Speaker | Time | Text |
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unidentified
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Music. | |
And now please welcome the president of the United States and first lady, Jill Biden. | ||
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. | ||
All righty. | ||
It is December 10th, 2024. I'm Dave Rubin. | ||
This is The Rubin Report. | ||
We are live streaming on the internet. | ||
You are likely watching on a computer or a phone. | ||
We've got a postgame show at rubinreport.locals.com. | ||
Senator Rand Paul will be joining me on the latter half of the show to catch up on what's going on with Syria, the incoming Trump administration, and a bunch more. | ||
But we're going to start today. | ||
We're just diving right in. | ||
We're just going right into the belly of the beast with some of the craziness that is happening on the left right now as it pertains to two specific cases. | ||
Obviously, Daniel Penny, who got off yesterday. | ||
That was the big news yesterday. | ||
It broke while we were live on air, so we were just able to dive into it just a little bit. | ||
Now we're seeing some of the media... | ||
And mainstream reaction to this. | ||
And he is a 24-year-old Navy vet who basically choked this guy on the subway. | ||
We'll get into the real specifics of it. | ||
Who was threatening to kill people on the subway. | ||
He did not wake up that morning and think, I'm going to New York City to hop on the subway and kill somebody, right? | ||
So he was acquitted. | ||
That is good. | ||
But the media is not framing it that way, of course, because they get up as down and down as up and left as right. | ||
All the other stuff. | ||
And then, of course, the other strange story in the last week that the left is also celebrating is that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was executed on the streets of New York in midtown New York City, and his killer has now been located And found, | ||
and they've uncovered some of his past writings and how it happened, but the left seemingly also celebrating him because he killed the CEO of a health organization and, you know, those are bad people who may not, you know, give you the exact returns you want or whatever else. | ||
It might be. | ||
So the show's a bit all over the place. | ||
But before we do anything, just very quickly, I have to show you a mainstream media headline yesterday. | ||
This is very important stuff. | ||
This is from the Toronto Star, big mainstream paper up there in Canada, how far-right influencers are weaponizing Canada as a warning to Americans and why it's also changing the way we see ourselves. | ||
And of course, there you see Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and a very scary far-right... | ||
Dave Rubin. | ||
And I just want to be very, very clear to the good people over at the Toronto Star. | ||
When I weaponize Canada, there is going to be a life-size John Candy statue on every corner. | ||
You will have to bow to it every time you walk by and name five of his best movies, which Summer Rental, I would put in there. | ||
It's little known. | ||
unidentified
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I know everybody would say Uncle Buck and, you know, some of the other stuff. | |
Summer Rental, not a bad one. | ||
Okay, let's dive right in. | ||
Yeah, I'm just showing you that, just to show you just like how absolutely ridiculous the mainstream media is. | ||
Yes, I'm far right. | ||
I'm weaponizing Canada. | ||
Okay, okay. | ||
Okay, so let's go and jump into some of the mainstream coverage post Daniel Penney being acquitted yesterday. | ||
You guys know Scott Jennings. | ||
He's sort of the one sane guy these days over at CNN. And, you know, I like when people use a little audio-visual where they show you something or they bust out the receipts. | ||
Scott did that right here. | ||
unidentified
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If you're on the American left tonight, here's my chart. | |
The good guys today, Daniel Penny. | ||
The bad guys, Luigi Mangione. | ||
It seems to me... | ||
How do you... | ||
What's the chart for victims? | ||
I'm just telling you what I see out in the world. | ||
I know, I know. | ||
I just want you to finish the chart. | ||
Which victim is good and which victim is bad. | ||
What I'm telling you is... | ||
That's not on the second page? | ||
People on the left... | ||
People on the left can't seem to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. | ||
I'm not asking you about people on the left. | ||
I'm not asking you whether you... | ||
Okay, so he's making it very clear. | ||
Obviously, they're covering the two stories we're talking about, and he's saying that, hey, the guy who stopped the person on the subway who was threatening to kill people, who did not wake up that morning with the intention to kill anybody, but did the thing we're all asked to do. | ||
If you see something, say something, or do something. | ||
You know, if you defund the police, you're going to get more criminality on the subway, and if someone's being threatened, maybe you do something as a good citizen. | ||
He's also trained because he went to the Navy. | ||
He is the good guy in this case, right? | ||
He stopped a bad thing from happening. | ||
Luigi Mangione is the guy who assassinated the healthcare CEO. Now, you may not like what the healthcare CEO was doing. | ||
You may not like how his company did business or anything else as it pertains to any of that. | ||
You may have all sorts of problems with how American healthcare works, but you can't just walk out there and do vigilante justice and murder An innocent man in the middle of New York City. | ||
Or I guess you can, but in this case, you're not going to get away with it. | ||
Anyway, that's Scott Jennings very clearly with a simple piece of paper. | ||
There are good guys and bad guys. | ||
Because you do if you're on CNN, you have to talk to people like they're eight years old. | ||
But here is the woman that you saw at the latter portion of that clip. | ||
Her name's Audi? | ||
Her name's Audi? | ||
Like after the car? | ||
Her name's Audi Cornish. | ||
That seems like a completely made-up name. | ||
Her name's Audi Cornish. | ||
And here she is comparing the good guy to the bad guy because moral relativism and all that stuff. | ||
unidentified
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You know, later in the night we're also going to talk about Penny and the verdict there. | |
There you also have a victim who somebody determined did not deserve to continue living, right? | ||
No, no, no, no. | ||
Yeah, tell me. | ||
Tell me which vigilante action is okay. | ||
One is being proactive, right? | ||
So this kid who executed someone, executed a guy walking away from him, shot him in the back, shot him for no reason whatsoever. | ||
Daniel Penny is a hero. | ||
You can say anything you want. | ||
Talk to people who ride the subway every day. | ||
Because I do all the time. | ||
I do all the time. | ||
I can't find anyone who rides the subway who's unhappy about this verdict. | ||
Wow, CNN hiring another sane guy. | ||
That's Arthur Adalia is his name. | ||
But of course, again, I mean, I just laid it out for you. | ||
These things are not comparable at all. | ||
But CNN, of course, wants to muddy the waters. | ||
They want to figure out how to racialize everything. | ||
And of course, if you're the good guy in this case, meaning you took out the person on the subway threatening to kill people, but you happen to be white and he happened to be black, they have to do everything that follows the narrative. | ||
So if things don't follow the narrative, then they're in trouble. | ||
Speaking of things not following the narrative, so The Daily Show covered this. | ||
And, you know, last week I gave Jon Stewart a little bit of credit because he's criticizing some of the portions of the left that have gone too far. | ||
But for the last 20 years, I mean, he in some ways was like the main guy driving so much of that. | ||
Right. | ||
What was the main thing they said about The Daily Show all the years that Jon Stewart was the host? | ||
It was that more young Americans get their news from The Daily Show than anywhere else. | ||
And he became, unfortunately, instead of being just a good old fashioned liberal that we might have some disagreements with, he became sort of a woke, crazy progressive. | ||
In any event, he covered the assassination last night. | ||
Oh, no, no. | ||
unidentified
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Sorry. | |
He covered Daniel Penny getting acquitted last night. | ||
And listen to the reaction from his audience and watch the sort of guilt-ridden way he's throwing the joke out here. | ||
Watch this. | ||
Today, they did appear to catch that guy today at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania. | ||
It's true. | ||
