying coach during a lot of these things. | ||
| So when you're getting those notes, I mean, you are sitting with the people. | ||
| I think that's partly what people also don't quite understand or maybe can't make sense of, that you guys are actually kind of normal despite... | ||
| Despite the bling and the gold and the name and everything else. | ||
| Despite all my bling, yeah. | ||
| No, it's true. | ||
| And look, that's how I grew up. | ||
| And I don't want to get Kamala Harris on anybody, but I grew up in a middle-class family. | ||
| And that's really my background. | ||
| But I was actually so impressed when I first started dating my husband that he was like that too. | ||
| And you, of course, you assumed, Dave, that, you know... | ||
| a Trump is going to fly private all the time, and they're not going to be sitting in a coach seat if they ever did fly commercial. | ||
| And that is actually not what I found. | ||
| I found that this was a very relatable family. | ||
| And quite frankly, it's one of the reasons I'm here today that I stuck around for all this time. | ||
| But yeah, of course, and actually the funny story is when I was elected as co-chair of the RNC, this was back at the beginning of March, and we had our Republican National Committee winter spring meeting in Houston. | ||
| And to leave Houston to fly back to Florida, I flew on a Spirit Airlines flight. | ||
| And I said, you know what? | ||
| This is actually very indicative of how I hope that this organization is run from now to the end of the campaign, because we don't need to be spending excessive money on things that don't matter. | ||
| We need to focus our money and our energy on what matters and on winning. | ||
| And so, yeah, you'll see me on a commercial flight near you soon. | ||
| When Rumble first started in 2013, they built the platform for the small creator. | ||
| They didn't censor or have biases. | ||
| They were fair and treated all creators equally. | ||
| No one thought platforms would censor political conversation or censor opinions around COVID, but they did. | ||
| Facebook admitted they fell to pressure from the Biden and Harris administration. | ||
| Of course, Rumble did not. | ||
| They held the line. | ||
| They're attacked daily for giving us a voice to talk to you. | ||
| They're attacked in corporate media. | ||
| They're attacked by governments like France. | ||
| They're attacked by brand advertisers who refuse to work with them. | ||
| Corporate America is fighting to remove free speech while Rumble is fighting to keep it. | ||
| Rumble won't survive with brand advertisers alone. | ||
| They don't get much of it. | ||
| So watching our show is the number one way we can ask for support from you. | ||
| But if you really believe in this fight and you have the means, one major way you can help Rumble survive is by joining Rumble Premium. | ||
| Join the community that believes in the First Amendment and believes in our human right to free speech. | ||
| Rumble is offering $10 off with promo code RUBEN when you purchase an annual subscription. | ||
| Go to rumble.com slash premium slash RUBEN and use code RUBEN. Like I said, if you have the means and believe in the cause, now is the time to join Rumble Premium. | ||
| If you don't have the means, we're just happy if you watch us right here on Rumble. | ||
| What do you make of that battle? | ||
| I guess it's a little less of a battle now that Trump has won, but the battle that was brewing between sort of the Trump direction of everything and the RNC direction that seemed to be kind of old and stodgy. | ||
| You know, I was at the Miami debate that obviously Trump didn't go to, but when Ronna McDaniel got out there, she basically got booed at a Republican national, at a debate. | ||
| And then Vivek really went after her. | ||
| And you can really just see the shift. | ||
| The old guard is just kind of being let go. | ||
| And there is this new thing. | ||
| Well, I think, you know, if you go back to 2016 or even 2015, some of those primary debates, I think it was pretty clear at that point that the RNC was like, Donald Trump is a joke. | ||
| This guy's never going to actually become president. | ||
| We don't need to take this too seriously. | ||
| And then I think it felt like to all of us in the family, as he started picking up steam, maybe there was some active resistance against him within the party. | ||
| And you're right to say, like, the old guard, the establishment, that's how people kind of saw the RNC. And I really think that that's why it was important for... | ||
| The change to be made at the top at the RNC because, look, it is a very important element of winning a presidential campaign. | ||
| You have to have an RNC that's going to work alongside of you if you want to be successful. | ||
| And so, you know, you have to be elected into these positions, though. | ||
| A lot of people think, oh, Donald Trump just plugged her in there. | ||
| No, I was elected by the 168 members alongside Michael Watley, our chairman. | ||
| And I just think it was important because we made sure the second we got in there that there was no daylight between the campaign and the RNC. And I can very distinctly remember 2016. Man, there was a lot of daylight between the two of them. | ||
| So I think it was— To their credit, though, they didn't try to stop him, as far as I know. | ||
| The Democrats really tried to stop their insurgent guy, Bernie, right? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| The Republicans, unless they did something that I don't know about, like, it just happened. | ||
| I think they were just kind of horrified in general. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| No, I don't think there was any active, you know, resistance in that fashion. | ||
| But I do think that, look, it's a lot to have this guy, this brash, billionaire, media mogul, Donald Trump come in and just kind of like shake up the political landscape. | ||
| I don't know that they were ready for that. | ||
| But this time, that's really what was very important to see happen. | ||
| So, I was going to save this to the end, but why don't we just get it out of the way right now. | ||
| There's a lot of rumblings about what your next little situation might be. | ||
| So, assuming that Marco Rubio is confirmed as Secretary of State, that means we have an opening in the Senate. | ||
| There are an awful lot of people in the Twitter world, and that is basically the world now, saying that you would be interested or that they would like you to be interested or something to that effect. | ||
| So, go. | ||
| So, I'll hum the floor now. | ||
| Yeah, look, I think had you presented this to me even a year ago, I would have said, I don't think this is something I would ever want to do. | ||
| But it's been an interesting journey, really, for me, again, to come from a very different background without the last name Trump, to kind of get immersed in politics. | ||
| And really, we all were in the family. | ||
| I started out in 2016 out on the campaign trail for my father-in-law, and I didn't know what to say politically. | ||
| I just said, I'll go out and talk about the man that I know. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| And that's sort of how it started. | ||
| Then I stayed on as a senior advisor to the campaign in 2017 after he was inaugurated. | ||
| Obviously, we had the 2020 election. | ||
| And then when I got a call from him to run for co-chair, I said, all right, I don't know if this is the right fit for me. | ||
| But I ultimately came to the realization that it was probably the best thing for me to do. | ||
| And I never wanted to look back and say, you know, what if I hadn't done this? | ||
| And so then, yeah, we get to a place where we do think that Marco Rubio, I assume, will be confirmed. | ||
