May 1, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
01:09:37
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Previously on the Rubin Report. | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't trust you. | |
| Get him the handbook. | ||
|
unidentified
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This is your fake news. | |
| Judges are fighting back. | ||
| No, I don't have to puke. | ||
|
unidentified
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Minocony. | |
| Animals, boners, Jesse Waters. | ||
|
unidentified
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Experience matters. | |
| I'm from Louisiana. | ||
| Good luck with all of that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good luck with all of that. | |
| All right, guys. | ||
| Hello, I'm Dave Rubin. | ||
| This is The Rubin Report. | ||
| It's May 1st, 2025. | ||
| I had to confirm with the team what the date was before we started just now. | ||
| Holy cow, the year is going. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I've said this to you before. | ||
| I don't know if this is just like a middle-aged thing or something, but it just seems to me that the days, the weeks, the months, the years are just going by faster and faster. | ||
| I mean, we're almost halfway through 25 already. | ||
| I do apologize that we're running a few minutes late today. | ||
| Congressman Ro Khanna. | ||
| Democrat Ro Khanna will be the co-host on today's show. | ||
| He's in D.C. right now, and he was hung up in a meeting, so he'll be on any minute. | ||
| We were trying to delay long enough, but I can't have you guys sitting at your computer for six minutes just staring. | ||
| I know what you were doing on that other tab, by the way, and you naughty and nasty, I'll tell you that much. | ||
| But Ro Khanna will be joining us in just a moment. | ||
| And I do want to say, if you did not see my interview that we did with Congressman Khanna, and it was about four months ago or so in D.C., I have tried over the last couple of years to have Democrats on. | ||
| The last Democrat that I had on before Ro Khanna was Bobby Kennedy when he was a Democrat. | ||
| The last Democrat I had on before that was Tulsi Gabbard when she was a Democrat. | ||
| Obviously, it's become incredibly difficult to find Democrats who are willing to have open conversation. | ||
| Every time we go to DC, we do the same exact thing. | ||
| We throw out about 20 invites to Republicans, about 20 invites to Democrats. | ||
| I don't hide my opinion about any of these things, so people know who I am. | ||
| They know basically what I think. | ||
| And Democrats never even respond to us. | ||
| They don't even respond. | ||
| However, Ro Khanna did. | ||
| We had a great sit down for an hour. | ||
| We had some agreement and some disagreement. | ||
| I think he's just getting in his chair right now, so we're going to bring him on in just a second. | ||
| And I do want to just preface all of this by saying, whatever our agreements or disagreements are, In some sense, is irrelevant. | ||
| We both love the country. | ||
| We might see things a little bit differently, particularly as it pertains to what's going on with immigration and deportations. | ||
| But the whole point of America is that people who think differently about things can live in a country peacefully together. | ||
| So with that note, I welcome the Congressman from California's 17th District, Ro Khanna. | ||
| Ro, how are you? | ||
| Great, Dave. | ||
| Thank you for having me back on. | ||
| I saw you got some flack from your own audience saying you got this guy. | ||
| Sometimes he says progressive things. | ||
| Why are you putting him on your show? | ||
| But I appreciate it because I think even when we disagree, it's so important that we have an exchange of ideas, free speech, not to have censorship. | ||
| And so I'm appreciative for the opportunity. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I have no doubt you got a little pushback, too, from perhaps some of your more progressive constituents. | ||
| But yes, you're totally right, and that's why I prefaced the show the way I did. | ||
| Well, let's just dive into it, because we had a little Twitter spat. | ||
| It's okay. | ||
| Everyone's going to be okay. | ||
| But we had a little Twitter spat the other day. | ||
| Next up, you've got to have me and our Vice President, J.D. Vancey. | ||
| We can settle our Twitter arguments on your show. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| You know, if you want to have both of us next time, that would be great. | ||
| I will message the vice president personally after this and see if we can make that happen. | ||
| But before we get into this... | ||
| You know, I'll get you the last point, and I don't want to... | ||
| He was a Marine. | ||
| Of course, I respect his service, and he was one of our mutual best friends, Cullen. | ||
| They were Marines together in Afghanistan. | ||
| And many stories. | ||
| So I think we've got to move in this country where when we disagree, we can still respect each other as individuals and have an argument on the ideas. | ||
| I'm with you. | ||
| It's why I started doing this show this way, and again, why I'm appreciative that you're here, because it has been very, very difficult to get Democrats on the show. | ||
| Before we get into the little Twitter thing, I want to read a quote from you. | ||
| You gave a speech at Yale recently, and listen to this. | ||
| Allow me to quote you, if you don't mind. | ||
| This is directly from your speech. | ||