Look, I'm sorry, guys. | ||
Apparently, a bystander at the McDonald's ratted him out. | ||
And normally, I would say, snitches get stitches. | ||
but obviously without pre-approval, there's really... | ||
It's interesting because he's really not sure what to do there. | ||
And this is where the left is always led by its worst impulses, right? | ||
So he's saying that the guy got acquitted and now they caught the killer, right? | ||
Oh, sorry, I'm combining two stories. | ||
He's saying that they caught the killer and the audience of the CEO, of the healthcare CEO, and the audience is basically booing like, oh, he should get away with it. | ||
And John kind of, sort of feels that way, or he's a little afraid. | ||
So the joke doesn't even fully work. | ||
Snitches get stitches, and I get it without pre-approval. | ||
Okay, it's like, you can understand why intellectually it's funny, except this is someone who should have been caught, right? | ||
This is someone who you should want caught. | ||
Every single person out there is aggrieved one way or another. | ||
We've all got somebody that we're really... | ||
That you could be really angry at or that you think wronged you or wronged your family or is wronging society. | ||
Once we give the slightest hint to that vigilante justice is okay. | ||
Oh, you don't like somebody the way they do business or whatever it might be. | ||
You can just shoot them and then somehow on television, you know, you're going to be lauded as the good guy. | ||
You got a real, real problem there. | ||
So unfortunately, I would say John is now stuck in a weird situation where his base If he tries to be sane, he's not going to be too happy with him. | ||
Guys, let me jump to Rumble Premium for just a moment, and then we'll have a bit more on the reaction to Penny's acquittal. | ||
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. | ||
Okay, so now watch as we really tie this thing together. | ||
So how did we get to a situation where on CNN you would have a host or an analyst, whatever she considers herself, comparing the guy who saved people on the subway because the guy was claiming that he was going to hurt people and murder people and didn't care if he went back to jail and all of these things. | ||
How do you compare that guy? | ||
To the guy who literally assassinated someone on the street. | ||
And then how do you end up in a situation where Jon Stewart is saying, oh, they caught the guy who did the assassination and his own audience is booing him? | ||
Well, the way you get there is the way we've gotten to most of the bad places that we've gotten to for the last decade or so, which is through the mainstream media. | ||
So now let's jump back about a year ago. | ||
This is ABC covering the original incident as it relates to Daniel Penney. | ||
unidentified
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Protests overnight demanding the arrest of the Marine veteran who put a homeless man in a deadly chokehold. | |
Witnesses say the victim was acting erratically and threatening other passengers. | ||
Whit Johnson has the latest. | ||
Overnight, protesters demanding the arrest of a Marine veteran. | ||
You took drugs from us! | ||
How many more?! | ||
The NYPD now reviewing that video and calling for witnesses to come forward. | ||
Authorities say 30-year-old Jordan Neely was acting erratically, and some witnesses reported he threatened passengers on the Manhattan F train when the 24-year-old veteran stepped in. | ||
Other passengers seen holding Neely's arms. | ||
He was later pronounced dead at the hospital. | ||
New York Governor Kathy Hochul calling the case horrific. | ||
This was an individual who took the situation into his own hands. | ||
Just looking at that video, you know it's wrong. | ||
No one has the right to take the life of another person. | ||
Sorry, bitch. | ||
Sorry. | ||
The law doesn't agree with you. | ||
You're right. | ||
Nobody has the right to take someone's life. | ||
But you also don't have the right to go on the subway and start threatening people, right? | ||
Daniel Penney is the good guy in this situation, but this is what the media does. | ||
This is what the media and the Democrat Party does with everything. | ||
You guys are the ones that defunded the police, so there is more criminality on the subway, right? | ||
People jump the turnstiles, people do drugs on the street. | ||
There was an article like two months ago, there's more public masturbation than ever in the New York City. | ||
It's true! | ||
It's true! | ||
We didn't want to cover it because we knew we'd get demonetized, but there, it's true. | ||
I don't know how much there was before, but there's more than ever now. | ||
But this is what happens. | ||
Daniel Penney gets on the subway. | ||
You're told, see something, say something, do something. | ||
And he went out of his way. | ||
He did the thing that most of us would be afraid to do, which is get involved. | ||
Oh, that guy's threatening those people over there. | ||
I'm going to hold him down, and then hopefully the authorities will get involved. | ||
Obviously, he didn't want to kill the guy, and other people were help holding him down as well. | ||
But then for Kathy Hochul to immediately... | ||
Basically condemn him, and then the media runs with that, right? | ||
And that is why we end up always with everything freaking backwards. | ||
Now let's show you, and of course, by the way, what Kathy Hochul just said right there is completely against the reason he got acquitted. | ||
But listen to Daniel Penny in his own words telling his side of the story. | ||
unidentified
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East Village in Manhattan, so I take the subway multiple times a day. | |
In this instance, I was coming from school. | ||
I got out of class around 2-15, and I was at J Street Metro Tech, took the uptown F train. | ||
At 2nd Avenue, a man came on, stumbled on. | ||
He appeared to be on drugs. | ||
The doors closed, and he ripped his jacket off and threw it at the people sitting down to my left. | ||
I was listening to music at the time, and he was yelling, so I took my headphones out to hear what he was yelling. | ||
And the three main threats that he repeated over and over was, I'm gonna kill you. | ||
I'm prepared to go to jail for life, and I'm willing to die. | ||
You know, this was a scary situation, and Mr. Nearly came on. | ||
He was threatening. | ||
I'm 6'2", and he was taller than me. | ||
There's a common misconception that Marines don't get scared. | ||
We're actually taught one of our core values is courage, and courage is not the absence of fear, but how you handle fear. | ||
You know, I was scared for myself, but I looked around. | ||
I saw women and children. | ||
He was yelling in their faces, saying these threats. | ||
I couldn't just sit still. | ||
Some people say that I was holding on to Mr. Neely for 15 minutes. | ||
This is not true. | ||
I mean, between stops is only a couple minutes. | ||
So the whole interaction less than less than five minutes. | ||
Some people say I was trying to choke him to death, which is also not true. | ||
I was trying to restrain him. | ||
You can see in the video there's a clear rise and fall of his chest, indicating that he's breathing. | ||
I'm trying to restrain him from him being able to carry out the threats. | ||
And then some people say that this is about race, which is absolutely ridiculous. | ||
I didn't see a black man threatening passengers. | ||
I saw a man threatening passengers. | ||
A lot of whom were people of color. | ||
Okay, so fortunately, he is a free man. | ||
We'll have some images of him celebrating his freedom in just a second. | ||
But when you watch that video, I mean, you know, I always say that thing about when people are telling the truth, it's easy to speak, right? | ||
You don't have to be genuflecting and screaming and waving your hands around and all of these things. | ||
You can just tell the truth and it's easy and we can hear it and feel it and it's authentic and real. | ||
And that's exactly what you got out of him right there. | ||
This is not someone who woke up Thinking, I'm going to murder basically a homeless black man today. | ||
There was a man screaming in the face of women and children, some of whom also happened to be black, as he pointed out, even though he wasn't the one. | ||
He's not the one racializing this. | ||
It's the mainstream media that racializes everything. | ||
So he's the good guy in this case. | ||
And justice actually was served. | ||
And we should all be aware of that and we should be happy about that. | ||
And Kathy Hochul should be embarrassed. | ||
I mean, you could almost argue she should be impeached and kicked out of office because she was prejudging a case. | ||
And then you wonder why all these mobs go out on the street and scream that the police are evil and that white supremacists are taking over and everything else. | ||
