Jan. 17, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
19:54
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| So is Pete Hegseth the man for the job? | ||
| Will Senator Marco Rubio make America safe again as Secretary of State? | ||
| Did Trump just seal the Israel-Hamas ceasefire? | ||
| He's literally just written on through social that the deal has been agreed. | ||
| And as Los Angeles braces for more winds and warnings of extreme danger, who will be held accountable for a disaster in failed preparation? | ||
| Do you want me to debate all this? | ||
| The host of The Michael Knowles Show on Daily Wire, Michael Knowles. | ||
| Dave Rubin, host of The Rubin Report. | ||
| Wajahat Ali. | ||
| The host of Democracy-ish. | ||
| And Julia Roginski, the Democrat strategist and author of the Salty Politics newsletter. | ||
| OK, well, welcome to all of you. | ||
| A stellar panel, if I may say so. | ||
| And Happy New Year to you all. | ||
| Let me start with Dave Rubin. | ||
| I watched most of Pete Hegseth's stuff yesterday. | ||
| And all I kept thinking to myself, I've got a lot of military in my family. | ||
| My brother was a British Army colonel. | ||
| My sister married a British Army colonel. | ||
| My grandfather was a decorated commando. | ||
| My great-uncle was a decorated war hero, and so on. | ||
| So I watched with great interest, thinking one thing. | ||
| If I was in the US military, would I feel good or bad about what I heard from Pete Hegseth? | ||
| And I concluded I'd be pretty happy that I had a guy there who not only had served his country for a long period, With great personal courage himself, but seemed to really understand what is required from the military and also seemed to pride actual meritocracy over mediocrity or virtue signaling or box ticking or DEI or any of these things. | ||
| And I thought, yeah, if I'm in the US military, I think I'd probably like this guy being at the top of the pyramid. | ||
| What did you think? | ||
| Yeah, you're absolutely right. | ||
| And I can speak as someone that's on this side of the pond, that I have friends and family in the military, and they're happy about this, too. | ||
| You know, there's two things going on with Hegseth here, despite the, I would say, hysterical virtue signaling of some of the senators that you just showed there. | ||
| The things are that he's qualified. | ||
| There's very little question about his qualifications. | ||
| But the other thing that I think is really allowing him to shine right now is his decade-plus time at Fox News, where he is able, as a TV presenter, that's what he... | ||
| He's been and a talk show host. | ||
| He's able to communicate these ideas clearly when he went out of his way to talk about equality and not equity and that we should have meritocracy and its qualifications that should matter. | ||
| These are all of the important things that we need to reintegrate not only into the military in America, very obviously, instead of lowering our standards and caring about skin color and genitals and sexuality, but we need to reintegrate it across all of our institutions. | ||
| That's the work for the broader Trump. | ||
| Well, we also know he's going to pass. | ||
| I mean, Thune, who's the majority leader, has already said it. | ||
| I mean, it's basically a done deal already. | ||
| But I think he's going to reform the military very quickly. | ||
| And I think we're going to get back to having a functioning military that people can be proud of, rather than counting, you know, how many lesbian generals that wear dog collars we have. | ||
| As important as that is, Michael Knowles. | ||
|
unidentified
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Why are you pointing at me? | |
| Hold on. | ||
| I'm not going to bring that allegation to the fore before we have a Senate inquiry. | ||
| Let me go to Bajahat. | ||
| Bajahat, I mean, I've heard the criticisms about Pete Higgs. | ||
| I know him a bit from when I've done stuff on Fox. | ||
| He's always been perfectly good to me and always, I thought, a very good performer on television. | ||
| But I also thought that under fire yesterday, and some of you got a bit personal and ferocious, he conducted himself calmly. | ||
| He seemed very well informed. | ||
| He clearly has some opinions about the military which others may not share. | ||
| But I certainly didn't get a feeling of somebody out of his depth. | ||
| And when you actually look at people who've held that job in the past, yes, some have been generals, but they can be pretty intransigent sometimes in their view about how things should be. | ||
| And some have not been generals and are imminently less qualified than Pete Heggs said. | ||
| So what was your view? | ||