| And his Senate seat will be open. | ||
| Ultimately, it falls on Governor Ron DeSantis. | ||
| And I do think he has great judgment. | ||
| I think he really is the reason that a lot of us probably moved to this state we're in right now. | ||
| Basically everyone is. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And so I'm ultimately going to leave it up to him, but I have said yes, I'd be very interested in discussing what that looks like, if that's something that he sees fit to potentially appoint me to. | ||
| Do you think of yourself as a particularly political person? | ||
| Well, again, not traditionally speaking. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But now. | |
| I mean, now. | ||
| You've been co-chair for a year. | ||
| You've been on the campaign. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| In some sick way. | ||
| I don't want to say yes, but yes. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| It's hard to have had all the experiences that I particularly have had and not feel like I am a political person now. | ||
| And it's weird because I didn't seek it out. | ||
| It kind of found me. | ||
| And I think that, you know, the way I generally feel about it, especially as it relates to a potential Senate seat, is I think I'm probably representative of a lot of the country, a lot of young mothers. | ||
| You know, my kids are five and seven. | ||
| And you look at the makeup of the U.S. Senate. | ||
| She has school-aged children. | ||
| Her kids are in high school. | ||
| But there really is no one that is representative of kind of the younger families out there, at least from a mom perspective. | ||
| And so I think if this is something that ultimately happens, that could be a really cool thing to see. | ||
| So speaking as a mom, the other thing that you were doing all along this was wearing the pink hats and the pink shirts, and you were out there with Sage and a bunch of others. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The women for Trump. | ||
| What were you finding was kind of the biggest pushback against that? | ||
| Because it seems to me the left has used abortion in this really perverse way to keep so many women afraid of voting for Republicans and made that the most important thing in the hierarchy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think you guys did an incredible job. | ||
| And I thought Megyn Kelly's speech the day before the election was like, man, that was the best women for Trump speech I had ever heard. | ||
| What do you make of sort of largely what's happening with women and mothers right now and how it pertains to what's going on with the Trump momentum? | ||
| Yeah, well, I think that, you know, it's kind of interesting because throughout the course of especially this campaign and this election, it was almost like women felt, like, guilty, but they knew, they said, we have to vote for Trump, but they're trying to make you feel guilty about it on the other side, to your point, with the abortion issue. | ||
| And I think ultimately when it comes down to putting food on the table for your family and thinking about what the future actually looks like, whether we're embroiled in World War III, you know, whether you can afford, you know, your current home or you're going to have to move, those sort of things I think take precedent. | ||
| over anything that the left was ultimately trying to push out there. | ||
| And I think a lot of women throughout the course of Donald Trump's tenure as a politician have been told, oh, well, if you're a woman and you care about women, you shouldn't be voting for this man. | ||
| But it was actually interesting to see the number of women who would come up to us out on the campaign trail and say, I'm voting for Donald Trump because I'm a woman, because I'm a mom, because I'm a wife, because I understand that this is the person who, as president, is going to do the best things for me, my future, my family's future. | ||
| And I don't think any of it stuck. | ||
| And I actually think a lot of women in particular kind of We're awakened in a way that maybe they hadn't been before in this election right now. | ||
| Because look, when it comes down to the kitchen table issues, I just don't think there's any disputing it. | ||
| Do you have any moments where you had somebody that was on the fence that you talked to after an event or that was like right there that you kind of helped get over it? | ||
| Because I still think even now there's plenty of people that are softly, maybe they didn't even vote for him, but are still softly there, but still afraid to say it. | ||
| Well, and I think a lot of that ultimately comes down to personality. | ||
| And they're being told that if you listen to certain media outlets, forget it. | ||
| This guy's the worst thing that's ever happened on planet Earth. | ||
| And I think that what I experienced was a lot of times there would be these people who would say, like... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm not sure about voting for him. | ||
| And to hear from someone who knows him, who really, I don't have a background as a Trump. | ||
| I come from a place like a lot of people do. | ||
| I hope helped a lot of people feel better about that. | ||
| And what I really actually think we're going to see happen is, and I think you're already seeing it happen. | ||
| Look, we already got the Trump dance out there. | ||
| People are kind of unifying in this crazy way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But I believe once he goes in the White House again, and the idea that he's going to put people in internment camps or any of these wild ideas that they tried to throw out there don't happen, and instead you see movement in the right direction for this country— I really believe that when he leaves the White House, I think he's going to have an incredibly high approval rating. | ||
| I think a lot of people who were so concerned or actively fought against him are going to say, God, what a waste of the past 10 years of my life doing this. | ||
| And I really do think that the next four years, he's going to shine. | ||
| He's going to do the great things for this country that he's promised. | ||
| And a lot of those people, I believe, are actually going to come around and say, man, I wish I had voted for him. | ||
| Do you think in some sense he'll be better having had these four years not to be president and having to gone through all of this stuff? | ||
| I mean, I do want to talk about the sort of wide tent now that he's got around. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But like specifically for him, the fact that he did step away and had to learn these lessons and I mean, quite literally almost be killed, like all of that stuff leading to somebody that can do it better than had he just been reelected. | ||
| Well, I think it was good for him, but I also think it was ultimately what the country needed. | ||
| And I think had he... | ||
| Look, there's no one who wanted him to win more in 2020 than those of us in our family. | ||
| And no one honestly worked harder. | ||
| You know, we were out there campaigning in the midst of COVID and all the craziness. | ||
| But I remember saying to him... | ||
| It was probably six months or so after he left the White House. | ||
| I remember saying to him... | ||
| I actually think that this was God's timing for you. | ||
| I actually believe that what people are going to experience over the next several years are going to show them they should have voted for you. | ||
| And if that's something you want to do again, I think that you'd be successful. | ||
| And I think it was good for him in a lot of respects, but I also think it was good for the country ultimately. | ||