Guys, as a total sidebar here, I've been given some information. | ||
This is from the New York Post. | ||
Public masturbation soars in New York City, with sickos pleasuring and exposing themselves in the open. | ||
It's up 51%. | ||
So I don't know the exact numbers on that, but that seems like a major jump in public masturbation, and I don't know what's going on over there. | ||
But if you're doing that on the subway, just hope that Daniel Penny is not on your train. | ||
Here is Daniel Penny celebrating. | ||
A couple images and a quick little video. | ||
Just celebrating at a bar in New York. | ||
And look, this is not a bad guy. | ||
This is not a racist. | ||
This is not a vigilante or anything else. | ||
He is the good guy in this story. | ||
Now I want to jump over to Jordan Neely's father yesterday. | ||
Jordan Neely is the guy who unfortunately is dead. | ||
The 30-year-old who clearly had a bunch of psychological problems and we'll get into some of the family history in just a moment. | ||
But this is Jordan Neely's father, Andre Zachary, talking about his son. | ||
unidentified
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I just want to say I miss my son. | |
My son didn't have to go through this. | ||
I didn't have to go through this either. | ||
unidentified
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It hurts. | |
It really, really hurts. | ||
What are we going to do, people? | ||
What's going to happen to us now? | ||
I had enough of this. | ||
The system is rigged. | ||
unidentified
|
Come on, people. | |
Let's do something about this. | ||
Let's do something about it. | ||
Too often. | ||
We have Eric Garner's mother here. | ||
Okay. | ||
unidentified
|
All right. | |
First off, I just want to reiterate, there's no celebration over the death of Jordan Neely, right? | ||
But what if Jordan Neely, as he's getting in the face of the women and children in that subway, what if he had stabbed somebody? | ||
What if he had punched somebody? | ||
Like, he was getting in there screaming, saying he wasn't worried if he was going to be arrested and all of these things. | ||
So I have sympathy for the feelings of the father. | ||
Nobody wants their child to die. | ||
However, there is a little bit more. | ||
This is little context from Greg Price on the history of George Neerly's father. | ||
George Neerly's father, Andre Zachary, who abandoned him as a child, placed him in foster care after his mother's murder when he was a teenager and did not care about him while he was homeless, says, I miss my son and the system is rigged. | ||
Okay, so again, that is in no way... | ||
I think you understand. | ||
It is what it is. | ||
There's probably no clean hands here. | ||
But the father, like, we got to do something. | ||
And the system is rigged. | ||
As you can hear people chanting in the background, it's like, well, what do you mean? | ||
Do you mean burn down New York City? | ||
Because that's what a lot of the left wants to do all of the time. | ||
Do you want vigilante justice and someone to go after Penny? | ||
Like... | ||
You kind of probably do. | ||
And actually, there's evidence of that. | ||
This is New York BLM leader. | ||
And BLM still exists, which is completely psychotic. | ||
The entire thing was exposed to be a massive money laundering scheme and completely fraudulent organization. | ||
But this is New York BLM leader Hawk Newsome. | ||
And, well, listen to the rhetoric here. | ||
unidentified
|
We need some black vigilantes. | |
That's right. | ||
People want to jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud? | ||
How about we do the same when they attempt to oppress us? | ||
I'm tired. | ||
All right. | ||
That is, I would say, as close to calls for direct violence as you can get within the confines of the First Amendment, right? | ||
You are not allowed to call for direct violence to people, but in essence, he is there. | ||
And then you wonder, again, when we see these mobs, whether they're the BLM mobs or the Hamas mobs or whatever, and they're breaking into stores and they're looting and they're scaring kids and women on the streets and all these things. | ||
Well, how did this happen? | ||
Well, it's... | ||
What we just showed you here, the media kind of lies about the story, racializes something that shouldn't be racialized. | ||
The governor of the state, preemptively before there's a trial and all the evidence is out there, immediately says Daniel Penny is the bad guy. | ||
Then you get The father, who sounds like he wasn't such a great father to this homeless person who was threatening women and kids on the subway. | ||
You get the father to imply that we better do something. | ||
Then you get a giant nonprofit organization that's completely fraudulent. | ||
You get the leader. | ||
His name is Hawk Newsome, which sounds like the bad guy in my nightmares, Hawk Newsome. | ||
It's like half Gavin Newsome, whatever it is. | ||
But you get, we're going to get out there. | ||
And then you wonder why we're endlessly in this strange, toxic place that we find ourselves. | ||
Well, you know what? | ||
You know what happens when you do all that? | ||
You get literally hundreds and thousands of confused people out on the street protesting, and they're not even sure why. | ||
This was New York City yesterday. | ||
unidentified
|
What's his name? | |
Jordy Neely! | ||
Say his name! | ||
Jordy Neely! | ||
What's his name? | ||
Jordan Neely! Go! Jordan! Jordan! Jordan! Jordan! Jordan! Jordan! Jordan! Jordan! | ||
Now again, nobody is celebrating the death of Jordan Neely, but let's frame it this way: How about this? | ||
Let's do a little thought experiment here. | ||
If Jordan Neely had gone on that subway that day and punched an old woman, particularly if she was black, you would have never heard of this story, right? | ||
because the media wouldn't have known what to do with the story, because it's a black homeless man, in essence, punching a black woman. | ||
They don't know what to do with that. | ||
That's why you don't hear about black-on-black crime in Chicago. | ||
It does not fit the narrative, right? | ||
They got what they thought was a perfect story here, sort of young, good-looking, navy, white guy kills black man. | ||
So it's perfect. | ||
Imagine if Jordan Neely had killed somebody on that subway. | ||
You probably wouldn't. | ||
They certainly wouldn't be protesting out there for justice for the dead person on the It would just be a story. | ||
It would be like, homeless man kills somebody on subway, we will all move on. | ||
And nobody would know the name of the homeless person or of the other thing. | ||
But this one fits the narrative, so they're running with it. | ||
My friend Megyn Kelly had, I would say, rather spectacular analysis of the situation. | ||
Meanwhile, someone over on Neely's side, he's sort of describing him as the victim. | ||
He wasn't the victim. | ||
He was the aggressor. | ||
He was the criminal on that subway car that day who was seriously threatening other passengers. | ||
He had a long history of hurting them. | ||
And somebody on his side yelled out in the courtroom, it's a racist country! | ||
Hello, madam or sir, that's not working anymore. | ||
You're going to have to find a new line. | ||
I don't know what it's going to be. | ||
But the BLM era is officially over. | ||
It's over. | ||
You had us in some sort of weird, psychotic... | ||
Headspin for four or five years and it's done. | ||
Trump's re-elected and Daniel Penney is acquitted in one of the most leftist jurisdictions in America, despite the fact that he is white and Jordan Neely was black. | ||
Yeah, that's right. | ||
This thing had nothing to do with race. | ||
This had everything to do with the lawlessness of New York City and the defunding of the police that is pushed by BLM and the progressive people like Kathy Hochul. | ||
This is far more, the death of Jordan Neely is far more on them actually than it is on Penny. | ||
So it is justice served that he is now a free man. | ||
And of course, they will use this. | ||
They will use this to increase protests when they want them, get violence out there when they want and everything else. | ||
But I think Meghan is completely right. | ||
You can directly connect this now to the election of Donald Trump. | ||
We are done listening to the mainstream media narratives. | ||
The bullshit that you guys have served us for so long almost got us to the precipice of the end of the country. | ||
I think that's how close we got just a couple weeks ago. | ||
Had the election gone the other way, we would be in deep, deep doo-doo right now, okay? | ||
But we're not anymore, and we're not going to listen to BLM, we're not going to listen to the mainstream narratives, and we're going to keep telling the truth. | ||
And we're going to keep fighting for the good guys and fighting against the bad guys. | ||