| Look, I know that Republicans actually like affirmative action because they're perfectly fine with mediocre MAGA men and lowering the standards to the point where Pete Hexeth, the Fox News host, can slither under it. | ||
| And B, the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| For people who don't know, the Secretary of Defense overlooks a budget of over $900 billion, 3 million people. | ||
| He is responsible in particular for defense policymaking. | ||
| We're talking about law and order, national security. | ||
| You're going to give it to Pete Hexeth, a man who was in the National Army Guard, his fellow colleague. | ||
| In the guard, looked at his tattoos and actually reported him to be an insider threat because it was so extreme. | ||
| This is a man who wrote a book called American Crusade. | ||
| In his book, Pete Hex had said, I am too extreme for the U.S. military. | ||
| In his book, Pete Hex had said, I support these militias, these paramilitary forces. | ||
| In his book, he calls the enemies liberals extremists. | ||
| So much for unity. | ||
| This is a man, not just adultery, but sexual impropriety. | ||
| He has been alleged of sexual impropriety and sexual assault. | ||
| If he has nothing to hide, release the woman that he has signed to an NDA and paid off. | ||
| Let her tell her story. | ||
| This is a man whose own mother sent one of the most damning emails I have ever heard and read in my life. | ||
| If your mother sends the email that Pete Hex's mother said you have failed in life, accusing him of being a sexual abuser, a man whose own Fox colleagues Have said allegedly in the New York Times that they're worried about his alcoholism and alcohol problem and a man who has economic impropriety allegations. | ||
| He was released from two non-profits. | ||
| What are we doing here, Piers? | ||
| Listen, with Marco Rubio, I disagree with him. | ||
| You don't see me here complaining. | ||
| Qualified guy, intelligent guy, Secretary of State, fine. | ||
| Pete Hegseth, as Secretary of Defense, what are we doing? | ||
| You guys are putting lipsticks on a pig, and you're making America less safe. | ||
| And the right wing in MAGA is doing this for Pete Hegseth. | ||
| You're making this country less safe just because you're bending the knee to Donald Trump, and he wants a lapdog, who, by the way, I'll agree with Dave on this, who's good on TV. So that's what we're going to do. | ||
| We're going to trade our national security for Pete Hegseth, release the woman from the NDA. I want to hear from the woman. | ||
| Secretary of Defense, let's defend women for Pete Hegseth. | ||
| That's my take. | ||
| You made your point. | ||
| Any negatives while we're at it? | ||
| He works out. | ||
| It was a joke. | ||
| He hasn't actually taken that seriously. | ||
| Let me bring Michael in here. | ||
| I mean, look, a whole litany of stuff there, almost all of which was put to Pete Hegseth. | ||
| I thought he actually batted away all of that stuff. | ||
| We got a clip, actually, of him batting away one of them. | ||
| Let's take a look. | ||
| All they were out to do, Mr Chairman, was to destroy me. | ||
| And why do they want to destroy me? | ||
|
unidentified
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Because... | |
| I'm a change agent and a threat to them because Donald Trump was willing to choose me, to empower me, to bring the Defense Department back to what it really should be, which is warfighting. | ||
| So I'm willing to endure these attacks, but what I will do is stand up for the truth and for my reputation. | ||
| False attacks, anonymous attacks, repeated ad nauseum, printed ad nauseum, as facts, we have provided to the committee, Mr. Chairman, and I know you're going to share. | ||
| On the record statement after on the record statement from people who have served with me, worked with me at Fox News, Concerned Vets, Vets for Freedom, you name it. | ||
| From the top of the chain to the bottom, who will say I treat them with respect, with kindness, with dignity. | ||
| That's men, that's women, that's black, that's white, that's every background. | ||
| I have prided myself as a leader of respecting people, being professional. | ||
| Michael, I thought that was quite an effective response, really, because a lot of it is just innuendo, hearsay, unsubstantiated allegation. | ||
| Other stuff has been settled, as Wajahat says. | ||
| That's not uncommon in America. | ||
| It's incredibly common for people to do NDA settlements or whatever with no blame or liability attached. | ||
| Where do you sit with this? | ||
| I mean, it looks like... | ||
| I don't know about you. | ||
| That's not common. | ||
| Sorry? | ||
| That's not common, not for me. | ||
| I don't know about you, but that's not common. | ||
| I'm not saying for you or me. | ||
| There's a police report where I sexually assaulted a woman and I signed her to an NDA. In America, that kind of settlement is not uncommon, is my point. | ||