| Now, I hate that our country had to go through this. | ||
| I think it's been terrible. | ||
| I think we look so weak. | ||
| I think we're in a really dangerous spot on the world stage. | ||
| I think the suffering that we've seen, whether you look at the southern border, the fentanyl crisis, all of it has been terrible. | ||
| But I do think that it allowed people maybe to really open up their eyes and realize that things are not good. | ||
| And, oh, my gosh, we voted for old Scranton Joe, this guy who they said would be this grandfatherly figure. | ||
| And take a look around. | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| But I think very specifically for my father-in-law, the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. | ||
| I don't believe he's the same person on the other side of that. | ||
| I really don't. | ||
| And I think spiritually, he's always, you know, believed in God. | ||
| He's always been a somewhat religious person. | ||
| I think it's a different level for him now. | ||
| And I actually believe that the thing he continued to hear out there, which was, we need you, this country needs you, and you were made for this time. | ||
| I think he actually started to fully embrace and understand. | ||
| And I think it's allowed him to be what will be, I think, one of our greatest presidents. | ||
| So do you think that'll be the key to the lessons that maybe he didn't fully get the first time around? | ||
| So like some of the COVID things or whatever he thinks maybe was a mistake or bringing in this person or that person, that now it seems like he's got this wide tent of people and you feel that the lessons will have been learned, that it really will be a tiger ship or however you want to describe it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, look, the lessons he learned were really, I mean, gosh, this guy came out of nowhere and all of a sudden went from zero to president, you know? | ||
| And since no one expected this to happen in 2016, there was no preparation for the transition. | ||
| There were no people identified to put in these key roles. | ||
| And he did learn that the hard way. | ||
| And he'll be the first to say, like, gosh, I wish I could have gone back and made some different appointments, some different choices. | ||
| But He was sort of left to the people surrounding him to say, oh, no, no, this is a great person. | ||
| This time around, as you've probably noticed, these are all people handpicked by Donald Trump. | ||
| These are people who he knows are going to be able to execute, do the job necessary, and work alongside of him and not against him in the background, which some of those people certainly throughout the first term were doing. | ||
| So in that sense, he learned that lesson very early on, I believe, in the White House. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| America, listen up! | ||
| The world's getting more unpredictable by the day. | ||
| Political insanity, rumors of civil war, an unstable stock market, and now the looming threat of a new global health emergency. | ||
| Did you know there's a bird flu summit? | ||
| It's eerily reminiscent of event 201 that foreshadowed the COVID pandemic. | ||
| And get this, the first topic on the agenda is mass fatality management planning. | ||
| If that doesn't send chills down your spine, I don't know what would. | ||
| But here's the good news. | ||
| You don't have to be scared if you're prepared. | ||
| The wellness company created the medical emergency kit, and every home in America should have at least one of these. | ||
| They're packed with life-saving meds like ivermectin, amoxicillin, and even a Z-Pak. | ||
| And it's all backed by experts like Dr. Peter McCullough. | ||
| Imagine this. | ||
| No more frantic searches for a doctor. | ||
| No more emergency waiting rooms. | ||
| Just a few clicks, and this kit is delivered right to your front door. | ||
| In times like these, having the medical emergency kit is not just a luxury, it's a necessity. | ||
| Protect your family by preparing now. | ||
| Head over to twc.health slash Rubin and use code Rubin to save 45 bucks. | ||
| Don't wait until it's too late. | ||
| Act now, take control, and ensure you're protected against whatever comes next. | ||
| That's twc.health slash Rubin. | ||
| Use code Rubin to save 45 bucks. | ||
| Free shipping. | ||
| And now, back to me. | ||
| So when you look at this wide tent thing with RFK and Tulsi and just this whole new crew of people, I mean, Tulsi literally ran as a Dem four years ago. | ||
| Bobby was a Democrat less than a year ago. | ||
| I mean, this is the thing that, for me, my entire career has been about. | ||
| Like, how do you take these lefties like me and show them that the Republicans aren't mean and evil and they don't hate gays and they don't just want money and love war and, like, this entire thing. | ||
| So what would you say is the descriptor of the thing that now your father-in-law represents? | ||
| What is this new thing? | ||
| Because it's not the old Republican Party anymore. | ||
| No. | ||
| Well, I mean, a lot of people call it the MAGA Party, America First Party. | ||
| But I really think it's the first step to unity. | ||
| And I know that that's mind-boggling for some people to think of Donald Trump as being able to do that. | ||
| But you're already seeing that happen with the coalition of people who formed around him. | ||
| And it wasn't like he went out there and had to really hustle to get them to be part of the team. | ||
| These are people who they themselves saw the power of what he could potentially do and why joining forces with him was such an important move. | ||
| And I think that it's just, it's such an incredible historic time. | ||
| I think that that's one of the things that, you're right, a lot of people probably came over and voted for him because of that. | ||
| But I do think if I had to describe it in one word, I think it's the beginning of unity in this country. | ||
| Do you think a lot of that just comes from New York? | ||
| That he's a New Yorker and built things in New York and he was always around different people and that it's why he's not afraid to be around Bobby and suddenly be like, oh, this guy thinks a few different things of me. | ||
| Like, that's New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, that's certainly part of it. | ||
| But look, I think what I experienced and what I saw happen the first term for him and the first go-around of things was that there were all these political experts who would come in and they would say, Sir, you can't pick this person because this person believes this one thing and that goes against the Republican standard and that's how we have to operate and you can't do that. | ||
| And he was kind of like... | ||
| I don't know, I like that person, but you're the political expert here, not me, so I'm going to go along with what you say. | ||
| Now that doesn't exist anymore for him. | ||
| Now he's saying, I don't care. | ||
| I really don't care what any of these experts think. | ||
| I'm the person in charge now. | ||
| I know what I need. | ||
| I know how to be successful. | ||
| And if you think about it, look, Donald Trump brands such a successful company for so long. | ||
| If you look at his companies, his businesses, and oftentimes he's able to identify talent, even when people don't see it within themselves. | ||
| I would put myself in that category, to be honest with you. | ||
| But if you look at the Trump Organization, some of the top executives, the people who've been there the longest, started out in very unlikely places. | ||
| They were his drivers, doormen, security guards. | ||
| And he gave them these opportunities that I don't think anyone else would have. | ||