And I know you guys aren't going to be happy about it, but you're going to have to suck it up because we ain't going to stop. | ||
Guys, let's talk about Ledger for a moment, and then we'll get to more on the way the media is reversing the truth as it pertains to the death of Brian Thompson, the CEO of the healthcare organization. | ||
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All right. | ||
So if I do say so myself, I think we clearly laid out the case right there. | ||
And I think you probably, if you were a little confused about any of the issues, I think you probably have a little more sense of what just happened in New York City. | ||
But now let's stay in New York City for a moment and talk about The murder of Brian Thompson. | ||
We've got this from The Daily Wire. | ||
Brian Thompson, the 50-year-old CEO of United Healthcare, who was gunned down in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, was one of multiple executives at his company who were being investigated by the Department of Justice for insider trading. | ||
Thompson was shot and killed in what authorities believe was a brazen targeted attack before he made it to the Hilton Hotel to take part in the company's annual investors conference. | ||
The New York Post reported that Thompson and several other executives at UnitedHealth Group are facing a DOJ probe. | ||
UnitedHealthcare is a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest companies in the world. | ||
On February 16th of this year, Thompson sold shares worth $15.1 million. | ||
Just two weeks before the public found out about a federal antitrust probe, according to Crane's New York Business. | ||
The DOJ was reportedly investigating whether UnitedHealth Group violated antitrust laws by making acquisitions that consolidated its market position. | ||
Thompson's sale of his shares earlier this year was his first since taking over the company in 2021, according to The Post. | ||
Thompson, United Health Group Chairman Stephen Helmsley, Chief People Officer Aaron McSweeney, and Chief Accounting Officer Tom Cruise sold a combined $101.5 million in shares. | ||
So, okay, so first, let's just address that. | ||
They were being investigated by the DOJ. Did they maybe do some things that the DOJ was not happy about, like acquire some other companies, and was there some monopolistic practices? | ||
Perhaps. | ||
But Either way, did he sell shares? | ||
Did he maybe have insider knowledge and then sell shares before the meeting and all those things? | ||
Did he perhaps do a whole bunch of nefarious stuff? | ||
Perhaps. | ||
I don't know any more than I'm reading to you right there. | ||
But the answer to that is perhaps, yeah, perhaps he did. | ||
But you cannot, as a citizen of the United States, say that someone's doing some bad things, and we'll have more on the motives in just a moment, and just go out there and shoot them. | ||
We have a legal system for a reason. | ||
So let's go a bit more from the Daily Wire here. | ||
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tish and Chief Detectives Joe Kenney identified the man arrested in connection with the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson as 26-year-old Luigi Mangione. | ||
Mangione was arrested at McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Monday after an employee at the fast food chain tipped off local police. | ||
Mangione is from Maryland and has ties to San Francisco. | ||
Kenny sat at a press conference. | ||
Police believed he attended college in Pennsylvania and most recently lived in Honolulu. | ||
The person of interest presented fake IDs to police and was found in possession of what appeared to be a homemade firearm and suppressor, according to authorities. | ||
According to Kenny, the gun found on the person of interest was capable of shooting a 9mm round and could have been made with a 3D printer. | ||
Mangione is facing a firearm charge in Pennsylvania. | ||
A manifesto was also found on Mangione's person after his arrest. | ||
Kenny did not go into detail on what was written in the manifesto, but he said it does seem he has some ill will toward corporate America. | ||
Mangione has no criminal record in New York, according to authorities. | ||
Mangione reportedly showed police officers the same fake New Jersey ID used by a person of interest in the case who was checked into a Manhattan hostel on November 24th, just 10 days before Thompson arrived. | ||
Was gunned down. | ||
Okay, so we'll have more on Mangione in just a second. | ||
But the point, again, I just want to drive it home beyond anything else. | ||
Whatever grievance you have as a person, we all have organizations we don't like. | ||
I don't like the people of MSNBC. You can't just walk out there and shoot them, right? | ||
Like, if once we do that, we're shredding any ability to have a functional society. | ||
So now a bit more on Mangione and some of his perhaps motives. | ||
This is from Colin Rugg. | ||
"Luigi Mangione had a back condition that was so bad that having physical relationships with his back condition wasn't possible. | ||
The update comes as left-wingers are fantasizing about having sexual relationships with Mangione." That's happening all over Twitter because, you know, there's some shirtless pictures of the guy. | ||
He clearly worked out. | ||
Police say that they found a 262-page manifesto on Mangione taking responsibility for the murder. | ||
According to R.J. Martin, the founder of a co-living community in Hololulu, Mangione opened up about his back condition during time in the community. | ||
His spine was kind of misaligned, Martin said, as reported by the New York Times. | ||
He said his lower vertebrae were almost like a half inch off and I think it pinched a nerve. | ||
Sometimes he'd be doing well and other times not. | ||
After a surfing incident, Mangione told Martin he wasn't in a relationship because he knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition was impossible. | ||
I remember him telling me that and my heart just breaks. | ||
In the 262-page handwritten manifesto, the writer admits to the murder and says that they acted alone. | ||
To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone, it says. | ||
The writer lashed out against companies that continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public Has allowed them to get away with it. | ||
Okay. | ||
Again, so now we're finding out a little bit more. | ||
So he clearly had this back pain. | ||
It sounds like he was denied certain coverage or services that he wanted. | ||
I am not defending anything that UnitedHealthcare did. | ||
We will find out more information about that. | ||
Is it possible they were denying coverage? | ||
And is it possible that health care companies in general or insurance companies in general deny benefits if your house is hit with a hurricane or you have a certain health problem or whatever it might be? | ||
Are they always doing what is exactly best for the customer? | ||
Probably not, right? | ||
Can we figure out ways to streamline some of that stuff and make some of that stuff better and more cost-effective so insurance companies are more likely to help you get the coverage you need, whether it's for your home or for your health or whatever? | ||
Of course, and we should have those conversations, and with AI and with Doge and with so many things changing, hopefully a lot of that stuff will get better. | ||
But once you say, okay, I've got a problem, I was denied coverage by this organization. | ||
I can just go out there and assassinate somebody. | ||
Somebody who maybe was doing some other nefarious stuff with insider trading or whatever else. | ||
Once you do that, we don't have a functioning society. | ||
And in some respects, the reason that we've gotten so close to not having a functioning society is because our culture has been rotten. | ||
So now I want to just jump back to the 20-second clip from The Daily Show and listen to the audience booing When Jon Stewart tells them that they arrested the guy who murdered an innocent man in, well, it wasn't broad daylight, it was at night. | ||
It was on video. | ||
We can't show you the video because YouTube will take it down. | ||
But catching the guy who committed the murder of an innocent man is a good thing. | ||
However, this. | ||
Today, they did appear to catch that guy today at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania. | ||
It's true. | ||
Look, I'm sorry, guys. | ||
Apparently, a bystander at the McDonald's ratted him out. | ||
And normally, I would say, snitches get stitches. | ||
but obviously without pre-approval there's really okay so So, yeah. | ||
John, you've, again, sort of festered this stuff. | ||
So nobody in their right mind should be applauding this. | ||
Again, you can have an honest conversation about what do we have to do as it relates to health care. | ||