| You wrote, I thought that actually might be an | ||
| interesting way to tee us up here, because a lot of what you're saying there I agree with in some sense, but I think we probably, Put much of the blame on, let's say, different people. | ||
| So the press, I do blame the press largely for lying about an awful lot of things. | ||
| I do think it's quite possible that a certain amount of people are not making the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, which then causes people to use accusations of racism and everything else. | ||
| But I guess my question would be, how was the reaction to your speech in Yale? | ||
| Because you kind of gave it to both sides to some extent. | ||
| You know, it got the most reaction probably of any speech I've given. | ||
| And there were two central points to it. | ||
| One, that institutions have failed us at the current moment, that people have been left economically stagnant. | ||
| People feel that their way of life isn't being respected. | ||
| But at the second point was that we need to have a robust defense of academic freedom, freedom of thought, not having censorship. | ||
| And I've been concerned about the attacks on universities. | ||
| I think now I understand that universities need to make sure that they have conservative voices and that there's robust debate, and we can have that argument. | ||
| But attacking them, in my view, is not the solution. | ||
| So, okay, so we'll get to Harvard and some of the things that are going on there. | ||
| So when you talk about economic stagnation, it seems to me in this speech you were applying this to the current administration. | ||
| When you see things like the Inflation Reduction Act that the Democrats passed that Biden pushed through, I mean, did that do anything to help stimulate the economy? | ||
| Did it not just actually increase inflation? | ||
| It did. | ||
| But first of all, my economic stagnation, I was talking about the last 40 years. | ||
| I mean, there's some things that I agree with. | ||
| Conservative critiques. | ||
| NAFTA was a huge mistake. | ||
| Letting China into the World Trade Organization on those terms. | ||
| Huge mistake. | ||
| We hollowed out steel. | ||
| We hollowed out aluminum. | ||
| We hollowed out shipbuilding. | ||
| We hollowed out drug manufacturing. | ||
| Industry after industry left. | ||
| Places like Lorain, Ohio, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Galesburg, Illinois. | ||
| You know, they've lost population. | ||
| Churches have been shrinking. | ||
| Storefronts are abandoned. | ||
| And this country didn't. | ||
| Do anything. | ||
| And what we need, in my view, is a Marshall Plan for America, not just for what we did for Europe. | ||
| Let's rebuild these places. | ||
| Now, where I have a disagreement with Trump is they think tariff policy is going to solve all of it. | ||
| But before you can protect industry, you need to build industry. | ||
| My view is we need investment, federal investment and federal purchase agreements to be able to do that. | ||
| That's what the Chips and Signs Act was about that I helped write with Todd Young, a bipartisan act. | ||
| And, you know, with all this money that's coming in in Arizona, TSMC, all that started because of the Chips and Signs Act. | ||
| By the way, it was a Trump administration idea. | ||
| The guy, Keith Crouch, in 2018, an undersecretary under Trump, came up with the idea of Chips and Signs that we ended up writing into law. | ||
| So I don't understand why the administration is backing away from that. | ||
| And the IRA had a lot of investments that are going to create good jobs. | ||
| Red districts. | ||
| Was it perfect? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| Can it be implemented better? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But do we need industrial policy in this country? | ||
| I believe we do. | ||
| So do you not think that Trump using the tariffs as leverage to get better deals, which, again, we'll find out where this all lands in about 70 days from now. | ||
| He gave about 70 countries, about 90 days to figure this thing out. | ||
| Do you not view that as just a negotiation tactic, which will clearly have other countries coming back to us with better deals? | ||
| Because that seems fairly obvious to me. | ||
| I mean, I think we've seen that already from several countries. | ||
| He's put a blanket 10% tariff on all these countries. | ||
| Europe has said that they were willing to negotiate zero for zero tariffs already. | ||
| So I don't know why, if it was just negotiation, they've come to the... | ||
| Come to the table before any of this, saying that they're willing to eliminate tariffs on American products, for many products. | ||
| And the other thing is that you could have this negotiation without imposing the kind of tariffs he did, which has created unpredictability. | ||
| I guess I did support him on steel tariffs. | ||
| I did support him on... | ||
| Strategic tariffs on aluminum. | ||
| I did support him on strategic tariffs on China. | ||
| Where he lost me was when he did it for every country, where he did it across the board at 10 percent, and where he went so high as he has on some of the numbers. | ||