| Just generally, in the American system, a lot of things get settled that way without any admission of liability or wrongdoing, which is the case with Pete Heggson. | ||
| Michael, where do you sit with this? | ||
| Well, so much of what Wajahat just said is not true, or as you point out, Pierce, is completely unsubstantiated, like the allegations that Pete Hegseth shows up trying to work. | ||
| Excuse me one second, Wajahat. | ||
| I've been on that morning show with Pete a number of times. | ||
| I've been in studio with him a number of times. | ||
| The only thing you could accuse Pete of is being too alert and energetic. | ||
| I found it overwhelming, actually, while I was there, tired, trying to dust the sand out of my eyes. | ||
| But you suggest that the graduate of Princeton and Harvard, who for decades has been in the... | ||
| U.S. military served his country honorably, that he's somehow unqualified to work at the Pentagon. | ||
| The most egregious accusation you make against him, though, is that he's an extremist because he has a tattoo. | ||
| Could you tell us what the tattoo is? | ||
| The tattoos, specifically, I did not make the allegation that he's an extremist. | ||
| it was actually you repeated the allegations so what's the title as an insider threat yeah right so what's the title i can tell you it says he was his fellow simple question what is this tattoo that you're so upset about i wasn't the one upset about it i I was talking about his fellow colleague. | ||
| This is exactly what I said. | ||
| Do you know what he was? | ||
| In the U.S. Army, called him out. | ||
| As a potential insider threat, looking at the tattoos on his chest. | ||
| What is the tattoo? | ||
| Also, I call him an extremist based upon his own book. | ||
| Read the book, American Crusade, his own words. | ||
| If you don't know what the tattoo is, just admit it. | ||
| Oh, my Lord. | ||
| Listen. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| I'm genuinely intrigued. | ||
| Do you know what it is or not? | ||
| We've got a panelist. | ||
| Do you know what it is or not? | ||
| She hasn't spoken yet. | ||
| A woman hasn't spoken yet. | ||
| She's going to come. | ||
| She's going to answer the question. | ||
| You're not answering. | ||
| Final question to you. | ||
| I did answer it. | ||
| But go ahead. | ||
| I've got my colleague right here. | ||
| Be honest. | ||
| Be honest. | ||
| Do you actually know what that tattoo is or not? | ||
| Listen, what I do know is I read his book. | ||
| And in his book, if you read it called American Crusade, in his book, wait a second. | ||
| Be honest. | ||
| Be honest. | ||
| I am... | ||
| Look, you guys are putting lipstick on a pig and literally bending the knee for Donald Trump, putting our national security at risk for Pete Hexen. | ||
| I am telling you everything, and you guys are finding ways to spend... | ||
| Why are you guys okay with a man who has an NDA with a woman that he allegedly sexually assaulted? | ||
| Do you know what the tattoo is that you've got so upset about? | ||
| It was his colleague. | ||
| His colleague called him out as an insider threat, not me. | ||
| His colleague, and I also said go to his book, read his words, American Crusade, where he says, I'm too extreme for the US military. | ||
| He texts its own words. | ||
| Stop talking for a moment. | ||
| David, Michael, why are you guys okay with that? | ||
| Where literally in his book, American Crusade, he says he's too extreme for the US military. | ||
| You don't know, do you? | ||
| Oh, my gosh. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Let's look it up right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't look it up. | |
| Don't look it up. | ||
| Let's go back to Michael. | ||
| Michael, hang on. | ||
| Michael, we gave him a chance. | ||
| He obviously has no idea. | ||
| Michael, what is the answer? | ||
| This falls along a threat as an insider. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| I'm going back to Michael. | ||
| 2021 pegged Pete Hexer as a potential insider. | ||
| You had 98 chances to answer and he failed the test. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sorry. | |
| I'm going to Michael. | ||
| I'm going to Michael. | ||
| Don't talk over each other. | ||
| Michael. | ||
| The tattoo in question is called a Jerusalem cross. | ||
| This is a medieval Christian symbol, goes back a long time. | ||
| In fact, at Jimmy Carter's funeral, there was a Jerusalem cross on the floor of the cathedral and on the program for the funeral. | ||
| There's one other tattoo that some have suggested could be extremist. | ||
| It's the phrase deus volt, which is a medieval Christian slogan, a long traditional slogan that refers to God's will and goes back a long way. | ||