And we will dig in and find out more if Brian Thompson did nefarious things or the selling of the shares was untoward or whatever it might be. | ||
But once you unearth this thing, and this is what you guys have done with everything, right? | ||
Healthcare executives automatically are bad and should be shot. | ||
White supremacists are everywhere. | ||
You've done this with everything, and it's deeply, deeply dangerous. | ||
I want to show you this wild clip. | ||
So there is this girl by the name of Taylor Lorenz. | ||
I think I've only... | ||
I mentioned her once or twice over the years on the show. | ||
She's gone after me many times. | ||
She's a lefty. | ||
She's got a sub stack, I suppose, but she was sort of like a mainstream lefty, like one of these people who is always focused on the people of the internet, right? | ||
Like what's going on on the underbelly of the internet from a left-wing perspective? | ||
So everyone's a white supremacist and a bad guy and everything else. | ||
So when I tell you that there are people who are genuinely celebrating That Brian Thompson was assassinated because they don't like American capitalism or how our healthcare works or something else. | ||
Well, here's a prime example of just that. | ||
unidentified
|
I do believe in the sanctity of life, and I think that's why I felt, along with so many other Americans, joy, unfortunately, you know, because it feels like... | |
Joy? | ||
Serious? | ||
I mean... | ||
Joy in a man's execution? | ||
Maybe not joy, but certainly not empathy. | ||
Because, again... | ||
We're watching the footage. | ||
How can this make you joyful? | ||
This guy's a husband, he's a father, and he's being young down in the middle of Manhattan. | ||
unidentified
|
Why is that making you joyful? | |
So are the tens of thousands of Americans, innocent Americans, who died because greedy health insurance executives like this one push policies of denying care to the most vulnerable people. | ||
And I... The many millions of Americans that have watched people that I care about suffer and in some cases die because of lack of health care. | ||
So should they all be killed then? | ||
Should they all be killed, these health care executives? | ||
Would that make you even more joyful? | ||
No, that would not. | ||
Why not? | ||
Why are you laughing? | ||
Because it wouldn't fix the system. | ||
You seem to find the whole thing hilarious. | ||
I find your question funny. | ||
A bloke's been murdered in the street. | ||
I don't find it funny at all. | ||
Actually, Piers, you did a great job right there because the question was right, should they all be killed? | ||
She first said she felt joy when he was killed, then she kind of walked it back because she realized how insane it sounded, but then she said she had no empathy. | ||
Like, if you can't have empathy for a completely innocent man being executed in the middle of the street, a father, again, you don't have to like some of his business practices and we'll find out, but everyone can be pissed at somebody for something. | ||
And once you just, once a society says, it's okay, take the law into your own hands. | ||
Proactively start murdering people. | ||
And the fact that they've now conflated these issues, right? | ||
When we jump back to that clip that we started with with CNN, that they've somehow conflated the idea that this guy just goes out there and murders a healthcare CEO for whatever reasons he has. | ||
Like, he's got his reasons. | ||
He has back problems. | ||
Didn't get the coverage he wants. | ||
You can just go out there and murder. | ||
And that somehow is like the guy who got on the subway and did something about someone who is threatening women and children, that they've conflated good and bad and everything else, right? | ||
That's what they've done with everything. | ||
That's what moral relativism is. | ||
There is no good and bad anymore. | ||
Everything's just thrown into a bucket, mixed up, and you don't know what's what. | ||
But that is, it is, when I tell you that the internet breaks brains and that, you know, that leftism, it's like, it's a mental disorder at this point. | ||
I think Taylor Lorenz is a perfect example of that. | ||
And I don't even need to make this about her, but there's an awful lot of people out there. | ||
They're on the streets of New York City right now who believe that. | ||
They believe it is okay. | ||
You know, healthcare is screwed up. | ||
Most people would agree with that, by the way. | ||
And that people don't necessarily get the coverage or they don't even do the innovative coverage that you might need. | ||
I have someone that's very, very close to me that's in the hospital right now. | ||
And because of the way the healthcare system works, not only at the hospital, but with the insurance itself, they're having trouble getting the—they want to do some innovative stuff. | ||
They want to think outside the box as it relates to the treatment, and they're unable to do it. | ||
Now, can you go out there and shoot somebody? | ||
No, you push and you do what you can. | ||
So again, this moral relativism has to end, and that's why Scott Jennings showing the paper was pretty good. | ||
unidentified
|
If you're on the American left tonight, here's my chart. | |
The good guys today, Daniel Penny. | ||
The bad guys, Luigi Mangione. | ||
It seems to me... | ||
How do you... | ||
Everybody on the left... | ||
What's the chart for victims? | ||
I'm just telling you what I see out in the world today. | ||
I know, I know. | ||
I just want you to finish the chart. | ||
Which victim is good and which victim is bad? | ||
What I'm telling you is... | ||
That's not on the second page? | ||
People on the left... | ||
People on the left can't seem to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. | ||
Yeah, well, we know what you think, lady. | ||
What you think is that these things are all equal, and that is deeply dangerous and deeply wrong. | ||
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All right, so we're going to connect with Senator Rand Paul in about four minutes. | ||
He's finishing up another interview. | ||
So we have a couple comments and questions here from the rubinreport.locals.com live chat, which if you want to download the Locals app, it's on the Apple Store and the Google Play Store. | ||
It's absolutely free. | ||
You can jump in there, and if you're throwing a couple bucks, you help keep us independent, and we can chat with you during the show. | ||
Let's see. | ||
Florida Man Chuck says, we will have the UHC's Shooters Manifesto before the Epstein list. | ||
Yeah, well, we'll see what happens with the Epstein list. | ||
I mean, I think that if cash comes in and they start opening things up, maybe we'll get it. | ||
But of course, the manifesto will be out there. | ||
And look, is it possible that this Mangione kid, is it possible that he had this horrible back problem, whatever was going on with his spine, and did it completely affect his life? | ||
And All of those things. | ||
And is it possible that he was not getting the treatment that he wanted or felt that he should get or whatever? | ||
And that the healthcare company did not care enough or was not doing the proper work to make sure that he was getting the proper healthcare? | ||
All of that is true. | ||
Could be true, right? | ||
All of that could potentially be true. | ||
But once you say, okay, I could shoot somebody, you really don't have a society anymore. | ||
Right? | ||
Like, okay, I was at a restaurant and my steak was medium rare and I asked for it well done. | ||
I don't know why you do that, but okay, I'm gonna shoot the waiter. | ||
You just can't do these things if we are going to have a functional society. | ||
KCN says, maybe people should walk around with squirt guns filled with hot sauce and spray the perverts. | ||
Yeah, public masturbation up 51%. | ||
Yeah, you deserve to be squirted with some, and if that got right in the tip, that would not be pleasant, people. | ||
Shecky Green says, Luigi Mangione is an example of the Ivy League elite and their self-loathing values coupled with a Manson-like criminal psychopathy. | ||
I mean, we'll find out more about him, but you know, it is interesting. | ||
So he went to Penn, he went to UPenn. | ||
So there's something very interesting about this story because he is highly, highly educated, right? | ||
They're finding out more on his social media about his thoughts and his life and everything else. | ||
But the guy hand wrote this 200 plus page manifesto. | ||
You know, so this wasn't a drug addict. | ||
It wasn't a transient or anything else, right? | ||
Like, that's what I think originally people thought, that this guy, and again, we're not showing you the video because it'll probably be taken down, but you can find the video all over the place. | ||
People thought originally this was probably like a hired hit. | ||
It looked like it was a hit man who did this because he had proper form with the gun, basically. | ||