| But he would say, I could see you doing these great things. | ||
| In much the same way, I think he's identifying the talent right now for his cabinet, for his administration, the way that Donald Trump always has. | ||
| And he no longer needs to listen to the political class anymore. | ||
| He's the expert himself now, and he's going to do the things he knows are necessary. | ||
| How worried were you that had the result gone the other way that your family was going to just take irreparable harm? | ||
| Whether that means literally him being in jail, Eric and Don's businesses destroyed, God knows what they could have done, for all of your careers and everything else. | ||
| How much was that looming large for you guys? | ||
| Well, I think it was always very, very much present in our minds, but I don't think you could focus on those things. | ||
| At least I tried not to. | ||
| I always felt like, and maybe this is the wrong way to be, but maybe I'm an optimist, generally speaking, I always felt like that the light was going to shine in the dark places, that the truth would ultimately come out. | ||
| And I really had to continue to believe that because you're right. | ||
| The thought of what may have been, and there's no doubt what these people were trying to do to us. | ||
| I mean, to my father-in-law, but anybody associated. | ||
| And look, you go back to the 2016 campaign, the Russia collusion hoax, the damage that that did to so many people. | ||
| These are people who, you know, you don't make a lot of money being on a presidential People are there because they love politics. | ||
| They love to be a part of it. | ||
| And they got their lives destroyed because of a hoax, because of a lie that was perpetrated by initially the DNC and the Clinton campaign. | ||
| But then, of course, the mainstream media just blew it up. | ||
| When do those people get their lives back? | ||
| You know, I still will say that so much damage was done that never gets discussed. | ||
| So there's no doubt that that was a possibility for all of us as well. | ||
| But, you know, I continued to remain optimistic. | ||
| I think our whole family did because I don't think you can focus on those things. | ||
| Otherwise, it kind of is all-consuming and you can't actually be functional at all. | ||
| Yeah, I heard somebody—we played a clip of it—somebody, like, right before the election on one of the podcasts, he did ask him basically that question, and he was like, well, I just don't think about it. | ||
| I thought, well, in some ways that sounds very short-sighted, and the other way it's probably literally the only way you could do it. | ||
| It's a bit of a self-preservation thing, I believe, actually. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| And it did kind of work. | ||
| So here we are. | ||
| How pleased are you that the mainstream media, which in many ways, it's been a love-hate relationship with your father-in-law, right? | ||
| Because they've clearly hated him and they said he was Hitler and everything else, but they loved him for ratings. | ||
| But how pleased are you guys that they, I mean, it seems very clear now that the ascendancy of the online media has completely eclipsed them at this point. | ||
| Well, they deserve it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Quite frankly, they deserve it. | ||
| As I was saying, it couldn't happen to a more deserving. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They asked for all of it and they got all of it. | ||
| You know, I just don't think the American people were as gullible and dumb ultimately as they thought that they would be. | ||
| And when you do have all these alternative sources for information, when you feel like or it is proven that you have been lied to by these people you're supposed to trust, People are like, well, we got to find something else here. | ||
| And gosh, the ratings and all of it. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I would say you love to see it, but I don't wish ill on anyone, despite probably how they feel about all of us. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I mean, they're going to keep coming no matter what. | ||
| what. | ||
| They always will exist one or another, but I just think less and less people will. | ||
| Yeah, no one cares anymore. | ||
| And that's a nice thing. | ||
| It's good. | ||
| Look, it's good. | ||
| All of the things that have happened, the real shock of the numbers in this election, the popular vote, which they said Donald Trump will never get the popular vote. | ||
| He won all of these things and he bucked the system so much that it did need a reset. | ||
| And I believe we're in that moment in time. | ||
| I believe there's this huge reset that's happened politically. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| What was the counterculture? | ||
| We are now like, this is it. | ||
| This is the place you want to be in the Republican Party. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a really amazing time. | ||
| And I always say, forget my proximity to all of it. | ||
| Just to be alive right now and to have experienced all that this country has, all that we have politically, it's a really, really incredible thing to say. | ||
| We got to live through the Trump era. | ||
| It really does. | ||
| I mean, I've been saying this for a while, and I hope I'm right. | ||
| I sense an 80s boom coming. | ||
| I think there's been enough damage to the calcified system that we are suddenly going to have a burst of creativity and economic growth and everything else in this country. | ||
| It's going to feel like the 80s again, which for people roughly our age will be pretty damn great. | ||
| It will be pretty great. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| It's great for us and it's great for the rest of the world, honestly, because, you know, and people obviously know this, but when you're the superpower of the world, you've got to lead and you've got to be on the forefront of everything. | ||
| And look, Elon Musk is saying he's sending somebody to Mars by the end of Donald Trump's term in office. | ||
| So there's so much, though, that I think can happen and I believe will happen. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| This is just, I mean, the golden age of America. | ||
| Donald Trump always says it. | ||
| I think we're going to be there. | ||
| What do you make of the Elon portion of this? | ||
| Because you guys are a pretty tight group, and obviously it's basically a family affair, and then there's the other cast of characters. | ||
| But Elon suddenly, I mean, there was even a picture with our family. | ||
| Who posted the picture? | ||
| It was like the Trump family. | ||
| I think it was Kai, my niece. | ||
| Right, so it's your niece, and then it's all of you guys, and then Elon and one of his kids. | ||
| It's kind of funny, like he basically is in, it seems. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He is, and it's interesting because I kind of feel like Elon is maybe a little bit like we are, which is that, you know, you kind of keep everybody at a distance, but once you're in, like, you're really in, you know? | ||
| And I kind of feel like he's a bit the same way from just watching how this whole relationship developed with my father-in-law. | ||
| But yeah, he's, look, I think that to have a brilliant mind like Elon Musk as part of your team, part of the transition and obviously Doge coming up. | ||
| I think that, look, we're approaching what I believe is probably the most transformational period in America since our inception, since the birth of this country. | ||
| And I think you have to give a lot of credit to Elon Musk. | ||
| Look, had he not bought Twitter, where would we be right now? | ||