| I just think it hasn't been done in the strategic way it should have. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| So let's leave that there for a moment and get into what got me to have you on the show today, because obviously a lot of the stuff that's happening right now with deportations and with judges that are going against the administration, and you can probably argue the administration going against the judges, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| You put up a video, we're going to show about 30 seconds of it, talking about the Wisconsin judge who, in your view, was standing up for the rights of immigrants. | ||
| Go. | ||
|
unidentified
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Judge for simply standing up for the rights of immigrants. | |
| This is without any historical precedent and truly terrifying. | ||
| Every American, every person who cares about the rule of law and freedom needs to stand up and speak out. | ||
| We need to demand the release of this judge and have due process and the rule of law. | ||
| Okay, so the line that got me there was that you said, simply standing up for the rights of immigrants. | ||
| So I responded on Twitter the way everybody does, and I said, what are you doing, man? | ||
| You responded respectfully, enjoyed our chat. | ||
| You don't think the federal government arresting a local judge in handcuffs for how she ran her courtroom is a scary overreach of federal power? | ||
| That was the question you were presenting back to me. | ||
| I responded with this. | ||
| I said, you said, quote, she simply stood up for the rights of immigrants, not noting illegal, but also she actively broke the law. | ||
| People get arrested in handcuffs. | ||
| I enjoyed our chat too, but this, as I mentioned many times, is another reason why I'm done with the Democrats. | ||
| So before I have you chime in, let's just have Pam Bondi, the current attorney general who did do this, chime in on what | ||
| No one is above the law. | ||
| In Milwaukee, an illegal alien from Mexico was in court, being prosecuted for domestic violence. | ||
| He was charged with violently attacking a man, punching him in the face 30 times, strangling him, and then attacking a woman by punching her in the face with his closed fist. | ||
| Both victims were brave enough to be in court. | ||
| The judge, Hannah Dugan, learned that ICE was outside to arrest him after court. | ||
| She is now charged with obstruction of justice for sneaking this criminal defendant, an illegal alien, out a back exit through her chambers to avoid his arrest, leaving the victims and prosecutors sitting in court all morning waiting on justice. | ||
| All right, Rose. | ||
| So it seems pretty clear cut to me. | ||
| So let's just do the first part first, which is that you wrote simply standing up for the rights of immigrants. | ||
| You acknowledge this was an illegal immigrant, not just an immigrant, correct? | ||
| I acknowledge that he very well may be undocumented and he very well may be... | ||
| But it's not very well. | ||
| I mean, he's an illegal immigrant. | ||
| I mean, the term I use is undocumented, but yes, I acknowledge that he... | ||
| That from everything I've read that he doesn't have legal status in the country. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And is there anything in there that Pam Bondi said that is not true as far as you know? | ||
| Here are the facts as I understand it. | ||
| First of all, my concern is that the judge shouldn't have been arrested. | ||
| I mean, if they wanted to put some complaint against the judge, etc., obviously I don't condone anyone interfering with the law enforcement. | ||
| I think arresting a judge for what? | ||
| She did. | ||
| Maybe you correct me if my facts are wrong. | ||
| My understanding is he was let out of the jury room, the door. | ||
| He ultimately had to go in a public hallway. | ||
| The public hallway, the ICE agents basically or others were there with him. | ||
| They rode the elevator down. | ||
| And so this is not an example of some judge who's sort of saying, okay, I'm going to take a... | ||
| A secret exit where someone is fleeing the building. | ||
| The person was ultimately in a public hallway in the building and didn't want the person arrested in her courtroom. | ||
| And I guess my view is, isn't that a state local judge saying, I don't want the person arrested in my courtroom? | ||
| It doesn't strike me as a criminal offense. | ||
| And it doesn't seem that we'll have to look at the facts, but the guy was arrested. | ||
| He was in a public hallway. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, again, I mean, it is the job of ICE to apprehend illegal immigrants. | ||
| I mean, that is the job of ICE. | ||
| And it sounds like she at the very least obfuscated or confused their ability to do their job. | ||
| Now, your issue, I think, also was that she was put in handcuffs and everything else. | ||
| I mean, at the end of the day, if you had had an illegal in your house and ICE came to your door and you hid them or snuck them out the back, they would arrest you, would they not? | ||
| You're a congressman. | ||
| They would arrest me. | ||
| Yes, but that's very different. | ||
| If I'm hiding someone who's broken the law in my house or telling them to evade arrest, yes, that's a crime. | ||
| But let me ask you this, just because you're being very thoughtful. | ||
| But if a judge says, do not arrest someone, let's say she didn't have him go out the jury room. | ||
| Let's say she just had him go out the regular... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sorry. | |
| Would you have a problem with that? | ||
| Literally, just as you made your point, that sentence, your audio cut out. | ||
| So if you could just repeat that, please. | ||