There was a moment where the gun jammed. | ||
But basically that did this have something to do with some kind of insider trading or some nefarious activity that Brian Thompson was about to go to this big meeting over, right? | ||
And that someone killed him right before the meeting, like it was a paid job. | ||
We now find out that that is not the case. | ||
But the fact that this kid is highly educated then also has that You call it psychopathy, but whatever you wanna call it, that insane sort of twisted view of the world that you can take justice into your own hands, it is a very, very dangerous cocktail. | ||
Gold Z says, Dave, have you ever watched John Candy on the old Second City? | ||
That's a jump to my initial thing from the Toronto Star where they called me all, what was it? | ||
I'm far right and I'm leading Canada down a bad path. | ||
Yeah, it's like I'm trying to fight for Canadians to live freely and not have jihadists running around the streets and push back against the insanely authoritarian Justin Trudeau, but I guess that makes me far right. | ||
Have I ever seen, yeah, I've seen old video clips of John Candy on SCTV. SCTV was sort of the Canadian, it was like a precursor to Saturday Night Live and so many legendary comedians. | ||
Came out of that. | ||
I think if I'm not mistaken, Bill Murray came out of that and a bunch of the guys from Ghostbusters and all those things. | ||
And a huge, yeah, huge amount of, Rick Moranis came out of it. | ||
Huge amount of comedians came out of Canada. | ||
Say that three times fast, would you? | ||
Jess Fernandez says, Dana White should set up a pay-per-view. | ||
Kamala versus Jill and all proceeds go towards the national debt. | ||
Wouldn't that be something? | ||
I mean, the ice cold stare, you're obviously referencing. | ||
the cold open that we did right there, which I believe was AI generated. | ||
But there is, there is some serious, serious tension right now between the Biden camp and the Kamala camp. | ||
It's also interesting that, you know, for, for four months, you know, basically since Kamala announced through election day, we were bludgeoned with her, Originally, they tried to hide her and let her skate by, but then they just put her out, put her out, put her out. | ||
And as my friend David Sachs, who's now going to be the AI and crypto czar for the Trump administration, as he pointed out, that put Kamala into this doom loop because they hid her, it didn't work. | ||
The more they showed her, it didn't work. | ||
So there was no way out for them on this thing. | ||
But it has become very, very clear now that between the Kamala camp, where now she's completely disappeared again and we were told that she's making all the decisions with Joe and there's no daylight between them and everything else, it's like there's an awful lot of stuff happening in the world right now that maybe she should be commenting on, like what's going on in Syria, which we'll talk about with Rand Paul in just a moment. | ||
It's like there is major, major tension there. | ||
And the fact that we don't even know who's running this administration and what's going on, it's just crazy. | ||
Let me jump back to what's going on in Canada because Donald Trump tweeted this yesterday. | ||
And this is like perfect, like Donald Trump, we're back in business. | ||
It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the great state of Canada. | ||
I look forward to seeing the governor again soon so that we may continue our in-depth talks. | ||
Sorry, Phoenix, I lost the prompter there. | ||
So that we may continue our in-depth talks on tariffs and trade, the result of which will be truly spectacular for all Donald J. Trump. | ||
Like that's Trump. | ||
That's Trump being Trump and like calling him governor, right? | ||
What did he say the other day after he met with Trudeau? | ||
He's like, look, if you guys are gonna be screwing us on trade all the time, why don't we just bring you in and you'll be the 51st state and we'll make this thing work. | ||
So obviously he's just poking him, but already some results have been Have been seen, right? | ||
It sounds like the trade discrepancy is going to be cleaned up a little bit. | ||
We won't be getting so screwed with trade with Canada. | ||
Why would we be getting screwed on trade with Canada? | ||
It's one thing if we're screwed at some level with trade from China, like they can seriously make stuff cheaper than we can. | ||
But why would we be getting screwed with a Western nation directly connected to our northern border like Canada? | ||
So it sounds like that's gonna be fixed up a little bit. | ||
It sounds like some of the immigration stuff is gonna be fixed up because we do have to protect that border as well because there's a lot of wacky stuff going on in Canada. | ||
So things are ordering themselves even before Trump has taken office. | ||
Carpenter Olaf says, we need to get Americans healthy and that will go a long way to fixing the healthcare system. | ||
You know, that's a great point. | ||
I almost said something like that. | ||
Oh, and I'm told that we have Senator Rand Paul. | ||
Senator Paul, are you there? | ||
I think we'll have him in just a sec. | ||
Do we have a senator? | ||
Oh, we'll have him in just a sec. | ||
We connected in just... | ||
Oh, there we go. | ||
Senator, it's good to see you. | ||
Are you hearing us? | ||
Are we coming in? | ||
We got you. | ||
Can you hear me? | ||
We're not hearing you. | ||
We're not hearing you? | ||
All right. | ||
Hang on just a sec, guys. | ||
We'll get that cleaned up. | ||
Apologies, everybody. | ||
We'll get that cleaned up. | ||
I'll comment on what Carpenter Olaf said, that we need to get Americans healthy, that will go a long way to fixing the healthcare system. | ||
Well, look, that's why I think we are about to see a renaissance in America. | ||
It's not just a cultural renaissance, and I've talked about creativity and movies and music and all of these things that are about to burst forth and AI coming in And just new ways of thinking about things that are so obviously on the horizon and interplanetary travel and all of these things. | ||
But we're also, thankfully, because of Bobby, RFK Jr., putting this on the menu for us, we are gonna start thinking about health differently. | ||
Some of our shows that do the biggest now are when we're focused on health, when we're talking about how to clean up your food and working out differently and getting outside and all of these things. | ||
So in some ways, I think you could argue As horrific as the lockdowns were and the forced injections and all of these horrible things, it did wake a bunch of us up. | ||
And if we start taking more care of ourselves, and this is to your point, if we start taking a little bit more care for our own health, right, oh, what did I put in my body today, et cetera, then you will be less reliant on the healthcare system, which hopefully will be rehauled in its own way. | ||
All right, I think we've got Senator Paul. | ||
Senator! | ||
Hey, Dave. | ||
Thanks for having me. | ||
It's good to have you. | ||
Obviously a whole bunch going on in the world right now, and I want to preface all of what we're going to do, because it's mostly going to be about Syria and some of the international stuff that's happening, is that years ago, before I supported Donald Trump, but I was kind of coming around, one of the reasons that I got there Is that you, who are really the standard bearer of libertarianism in the government right now, you are coming around on Donald Trump, I think as it relates partly to his foreign policy, and that was one of the things that got me there. | ||
So let me start with a quote from the Daily Wire just to catch everybody up, and then we'll get your take on what's going on in Syria. | ||
On November 30th, Islamic terrorist groups, including Hayat Tahir al-Sham, launched a rapid offensive capturing Aleppo, Syria's second largest city. | ||
By December 5th, these forces had also taken control of Hama, the country's fourth largest city. | ||
The swift territorial losses prompted the Assad regime to seek support from allies. | ||
Iran pledged assistance to the Syrian government following the fall of Aleppo. | ||
By December 7th, rebel forces had entered Damascus, leading to the collapse of the Assad regime. | ||
President Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, where he was granted asylum. | ||
He continued. | ||
Likewise, Ukraine President Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness. | ||
They have ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers and many more civilians. | ||
There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. | ||
Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger and far worse. | ||
I know Vladimir Zelensky well. | ||
This is the time to act. | ||
China can help. | ||
The world is waiting, Trump said. | ||