| These are very traditional, very mainstream Christian symbols that not only are not extreme in any way, but which even the people who want to accuse him of extremism couldn't possibly name. | ||
| That is pathetic. | ||
| All right. | ||
| His insider guardsman did it, which is what I said. | ||
| And also I said that he called himself too extreme for the U.S. military in his book. | ||
| That's pathetic. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Is Pete Hexteth lying that he's too extreme in his book? | ||
| Let me go to Julie. | ||
| He's too extreme for radical leftists. | ||
| Let me go to Julie. | ||
| Is he lying? | ||
| Be gentlemanly, please. | ||
| We have a lady who's not spoken. | ||
| Julie, be waiting very patiently. | ||
| Your view of this? | ||
| I'll tell you what, before you answer, I know you said in your sub stack about this, under normal circumstances, he, Pete Hexteth, would be precluded from serving... | ||
| In any leadership role. | ||
| So explain why you why you said that. | ||
| Well, let me I will explain in one second. | ||
| Let me go back to something that was said in the very beginning, that he spent more than 10 years at Fox News, and that's what qualifies him to be in this position that he wants to be in. | ||
| I spent more than 10 years at Fox News. | ||
| I don't think I'm qualified to run the DoD whatsoever. | ||
|
unidentified
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I said that was one of the things. | |
| Well, I don't think that's even a remote qualification. | ||
| That's one. | ||
| Being able to communicate ideas as the Secretary of Defense and explain policy is actually a very big part of the job. | ||
| There are plenty of qualified Republicans out there who can run the DoD who also are good on television. | ||
| It does not need to be Pete Hexeth. | ||
|
unidentified
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Secondly... | |
| Again, you talked about NDAs. | ||
| I am bound by an NDA at Fox News. | ||
| If I were not bound by an NDA and Fox News wanted to release me from that NDA, I could tell you about my time with Pete Hexeth. | ||
| Unfortunately, that's not possible. | ||
| But I will say that the reason that there are so many people who anonymously came forward at Fox News is that because they're also bound by confidentiality provisions, which one-third of all American workers need to sign on their first day of work. | ||
| And if they were to go public, they could get sued. | ||
| The reason this accuser is not heard from is because, according to The New Yorker, She tried desperately to meet with Joni Ernst on the committee, and Joni Ernst turned her down. | ||
| So the reason that she has not been able to come out publicly is because she has an NDA, and even privately, she could not meet with a senator on this committee who is also a rape survivor to share her story, because that rape survivor did not want to hear from a woman who was going to put her potentially in a position to vote against Pete Hexeth. | ||
| Pete Hexeth has written himself while at Princeton. | ||
| Saying that women who are passed out, if you have sex with them while they're unconscious, that's not really rape. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Now, the American military has a tremendous sexual assault problem. | ||
| A horrible sexual assault problem. | ||
| I have spoken to women in the military who say on deployment, it's not a question of if, but a question of when they will be sexually assaulted. | ||
| You cannot possibly have somebody running our military. | ||
| Who has said that women who are unconscious deserve to be raped because it's not really rape. | ||
| You can just go have your way with them. | ||
| So I don't know which soldiers you've been talking to who think Pete Hexeth is a great thing for the military. | ||
| There's not one woman out there who cares about being assaulted on deployment, who thinks that this is the person. | ||
| That needs to be in charge of the United States military. | ||
| And as for the cross that you talked about, yes, deus volt, which is the cross that he has, and the slogan that he has, is an old Christian cross. | ||
| The phrase, excuse me, the phrase. | ||
| The phrase, however, was uttered by crusaders as they were slaughtering Jews and Muslims during the Second Crusade specifically. | ||
| So it's not just a random cross. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's not just a random phrase. | |
| It's not true. | ||
| It is true. | ||
| The phrase was uttered after the Council of Claremont when Pope Urban II declared the Crusade. | ||
| It was actually probably Dieu le Voule, but it's been rendered in Latin as Deus Volta. | ||
| It has nothing to do with slaughtering Jews. | ||
| It has nothing to do with slaughtering Muslims because the Muslims had invaded Europe, not the other way around. | ||