| Would we even be having a conversation about Donald Trump winning? | ||
| What would be happening? | ||
| Probably not. | ||
| No, honestly. | ||
| And so I think he's been really important to all of this. | ||
| And we like to have him on the team. | ||
| We like to have good people on our team. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What can I tell you? | ||
| It's just hilarious to me. | ||
| It's like the same people who think that the world is going to end in six years because of climate change also now hate the guy that wants life to go interplanetary. | ||
| It's like, guys, it's... | ||
| You can't make it up. | ||
| I kind of feel bad for them. | ||
| If you're still bought into this right now, I feel sad. | ||
| You just must really want a miserable existence and just constantly need to find something to be upset about. | ||
| Misery loves company. | ||
| That's why they're constantly bitching and moaning about everything. | ||
| Apparently. | ||
| What has this done for you just in terms of your family and being a mom throughout this? | ||
| I mean, being on the road and having to leave your kids back and all that kind of stuff. | ||
| That's got to be tough. | ||
| It's not easy. | ||
| It's one of the reasons I initially kind of said no to being co-chair of the RNC. Look, there's no doubt everybody knew the weight of this election, even a year ago, which is roughly the time that I got the call that this was maybe going to happen. | ||
| I initially told my father-in-law when he called me, I said, I just don't know that this is something I want to take on right now. | ||
| My kids are really young. | ||
| They were four and six at the time. | ||
| I probably try to be too many things all the time, but I also, when I'm at home with my kids, I'm going to be the best mom there's ever been. | ||
| I go to everything with them, every soccer practice, basketball, gymnastics, all of it. | ||
| And so I knew going into this how much time it would require for me to be away from them. | ||
| But I also thought about the fact that this is for them. | ||
| You know, what kind of country are we going to be leaving for our children if we continue down the path that we were really on? | ||
| And it was honestly too frightening to even think about fully. | ||
| So it was a lot, a lot of time away from them. | ||
| But look, my mom, I drag her down from North Carolina. | ||
| Every opportunity I get to come hang out with my kids, she was down here a lot. | ||
| And look, I'm lucky to have a very supportive husband and be lucky enough to have people to help me when I need them. | ||
| And so it's good to be back home and be playing the role of mom a little bit more. | ||
| Is Eric going to be in this, in the administration? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| He'll be the first to say no. | ||
| Look, they have a company to run. | ||
| I mean, don't forget when I actually believe one of the reasons that my father-in-law decided to run in 2015 and make that announcement then is because he put his whole life into the Trump organization. | ||
| And he needed to know that he could leave it and that it would be taken care of well. | ||
| And I think he knew that his kids were able to take things over at that point. | ||
| I think the previous times he kind of flirted with the idea. | ||
| I don't think he felt like they were ready to do it. | ||
| But I think he knew in 2015 they could. | ||
| And so my husband's taken on basically the top role there at the company and fully runs the Trump organization. | ||
| And so for him, look, there are thousands of people every day who rely on my husband to do his job to make sure that, you know, this company is still up and running and expanding. | ||
| And we're all over the world right now with golf courses and hotels and everything else. | ||
| So he takes that very seriously. | ||
| And he only wants to be at the Trump Organization right now. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| And the thing is, you know, me having known you guys a little bit, although somehow, bizarrely, this is only the second time that we've ever met in person, but knowing Eric, and I've known Don for a long, long time, and, you know, like when COVID started, I think the day of the lockdowns, Don and I maybe were supposed to do an interview that day, and then obviously that got canceled, and we were on the phone, and all he was talking about was he was so upset about having to lay off, they were basically forcing him to lay off people from the hotel. | ||
| And that's what he was upset by. | ||
| And then you hear all these things in the media about how evil they are. | ||
| They only care about money, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And it's like every time I've had any interaction with any of you guys, it's just the complete reverse. | ||
| I'm sure that's not a surprise to you. | ||
| But for other people, I guess it's still a surprise. | ||
| No, you're right. | ||
| One of the provisions of selling the old post office, the hotel in Washington, D.C., obviously. | ||
| Was that they, I know. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| Everyone's like, are you buying it back? | ||
| Can they take it back? | ||
| Can somebody, can Elon buy that? | ||
| Maybe we should get Elon to buy that. | ||
| That, to me, that is what the 80s, the 80 comeback that I'm talking about, it was represented by what was going on in that hotel during the pre-COVID Trump presidency. | ||
| It was an endless party there. | ||
| It was so much fun. | ||
| America's Living Room. | ||
| And it was literally like you just show up and everyone's there. | ||
| You just turn around and it's like, I know that person, I know that person. | ||
| No, it's good. | ||
| I think it'll still, I think that'll make a resurgence. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Despite the Trump name. | ||
| Wait, what is it now? | ||
| It's just some other hotel. | ||
| It's the Waldorf Astoria now. | ||
| But in part of their terms of the contract for them to sell that, they said you have to keep all the employees who are currently here. | ||
| You know, that's... | ||
| Welcome to my show! | ||
| They're attacked daily for giving us a voice to talk to you. | ||
| They're attacked in corporate media. | ||
| They're attacked by governments like France. | ||
| They're attacked by brand advertisers who refuse to work with them. | ||
| Corporate America is fighting to remove free speech while Rumble is fighting to keep it. | ||
| Rumble won't survive with brand advertisers alone. | ||
| They don't get much of it. | ||
| So watching our show is the number one way we can ask for support from you. | ||
| But if you really believe in this fight and you have the means, one major way you can help Rumble survive is by joining Rumble Premium. | ||
| Join the community that believes in the First Amendment and believes in our human right to free speech. | ||
| Rumble is offering $10 off with promo code RUBEN when you purchase an annual subscription. | ||
| Go to rumble.com slash premium slash RUBEN and use code RUBEN. Like I said, if you have the means and believe in the cause, now is the time to join Rumble Premium. | ||
| If you don't have the means, we're just happy if you watch us right here on Rumble. | ||
| That's the thing that people miss about this family, and I can speak to it as an outsider, because despite the fact that Eric and I have been together for, I think, 16 years, better get it right, 16 years, I still, look, I was raised very differently. | ||
| And I can tell you that had I ever seen any reason to think that these people were anything other than good-hearted, kind people who were hard workers and really just wanted to do the right thing, I would never have been here. | ||