Syria's a mess, but it is our friend, and the United States should have nothing to do with it, Trump said in a post on X. This is not our fight. | ||
Let it play out. | ||
Do not get involved. | ||
And you know what? | ||
We'll just come back to you right here. | ||
I don't need to read anymore. | ||
Senator, I sense you agree with the sentiment there that we are in way too deep in too many of these conflicts. | ||
We have no idea where the money is going all over the place. | ||
And that, as it pertains to Syria particularly, we don't even know who the good guys are to some extent. | ||
Yeah, I couldn't agree with President Trump more. | ||
I think that this is not our fight. | ||
I think it's a crazy notion to even have 900 US troops there. | ||
We have them scattered in a half dozen locations. | ||
There's barely more than 100 soldiers in one location. | ||
I think they're more of a target than they are deterrents. | ||
I think they're a tripwire. | ||
I think they could get us more heavily involved in a very messy situation where it's unclear who the good guys are. | ||
The people who have taken over the government were recently called al-Nusrah, and before that they were called al-Qaeda. | ||
So these were people who are jihadist, intolerant of other religions. | ||
They've been heavily backed by the Turks. | ||
They probably have made this quick advance with the Turkish help. | ||
And so there's a question. | ||
Are there still several hundred thousand Christians in Syria? | ||
Are they going to be intolerant? | ||
Are they going to be expelled from the country? | ||
Are they going to be treated as second-class citizens? | ||
Will the fighting go on? | ||
Will there still be Iranian proxies? | ||
Will there be Syrian Kurds? | ||
Now, the one enemy we do know that the Turks hate the worst are the Syrian Kurds. | ||
Who is it that we fought with when we were fighting against the Assad regime and others? | ||
We were fighting alongside the Syrian Kurds, giving them weapons and billions of dollars. | ||
So it is a very confusing situation, and I think people should be very hesitant to get us involved. | ||
I think the thing we ought to do firsthand is remove the 900 troops from Syria because they're not of any value in deterring any attacks. | ||
Do you think we have any responsibility to the Syrian Kurds or any of the other Christians or minorities that are there in that we've been there? | ||
As you just mentioned, we were helping the Kurds fight. | ||
Turkey obviously is not happy with the Kurds and have been trying to stop them from getting a state forever. | ||
You know, in that we were involved, do we have any responsibility whatsoever? | ||
There's no constitutional authority for us to be there. | ||
If Congress wants to vote, the majority of Congress to go to war in Syria, first they'd have to decide who we're going to fight. | ||
Is there a constitutional role for us to be involved with the domestic policing of another country? | ||
There just isn't. | ||
Now, it doesn't mean we don't have sympathy. | ||
I have a great deal of sympathy. | ||
In fact, I think that the Syrian Christians are in danger from this new group, frankly. | ||
One of the things about Assad, even though nobody liked Assad, myself included, was he did protect the Christians. | ||
That's why it's difficult determining Middle Eastern politics and who you support and what you want, and sometimes it's be careful of what you want, you might get it. | ||
You know, Assad's going to be gone, but he did protect the Christians. | ||
It wasn't a free country, but he did protect the Christians. | ||
And now with him gone, you have jihadists who have been closely aligned with al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, with this Islamic movement that is one of intolerance towards other religions. | ||
They're also heavily backed by the Turks, who hate the Syrian Kurds, who used to be our allies also. | ||
It's a situation, it's just not our fight. | ||
There is no winning situation. | ||
But I don't want it to be taken as, oh, I have no sympathy for the Syrian Christians or for the Syrian Kurds. | ||
You can have sympathy without Believing that we have enough money or constitutional authority to be the world's policeman. | ||
I want to throw to a quick video of Donald Trump yesterday basically echoing what you were saying right there. | ||
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So Taliban is our enemy. | |
ISIS is our enemy. | ||
We have an area that I brought up with our generals four or five weeks ago where Taliban is here, ISIS is here, and they're fighting each other. | ||
I said, why don't you let them fight? | ||
Why are we getting in the middle of it? | ||
I said, let them fight. | ||
They're both our enemies. | ||
Let them fight. | ||
Sir, we want to do it. | ||
They go in and they end up fighting both of them. | ||
It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. | ||
I think I would have been a good general, but who knows? | ||
Sorry, quick correction. | ||
People know I love making corrections as they happen. | ||
We snagged that video yesterday. | ||
That was obviously from when Donald Trump was president. | ||
But does that right there, the fact that he's basically saying what you just said years ago, it just so deeply is contrasted with everything that this administration has done as far as foreign policy? | ||
Well, you know, when your enemies are fighting, you have two different enemies, instead of choosing one that might be a lesser enemy and siding with them, you know, some people are of the opinion, buy popcorn, you know, watch them kill each other, but there's no dog in the fight. | ||
There's just no reason for us to be involved with that. | ||
And I think that's what Donald Trump was saying, and I think that's what he believes. | ||
Of all the presidents in my lifetime, I haven't seen any more than Donald Trump believe in less intervention overseas and support a policy that I can support wholeheartedly. | ||
But we need to follow through with it. | ||
I mean, the last time he tried to remove those troops in Syria, they've been there since he was president. | ||
The last time he tried to move them, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and these other military hawks Tried to forbid him from doing it. | ||
Sort of the opposite of what the Constitution says. | ||
The Constitution says Congress declares war, but once war is declared, the president executes the war plan, which means where you have the troops. | ||
They actually wanted to change the law to say he actually had to ask Congress for his permission to move troops around. | ||
This is the opposite of what our founding fathers intended. | ||
But I'm hopeful that when Donald Trump comes in, the troops will be removed from Syria. | ||
They have no value there, they are a target, and they are a potential tripwire to drawing us into a messy civil war with no clear heroes. | ||
Let's stick with that hopefulness for a moment, because I've been quite pleased with the picks so far and the nominees, and I sense that Trump really has learned some of these lessons. | ||
Can you give us some maybe insider take on what you think about the picks and the direction? | ||
And do you really think that Donald Trump learned some of the lessons as how deep the deep state is and some of the mistakes that he may have made? | ||
I can only hope so. | ||
Time will tell. | ||
I do believe that, you know, in the first administration I warned him repeatedly about John Bolton, who had terrible foreign policy views and was a war hawk wanting to be involved everywhere around the world. | ||
I warned them repeatedly, and he still picked him, despite my objections. | ||
And he turned out to be disloyal, he turned out to be a never-Trumper, and he turned out to be a disaster on foreign policy. | ||
I'm hoping that won't happen with this foreign policy team. | ||
Time will tell. | ||
But I do have some disagreements with them. | ||
While they don't want to be heavily involved in the Middle East, some of them want to expand the military budget to a great degree and become involved in a belligerent way with China. | ||
I think that's a huge mistake, and I think that trading with China is a much better option than fighting with China. | ||
And so I don't really like some of the bellicosity I hear from the incoming administration about severing ties with China. | ||
I think that actually makes war more likely with China if we sever our trading ties. | ||
Let me ask you about something that I'm 99% sure you're very happy about, which is the DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Ilan and Vivek. | ||
I mean, I feel like this is like if you could have done exactly what you wanted to do and start a new government institution, even though you don't want to expand government, this is what you would have done. | ||
And probably you're feeling pretty good about this thing, right? | ||