| Would you have a problem if she just said, I don't want anyone arrested in my courtroom? | ||
| And it wasn't a question of, okay, they used the jury door. | ||
| Let's say it was the other door. | ||
| Do you believe that a local judge should be able to say, look, in my courtroom, I don't want someone to be arrested? | ||
| A church could say that in a church. | ||
| That's not concealing someone's arrest. | ||
| It's just saying in this... | ||
| I don't want ICE arresting someone. | ||
| Well, I don't know what the actual legal procedure is as it relates to that, whether ICE is allowed to literally walk in the courtroom or not. | ||
| I don't know what that is, but the idea that a judge would do anything so that it would confuse, at the very least, ICE's ability to do their job. | ||
| Does seem illegal to me. | ||
| And then the issue about the handcuffs, it's like, look, I don't think judges are above the law. | ||
| I mean, I just don't. | ||
| If you harbored an illegal alien, you'd be taken away in handcuffs, and so would I. So I don't see why a judge would be treated any better than us, I suppose, or better than anyone else. | ||
| As to whether it happened in the courtroom or not is somewhat irrelevant. | ||
| But the second the guy, let's say, even if I grant you that, right? | ||
| Again, I don't know the legal. | ||
| But the second he walks out of the courtroom, he should be arrested. | ||
| And my sense is he was. | ||
| I mean, he goes to a public hallway. | ||
| They don't arrest him. | ||
| I don't understand why they don't arrest him right at the public hallway, but then they eventually arrest him. | ||
| I would have a very different view of the facts of the case if she had said, come to my house, or here's a car, go drive away, or here's someone who's going to escort you to safety. | ||
| She basically said... | ||
| People exit the courtroom. | ||
| A lot of times when there's a lot of press or other things, people exit through the jury room. | ||
| We'll see the facts. | ||
| If the facts come out showing that she was actually trying to have this person evade the ICE agents, then I still don't think in this context of the courtroom it's a criminal matter, but I'm not going to condone that in any way. | ||
| My point is just this idea of the federal government. | ||
| Arresting state judges. | ||
| Imagine, look, there is going to be a Democratic president at some point. | ||
| Imagine a Democratic president now federalizing the powers and saying, OK, if we disagree with a state judge and think that the state judge is violating in some way the laws, maybe they put the Ten Commandments up in the courtroom and they think it's a violation of establishment that we're going to send in people to arrest the judge. | ||
| I just think it's a dangerous line on federalism and separation of powers. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, it's interesting. | ||
| I like when I hear that Democrats still care about federalism and separation of powers. | ||
| So I will give you that. | ||
| But let me throw to Tom Homan's opinion on this. | ||
| As I said from day one, you don't have to support ICE's operations. | ||
| You can support sanctuary cities if that's what you desire to do. | ||
| Sanctuary cities can stand aside and watch ICE keep their communities safe. | ||
| Because any public official, whether you're mayor, city councilman, or governor, their number one responsibility is protecting the communities. | ||
| And ICE has been clear we're targeting public safety threats and national security threats. | ||
| I can't believe there's any elected official, and especially a judge, that doesn't believe we should be doing that and they should be helping us. | ||
| But ICE happened day one. | ||
| You can sit aside and watch. | ||
| You can argue against us all you want and protest all you want. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But when you cross that line, I've said this a thousand times, when you cross that line to impediment, So again, I just agree with that wholeheartedly, and that is connected to what Bondi said as per what the judge did. | |
| It sounds like you have a slightly different take on that. | ||
| But I do want to just get back to the phrase "illegal" again. | ||
| In the video when you said "immigrant," Like, are you intentionally trying to confuse illegal and legal? | ||
| Because I think that's the way it reads to most people, even if that is not your intent. | ||
| No, I think that people should come into the country through the legal process. | ||
| And I think that that is the law of the country. | ||
| And I certainly am not encouraging anyone to come in, not through the legal process. | ||
| My parents came here as immigrants. | ||
| They got a student visa, they got a green card, they became citizens. | ||
| So why not just say illegal? | ||
| Why not just say illegal instead of just saying immigrant, which does confuse the issue. | ||
| If this was a legal citizen of the United States and ICE came for them, nobody would be for it. | ||
| I'd be screaming about that, of course. | ||
| Well, look, I could have said an immigrant without legal status or without... | ||
| Without documents. | ||
| I think that the question is, in the Abrego case, where I acknowledge the person doesn't have status, is that the person still has some due process. | ||
| And I guess that's one of the questions. | ||
| This is where I got into a back and forth with the vice president. | ||
| His argument is... | ||