| I would never have come out in 2016 and campaigned for my father-in-law across the country. | ||
| But those are the kinds of stories that you never hear. | ||
| And I'll give Eric and Don a lot of credit, because during COVID, they were able to keep so many people employed, despite the fact that a lot of these hotels were not operating at full capacity or anything close to it. | ||
| And that was the thing that I think they found most upsetting about the Letitia James situation, because... | ||
| Because, yeah, half a billion dollars is absolutely outrageous. | ||
| The whole thing was ridiculous. | ||
| But forget about Donald Trump. | ||
| Forget about the Trump organization as a whole. | ||
| They were worried about all of the people who worked for the company and what that ultimately might mean for them. | ||
| If the, you know, the Attorney General of New York says you can no longer operate businesses in the state of New York, the thousands of people... | ||
| That would have impacted, kept my husband and Don up every single night, I can tell you. | ||
| Does Eric, or I guess you, do you guys have hope that New York will sort of turn around enough that you guys will be able to do business properly there? | ||
| I mean, it's sort of the same thing in Cali, why Elon left and I left and Rogan left. | ||
| I mean, people are just like, we can't do it here anymore. | ||
| Look, I kind of feel like... | ||
| Except my name isn't all over the New York City skyline while your last name is. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Look, I mean, New York is the pinnacle of everything. | ||
| And it's been really sad, I think, for a lot of us to see what happened to New York. | ||
| I moved to New York in 2008 as, you know, this girl from North Carolina thinking, that's it. | ||
| They say, if you make it there, you make it anywhere, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's the dream, is to go to New York and make it big. | ||
| And unfortunately, it feels like a lot of that dream has died for a lot of people, because who wants to live in New York right now, honestly? | ||
| But I do think you saw the tide starting to turn. | ||
| Look, Lee Zeldin came pretty close to becoming governor of the state. | ||
| I think you saw the way that Donald Trump and Republicans as a whole chipped into the lead that Democrats usually have in this election in particular— And I think it just goes to the fact that people are sick of what's been happening. | ||
| They don't want to live their lives like this anymore. | ||
| To be paying the most exorbitant prices per square foot for an apartment in New York City, and yet you go outside and there's homeless and there's, you know, immigrants who are being, you know, treated into the nicest hotels. | ||
| And the whole thing is, it's crazy and nobody wants to live that way anymore. | ||
| The crime through the roof... | ||
| All of it. | ||
| I do think that there's sort of this inflection point that we're at right now where I hope to see a good comeback of New York. | ||
| I think it's possible, but you've got to have the right leadership there. | ||
| How great was that MSG return for you guys? | ||
| I was there. | ||
| I was only a couple rows behind you, but they don't let everybody just maul you guys. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| I don't love that. | ||
| And even the way you and Eric gave the speech, it was like he kind of did the meat and then you got up there and you're like, well, I am going to say a few words. | ||
| But it showed that you guys love each other. | ||
| There's like a Good nature to the relationship. | ||
| And you see so little of that on the Democrat side. | ||
| You're like, are these people married? | ||
| Do they like each other? | ||
| That one had sex with the housekeeper and this one just like the whole thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, we do like each other, Eric and I. It's sort of nice. | ||
| That was amazing. | ||
| You know, and the thing that got me, I think Eric talked about it in his speech when we were there, was driving down there. | ||
| Okay, we, again, I lived in New York for like 15 years. | ||
| I very vividly remember the night after my father-in-law won in 2016. November 9th, 2016, we couldn't leave our apartment because there were people like rioting in the streets. | ||
| There was this march going through the city. | ||
| It went right by. | ||
| We looked out of our window and I said, I don't know when we're going to be able to go out and just walk around. | ||
| We had horrible things screamed at us on the streets of New York. | ||
| Um... | ||
| It's sad that that ever happened, but the difference between that and what we experienced going to that MSG rally. | ||
| It was unbelievable. | ||
| Nine day. | ||
| People like 20 deep lining the streets with Trump signs, with flags, so excited. | ||
| That shows you right there. | ||
| There is something that has happened in this country, even in deep blue New York City. | ||
| Something's going on there. | ||
| I think people are ready. | ||
| In some ways, do you think that the reaction to that thing, the way the media treated it, oh, it's this white supremacist rally, and they've harkened it back to the Nazi rally from the 30s. | ||
| In some ways, do you think that that actually helped? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because it was like the final, like, it was sort of like Obama two days before doing Very Fine People again. | ||
| It was just like, man, you guys are going to run with Every crazy thing and then just enough people are over it. | ||
| That's because for me being there and seeing the amount of love there and a place where there were Orthodox Jews sitting next to—do you see there was literally—I put up a picture. | ||
| There was an Orthodox Jew sitting next to—sitting one row in front of a woman in a burqa. | ||
| And I was like, where else could this ever happen on Earth? | ||
| Much less in America. | ||
| But that's a Trump rally, by the way. | ||
| That's what the media missed the whole time. | ||
| And I do think if you told Donald Trump he's never going to be able to do another Trump rally, he'd be very upset. | ||
| So we may still see them yet. | ||
| But, you know, that's the thing that they missed is that it really was this welcoming place for anyone. | ||
| If you showed up there and you were like, I'm a Democrat, I'm probably still voting Democrat, but I just wanted to come check it out, people would be like, come on in, we're happy to have you. | ||
| I do think that all of that stuff backfired. | ||
| And I think the hysteria over it, and the way that they, look, you're welcome to criticize whatever it is, but when you amplify it and take it to a level that everyone can look at and is like, I don't know, I saw a lot of Israeli flags there. | ||
| It doesn't work for people, and I think that people start to—those are the moments where people almost get red-pilled, and they're like, well, let me investigate myself. | ||
| And then once you do just a little bit of digging, you actually start to learn that the things you've been told about Donald Trump or the Make America Great Again movement or all of it are all false. | ||
| And I think that that really made a lot of people take a second look at things, and probably ultimately, yes, it did help. | ||
| What do you think you'd be most excited for in terms of the administration? | ||
| I mean, clearly there'll be this cultural thing, but is it like taking out the Department of Ed? | ||
| Is it that we'll maybe do things a little differently as it pertains to Ukraine? | ||
| What for you is the thing that you see as the gold standard to go for? | ||
| I just... | ||
| I think all these systems that, you know, we have to trust our institutions, our fundamental institutions in America. | ||