Absolutely. | ||
I've been in contact with Vivek several times. | ||
I know him well, and we're giving them ideas. | ||
We have supplied them with over 2,000 pages of waste that we have culled through for the government and think could be removed. | ||
We love the idea of actually making government workers show up. | ||
I know that when Elon took over Twitter, he said you had to show up in person and about a third of them quit. | ||
He then said you had to not only show up in person, but prepare to work overtime and another third of them quit. | ||
So we'd love to see that kind of result in the federal government. | ||
We would also like to see some of the spending that's not necessary be sent back to Congress. | ||
There's a special procedure called rescission. | ||
And when it comes back to Congress from the president, it actually can be cut with a simple majority vote. | ||
That's something that has not really been utilized. | ||
It was not really utilized in the first Trump administration. | ||
But if they utilize that and come to Congress and work with convincing some of the weaker knees up here, the bigger government Republicans to go along with cuts, we could cut a tremendous amount, but we need most of the Republican votes to stay together to be in favor of cutting spending. | ||
What would you say to the people who are concerned about the people who are going to be fired? | ||
I think most certainly my audience, everyone's on board, slash the budget, let's get two trillion out, fire the people, okay, fine. | ||
But what at the human level, so thousands of government employees likely are losing their job in about two months from now. | ||
Do you have any concerns about that? | ||
Do you think they'll be picked up by the private sector? | ||
Does it really matter in a weird way or is it just a pain point that we have to deal with? | ||
I'm very concerned with the people whose wages are being garnished to pay for the federal government. | ||
I'm concerned about the guy who makes $40,000 a year working his butt off and he lost $5,000 worth of purchasing power because our government is spending more than comes in. | ||
I'm worried about the debt destroying the currency. | ||
And the thing is, is there are lots and lots of jobs in the private sector. | ||
The private sector is booming. | ||
We have a dearth of workers, frankly. | ||
We're having trouble finding enough workers. | ||
And so there are a lot of jobs outside of the government. | ||
And I'm all for everyone to have a job. | ||
I think a job is a great thing to have. | ||
But we don't need to have a government that spends $2 trillion more than it comes in. | ||
And we also need to be able to show up for work. | ||
One of my favorite stories was a few years ago, we had a guy at the EPA. He was assistant EPA, right number two spot at the EPA, and they noticed he was not in his office very much, and sometimes would be gone for six months at a time. | ||
And they asked him where he was, and they said, well, I also work for the CIA. And they said, really? | ||
The EPA and the CIA? He says, yeah, I'm on secret missions a lot. | ||
So we had a shutdown and someone actually said, hey, let's call the CIA and make sure he actually works for the CIA. They'd never heard of him. | ||
So he did this for 10 years. | ||
He stole millions of dollars from the taxpayer. | ||
That's one example. | ||
Do you think we might not have some other examples of people who are spending their days at the casino or at the racetrack because they can't be bothered to come in? | ||
Every one of them should come in. | ||
Every one of them should be monitored. | ||
Every one of them should have to prove they did some work. | ||
And if they didn't, they should be let go. | ||
You're giving me the perfect segue. | ||
I want to just throw to one other clip with you. | ||
This is Tech Guru Joe Lonsdale. | ||
He was subbing in as a co-host on the All In podcast, talking about what we have to do in 25 to bring back government accountability and efficiency. | ||
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Well, listen, Jake, I do agree. | |
I think almost all... | ||
Reasonable Americans can see that our growth is ridiculously constrained. | ||
And I think Jeff Bezos was saying yesterday, we need a growth-oriented mindset if we're going to get out of our debt problems, out of our deficit problems. | ||
So it's nice to see everyone kind of coming on the team and saying, yeah, we need to fix these things. | ||
I think what people don't understand is just how broken the government's bureaucracies and regulations are. | ||
It's not like they're kind of sort of bad. | ||
It's almost like they're companies that went bankrupt. | ||
Think of the worst company you know in Silicon Valley that went bankrupt like 30 years ago. | ||
And imagine if someone just kept pumping money into that worst company you know over like 30 years to keep hiring people. | ||
So like Yahoo or AOL, like some legacy company. | ||
It was failing and take the worst apartment there and then like the worst apartment gets the most money. | ||
So it's like, it's like, it's like more, I guess you can use the word now, it's more than anything you've seen in a long time. | ||
And so there's really two things here. | ||
One, you got to take a chainsaw, as Elon, like I said, you got to take a chainsaw and just like cut a ton of broken stuff. | ||
But then Day two is you got to say, how do we make this not stupid in the future? | ||
And there's things like maybe you bring back tests, maybe you bring accountability. | ||
The thing I'm most passionate about is right now there's over a million rules at the federal level. | ||
It's stuff that everyone disagrees on. | ||
You can be the most left person trying to build solar or wind or whatever, and you're like, what? | ||
I have to do what study over how many years? | ||
This makes no sense. | ||
So we got to take these regulations and not only cut them, but we got to make a data-driven system that forces regulations to defend themselves. | ||
And that way, instead of having a cancer, It just grows forever out of control. | ||
You could actually have a process that naturally trims things, naturally makes things fight for themselves, and that way it doesn't get as dumb ever again. | ||
Senator, I feel like you must love hearing that. | ||
People who actually build things, titans of industry, talking about why regulation is stifling everybody. | ||
And it seems to me that there is going to be a resurgence. | ||
I think we have an American renaissance on the way, but I think the ideas of libertarianism and classical liberalism, the idea that the government should get off your back and that we don't need all of this hyper control, I think more and more people are getting on board that than certainly any other point in my lifetime. | ||
If you look at efficiency, and you want to have efficiency in government, and you look at Elon Musk's career, one of the things he did at SpaceX is instead of getting contracts that were cost-plus, they began having competitive contracts. | ||
With a cost-plus contract, Boeing could have a billion-dollar contract, and they get 10%. | ||
But if they have cost overruns and it's $2 billion, they get 10% of $2 billion. | ||
They get a bigger profit. | ||
And so getting rid of that and having competitive contracts will help a great deal. | ||
I think there's all kinds of things like that that can happen through government, attrition of employees, firing of employees, but also sending money back, doing things for less money and sending the money back to Congress. | ||
And that's the rescission process and a simple majority of Republicans could remove that spending. | ||
That is something I think we should work hard to do. | ||
Senator, as always, I thank you for your time. | ||
As one of the few people in government that is actually doing an efficient job, what do you do for the rest of today? | ||
What do you do on this Tuesday? | ||
Cutting spending. | ||
I'm leaving here and have a big pair of scissors to cut some coupons, cut some spending, you know, get rid of some waste and graft. | ||
There's plenty to do. | ||
All right, well, I thank you for your time, and let's do this in person around inauguration. | ||
We're going to be in D.C. for a couple days. | ||
Sounds good. | ||
All right. | ||
Senator Rand Paul, everybody. | ||
All right, guys. | ||
That is our show for today. | ||
If you did not see it on Friday, my full hour-plus interview with the great Gad Saad. | ||
The great Gad Saad is up right now. | ||
And it's, for those of you that saw the beginning of the show with the Toronto Star article that Dave Rubin is a far-right leader leading to Canada to the Abyss, it's because I put people like Gad on. | ||
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So... | |
Enjoy that, Toronto Star. | ||
We've got a post-game show coming up in about 30 seconds, rubenreport.locals.com. |