| Oh my God, are you really saying that the reason the Crusade, which was sent to the Holy Land to liberate the Holy Land, from whom? | ||
| From Jews and Muslims. | ||
| The Crusade began because the Eastern Emperor asked for help from the Western Pope because the Seljuk Turks were slaughtering Christians in the Holy Land. | ||
| Because those lands were Christian before the Muslims invaded in the 7th century. | ||
| So that's why. | ||
| - No, no, no, those crusades-- - Good to know Michael's pro-crusade. - Listen, those lands-- - You get along really well with Keith Nexeth. - Those lands became Christian after the first crusade, okay? | ||
| So let's be very clear. | ||
|
unidentified
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The lands were Christian in the first and second centuries, and then the Muslims... | |
| Islam didn't exist before the seventh century. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| Okay, I could... | ||
| Listen, listen. | ||
| I can go all day if you want to talk about the Crusades, but the point is... | ||
| What that has to do with Pete Hexeth is it's not that he has a random cross. | ||
| That talks about his faith in Jesus Christ. | ||
| He used a very specific terminology. | ||
|
unidentified
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But putting all of that aside... | |
| A phrase that was first uttered to defend persecuted Christians in the Middle East, just like they're being persecuted today. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And that's who you want as the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Wonderful. | ||
|
unidentified
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If you want to talk about the Crusades... | |
| Julie, finish your point, and I'll go to Dave to respond. | ||
| My point is that I cannot even... | ||
| I cannot even believe that something the Vatican apologized for is something you're defending, which is the slaughter of Jews and Muslims during the Crusades. | ||
| What did the Vatican apologize for? | ||
| Excuse me, the Vatican said the Crusades... | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| Oh, my Jesus. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Why don't you give me a call after this and I will walk you through exactly... | ||
| All right, let's try and bring things back. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right, let me... | |
| All right, time out. | ||
| We'll do a separate Crusades debate another time. | ||
| Let me bring Dave Rubin in. | ||
| Dave, the issue of DEI came up quite a lot in Pete Hegseth's day yesterday. | ||
| And there's certainly been a growing sense of DEI invading almost every aspect of American life, society, culture and so on, including the military. | ||
| I thought he landed some pretty effective points on that as well. | ||
| And coming at a time when you see... | ||
| People like Mark Zuckerberg, who were leading the kind of charge of DEI and liberal woke policy, now doing these screeching U-turns, recognising that actually it wasn't right. | ||
| It wasn't fair. | ||
| It wasn't equitable. | ||
| It effectively has collectively encouraged mediocrity over meritocracy and so on. | ||
| And I thought he was effective on that. | ||
| Oh, I thought he was quite effective because he is a TV presenter and knows how to communicate ideas effectively. | ||
| He has been well-versed in interviewing people and discussing this and talking to people inside the military and inside of all of our institutions and corporations that have been wrecked and ransacked by DEI. The idea of America is based on individual rights. | ||
| We do not care about your sexuality or your gender or your skin color or any of those other immutable traits. | ||
| We all, regardless, I think, of political allegiance, would like to be effective and be able to protect Americans and American interests. | ||
| We want people who are competent, who are physically fit and mentally fit to do these jobs. | ||
| I mean, there's a million examples I can give you here, Piers, but we only need to look at what's going on with the California fires right now and the amount of time that the fire department and the administration and Gavin Newsom and the mayor and L.A. and California as a whole spent On diversity in the fire department, rather than figuring out ways to go about combating fire properly and preventing these things. | ||
| And that's the exact same thing that the military is going through. | ||
| It's, by the way, exactly what Mark Zuckerberg was going through at Facebook, where he was dealing with an insurrection of his own employees who were woke and trying to silence everybody and the rest of it. | ||
| So all of these things are deeply connected. | ||
| And I would say... |
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