| And I think what you saw happen with Donald Trump over the past two years, starting with the raid on Mar-a-Lago, whether it's Letitia James, like we talked about, Fannie Willis, you know, Alvin Bragg, all of it— People look at those things and they say, how is this possible in America that you can use these Soviet-style communist attacks on a person, a political opponent, in America? | ||
| And I don't think you can look at it any other way. | ||
| I really don't. | ||
| To me, what I hope to see happen is light shone in dark places. | ||
| I hope that anytime there is anything that is insidious and wrong and is counter to who we are as a country, it is rooted out and it is made apparent to everyone. | ||
| People need to see this stuff. | ||
| I really believe that. | ||
| I think Doge is going to do a pretty good job of a lot of that. | ||
| but I, I do think that for me, I just hope there's a reset and a, a, a, an ability for the average person out there to trust these institutions again. | ||
| Look, I feel like we played at the RNC a big role in allowing people to trust our electoral process. | ||
| Again, this election, that was one thing we really worked hard on in the same manner. | ||
| I think it's going to be important to go forward in this country and for people to have trust in, in all of the, you know, the future of America, honestly, that they have to trust these institutions. | ||
| So you actually hit the next thing I wanted to get to, which was election integrity, because I think basically everybody, even on election night, where everyone was asking me, Dave, what do you think is going to happen for weeks? | ||
| And I kept saying, by any measure that I can measure anything, if I have any sense of any of this, and I think I have a little sense, I was like, he has to win. | ||
| I just know so many people in my own family that had Trump derangement syndrome eight years ago that are now Oh, we cured them. | ||
| You cured them. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| Not everybody, but a lot of them. | ||
| We'll take it. | ||
| But I think everybody, which is why even at midnight still that night, I still was like, I don't know, a pipe could burst, something like that. | ||
| Like, what, how did that whole system work for you to make sure that nothing crazy was going to happen? | ||
| Or if something crazy happens, you were going to be able to do something about it or know about it? | ||
| Because to me, that was probably, I would imagine, the biggest part of your job in the last year. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, and it was interesting because getting into the RNC and saying, okay, we've got eight months until this election. | ||
| What do we do? | ||
| Like, how do we ensure that there's the best chance for Donald Trump to win? | ||
| I think we knew that we had to just pare everything back. | ||
| We can't continue to just, you know, be all these different things and all these different places. | ||
| We have to focus solely on a couple of things. | ||
| And we said we have to get out the vote and get people to vote early and get the low propensity voters out. | ||
| And we have to make sure that we protect the ballot and that people know that we're watching. | ||
| People know it's safe to get out and vote. | ||
| And anybody who wants to cheat knows that we're going to prosecute you. | ||
| You're going to be held accountable for it. | ||
| And so it was a heavy lift for sure. | ||
| And I give a lot of credit to Michael Watley, our chairman. | ||
| We kind of took what he did in North Carolina in 2020. If you go back and look, North Carolina was one of the only states without a lot of question in terms of any voter fraud or any spikes of ballots that were statistically impossible. | ||
| Not that I would ever say that, but if one were to say such a thing— Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Good. | ||
| So we won't get canceled. | ||
| They won't shut this down. | ||
| But that was the number one focus. | ||
| And so we really made it very hard for any funny business to have happened. | ||
| And we started by going to all the battleground states and saying, okay... | ||
| We need to have an operation on the ground. | ||
| We're going to open up these election integrity offices. | ||
| And we need to publicize that in the local media so that people know, number one, we're watching. | ||
| Number two, if you do anything wrong, we're watching. | ||
| And number three, oh, it is safe to get out and vote. | ||
| So we did that in all the battleground states. | ||
| We opened multiple offices over the course of several months. | ||
| We publicized it in the local media. | ||
| And then we had to get people to volunteer. | ||
| and we got 230,000 people to volunteer And we had 6,500 attorneys spread out across the country in all these battleground states. | ||
| Most of these people, again, volunteer. | ||
| And we had an operation set up so that when there was a problem identified, they phoned it into our war room of sorts with our legal team, and they figured out the best way to attack it. | ||
| And we dealt with some 20,000 issues throughout the course of early voting and election day. | ||
| And yeah, I knew if there was no cheating, Donald Trump was going to win. | ||
| How worried were you, though, that something wacky might happen? | ||
| Because then it really would have fallen out. | ||
| People would have been like, well, wait a minute. | ||
| Oh, that's me. | ||
| No, the stakes were very high. | ||
| Don't kid yourself. | ||
| And I knew that. | ||
| I was like, oh, my God, if this doesn't work, you know. | ||
| But I mean, what time did you finally say, OK, like, were you there? | ||
| It's probably 1 a.m. | ||
| Yeah, probably 1 a.m. | ||
| No, look, I think you do the best you can, but you always say, God, like, what else? | ||
| We went through every possible issue we could imagine, and we accounted for it, and we had a plan for it, and we had a team for it. | ||
| But you're always like, well, what else could happen? | ||
| There might be something new that we haven't planned for. | ||
| So yeah, in the back of my mind, up until this thing is done, I'm like, I could be the one. | ||
| I could be the Trump who failed, and we ultimately lost the election. | ||
| But But yeah, we had an incredible team, very proud of everything they did. | ||
| And I really hope that we restored faith, like I said, in people's minds in terms of our electoral process. | ||
| Because what kind of country are we if you can't trust that? | ||
| You have to trust it. | ||
| Otherwise, we're basically a banana republic, third world country. | ||
| Yeah, the line that I always use is, the night that your father-in-law won the first time, I was with the Daily Wire guys, and no one thought he was going to win that night. | ||
| And Andrew Klavan said, boy, what an incredible—and I didn't vote for him the first time. | ||
| I voted for Gary Johnson. | ||
| I did vote for him the second time and obviously this time, but that time I wasn't quite there yet. | ||
| And Klavan said something that I really love, which was, he said, you know, the thing that everyone said couldn't happen just happened in America, and how many countries can that happen in? | ||
| And I thought, that's really it right there. | ||
| You're not always going to get the result you want, but when there's still a little mystery in the system, that means that the people do have a voice, and that's pretty great. | ||
| And we have to have that. | ||
| And we have to make people aware that that exists. | ||
| Because I think it was the number one question every single place I went when I would go. | ||
| Speak places, campaign events, airplanes, restaurants, gas stations. | ||
| Every single time people would say, are they going to cheat? | ||
| That's the number one thing. | ||
| And so to have half the electorate feeling like they can't trust our system, that's awful. | ||
| That really is a slippery slope and a scary place to be for a country. | ||
| That statement is exactly right. | ||
| How many other places could something like this actually happen? | ||
| Do you feel like it's fully restored now? | ||
| Because clearly our side now feels like it was cleaned up enough. | ||
| And you don't hear much really on the other side about, they're not thrilled at the moment, but you don't really hear much about shenanigans. | ||
| So that's kind of nice. | ||
| Yeah, they tried a little bit in Pennsylvania. | ||
| They tried to come in there and get a little cute. | ||
| I don't think that they were prepared for how aggressive we were going to be on this, but we had to. | ||
| I feel like currently, yes, it's restored, but I don't think you can ever take your foot off the gas with this. | ||
| Unfortunately, I would love to say, okay, it's all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows now. | ||
| Let's all move on. | ||
| I think you're always going to have to have people watching this and making sure that everything is free and fair. | ||
| And one of the interesting things in this election in particular is that for 40 years there was a consent decree placed upon the Republican National Committee. | ||
| We could not, from the RNC, train people to actually be poll workers for 40 years. | ||
| And the only reason it was lifted is because like a year and a half ago, this federal judge in New Jersey who had implemented this and he kept re-upping it every single year, he died. | ||
| And so it was done away with. | ||
| And not that I'm saying anything, but I wonder oftentimes if the ability we had now for the first presidential election in four decades to actually train people in polling locations who work there in terms of what they need to look out for. | ||
| Things like machines should never be connected to the Internet. | ||
| How to recalibrate the systems of every night before you shut things down. | ||
| All of those things, maybe that made a difference. | ||
| So you wonder who's been training all the people in the polling locations for 40 years and maybe why things were a little off. | ||
| My last question to you then, unless you want to add anything else to the senator thing, but I think we got the answer on that one, would be for anyone that's watching this that still has some of those worries, some of those concerns, they didn't quite get there. | ||
| Give me something like some kind of insider baseball story maybe about your relationship with your father-in-law that might help them get there. | ||
| Because again, that was for me. | ||
| I mean, when I met him that first time at Mar-a-Lago and he Maybe I told you the story, maybe not. | ||
| Just real quick. | ||
| And he said to me, he looks at me, Don introduced us, and he said, I recognize you. | ||
| I said, oh, I'm on Fox a lot. | ||
| And then he turned to my husband, David. | ||
| He said, who are you? | ||
| He goes, well, I'm his husband. | ||
| He goes, husband? | ||
| And he was sitting. | ||
| He slaps his hands on the table. | ||
| He stands up. | ||
| He goes, you know what your problem is? | ||
| Your problem is you're too handsome. | ||
| You could have any chick you want, but you want this guy. | ||
| And then he goes, Ivanka, can you believe it? | ||
| These guys are gay. | ||
| But that's what I wanted out of him. | ||
| Of course! | ||
| No, it's not that I wanted. | ||
| He treated me the way he would have treated anyone else, and it was a normal, sane reaction. | ||
| That's him. | ||
| And that was one of the things that I was finally like, okay, whatever reservations I have left just completely got blown away. | ||
| So for anyone that's still out there watching this, that's like in that sort of neither here nor there place... | ||
| Well, I mean, I'll tell you, yesterday, my daughter had made something at school for Grandpa. | ||
| And yesterday, you know, they give these kids the whole week off of school. | ||
| I don't know why they would do such a thing to the parents here in Florida, but okay. | ||
| So they wanted to go down and say hi to Grandpa. | ||
| And gosh, this guy is so busy right now. | ||
| People, you know, you go in there for a meeting at 11. If you're lucky, you get to see him at 3. He's constantly backed up. | ||
| He's always on the phone. | ||
| And so he had people in his office, and my kids show up there, and of course they stick their heads in the room, and I'm like, oh, I don't know, we might have to come back a little later. | ||
| And he's like, oh, come on in. | ||
| Stops his meeting, puts the phone down, literally in the moment there. | ||
| He doesn't care. | ||
| He's got the next secretary of education there. | ||
| He's got all these important people, folks on the phone. | ||
| He's like, hold on, I'll call you back. | ||
| To hang out with my kids. | ||
| And that's the side of Donald Trump that they say doesn't exist. | ||
| They say that this guy is so narcissistic and involved with himself that he doesn't care about anything else. | ||
| And it's actually the opposite. | ||
| And your story I love because you see the humorous side of Donald Trump. | ||
| This man is one of the funniest people I have ever met. | ||
| Well, the fact that he immediately went to crack a joke about it, and it was funny, but it was also like, oh, you were, like, razzing me a little, and I was like, how great is that? | ||
| Like, the second I meet the president of the—and, by the way, that was the week before Christmas when the first impeachment was happening. | ||
| So the guy's under a lot of stress, you would imagine, but the fact that he was smiling and laughing. | ||
| And the other thing that I saw him do was I told him something about, I had like two minutes with him alone, and I told him something about why I thought Bloomberg was running at the time. | ||
| And he put, sorry, the first lady's hand was on the table. | ||
| And he put his hand on her hand, and he said, honey, I want you to listen to this, what I had just told him about why I thought Bloomberg was running. | ||
| And I thought that was something right there. | ||
| They say they hate each other and everything else. | ||
| But the reaction was, put his hand on her hand and say, honey. | ||
| Like, his first reaction was, I want her to hear this. | ||
| And I was like, that's the stuff that people just can't get through the media craziness about. | ||
| Yeah, he's a real human being. | ||
| He's a real human. | ||
| He's a real dad. | ||
| He's a real father-in-law, a real grandfather, a real husband. | ||
| And, you know, I think that a lot of people probably try to close themselves off from that reality of Donald Trump because for some reason they want to hang on to this idea that he's this monster. | ||
| But that's the thing, Dave. | ||
| I think over the next four years, I don't even think it'll take four years. | ||
| I think it'll take a year or two. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| Yeah, me too. | ||
| People are going to start to realize, oh my God, we have been hating this man for no reason for so long. | ||
| You cannot look at what he has done, what he's been through, and the fact that he's kept going and think anything other than he really does believe he can do the best job for this country. | ||
| And I'm glad the American people agreed with us on that, too. | ||
| And that's how you end an interview. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics instead of nonstop screaming, check out our politics playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist all right over here. |
Export Selection