| And I don't think I'm distorting it, is that people who are undocumented in this country, who don't have legal status, are entitled to less due process under the law because he thinks that it's too much of a burden on American citizens. | ||
| The 14th Amendment says that you have to have due process for every person in America, that every person in America also has free speech. | ||
| I don't think we have lesser standards of due process for people in | ||
| Okay, so putting aside the constitutional argument there, what would you make about the literal argument that if 10 to 15 million people came into this country in the last four years, which is what it sounds like, about 10,000 people a day, that quite literally, | ||
| and again, I'm slightly putting aside the constitutional argument for a moment, how else are we supposed to get rid of people? | ||
| Whether they are beating women or raping people or bringing fentanyl, or they're just illegal in the first place. | ||
| How else are we supposed to do it? | ||
| I mean, nobody was talking about it for four years that they were breaking the law coming here in the first place. | ||
| Well, I think that we have to deport people who have been convicted of serious criminal offenses. | ||
| And I have confidence in our legal process to be able to do that. | ||
| I think you can give someone due process and then adjudicate that. | ||
| And make sure that they are convicted and deported if it's a violent, if it's sort of domestic violence, if it's a violent felony. | ||
| But how do we do that? | ||
| How do we do that for 10 to 15 million people? | ||
| And by the way, not all of them are criminals. | ||
| Not all of them are violent criminals, but they are all criminals. | ||
| I mean, it is illegal. | ||
| If I just wandered into Mexico and they found me, they would kick me out immediately, and it would be well within their right. | ||
| Well, I think we need to have secure borders. | ||
| But certainly, I don't know if it's your view. | ||
| Do you really believe that everyone who's undocumented in America, and the estimates range from 12 to 15, 18 million? | ||
| I don't know the exact numbers, and I don't think anyone does. | ||
| Do you really think if it was up to you, you would have all of them kicked out of the country? | ||
| I don't know about that. | ||
| I don't think it's going to happen under Trump and Vance. | ||
| Well, first off, I think you can make a completely moral, clean, legal argument that yes, every single one of them have to go. | ||
| I don't know that that's exactly my position for people that have been here for a long time and have jobs and have family here and have been law-abiding, but that's part of the problem. | ||
| There's no way to deal with these massive numbers. | ||
| But let me show you something that Ilhan Omar said, I would say one of the more radical members of your party, and let me just see if you agree with her. | ||
| Across this country, millions of us are standing up for our human rights and our democracy. | ||
| Judges are fighting back to block these unconstitutional executive orders. | ||
| Here in Congress, we are fighting back every single day. | ||
| We are fighting to protect immigrant families from mass detention and deportation. | ||
| We are fighting to prevent horrific cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and Social Security. | ||
| It won't be easy, but we must continue to organize, to speak out, and to build a future that reflects our highest ideals. | ||
| Okay, this is a woman who, as far as I understand it, married her brother and broke immigration laws. | ||
| Do you know anything about that? | ||
| No, and my view is a lot of those things are rumors that... | ||
| People that we've shown traffic in, unless people have actual facts. | ||
| I mean, look, one of the things I do, I've done this with the Vice President, who I have tremendous disagreements with, is I always praise Usha Vance and his wife and his family. | ||
| We've got to stop cragging people's family and personal lives. | ||
| Let's just stick to the... | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I mean, there's quite extensive reporting that she actually did marry her brother for his immigration purposes. | ||
| But putting that aside for a moment, again, she says protect immigrant families. | ||
| This inability to make a distinction between illegal and legal, I honestly think it is the most destructive thing. | ||
| It's not my party. | ||
| It's your party. | ||
| I think people hear that, and they go, these guys are bullshit artists. | ||
| I really believe that. | ||
| I'm trying to give you a little nugget here to use. | ||
| I would say two things. | ||
| One is whether you are here through the legal process or whether you don't have legal status. | ||
| In my view, you should be entitled to due process in America. | ||
| That's what makes us an exceptional country. | ||
| That's our constitution. | ||
| We can talk about having a more secure border. | ||
| I said to someone, you know, when people knock on your door that you say who's there, I think it's perfectly reasonable for Americans when people are knocking on our door to say who's there and to vet people before they come in. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So did the previous administration do that? | ||
| Not well enough. | ||
| No. | ||
| I mean, look, I'm not going to defend that. | ||
| 8 million or whatever the reports were of people undocumented came into the country. | ||
| It's not an unreasonable request for Americans, which are incredibly generous people. | ||
| My parents came as immigrants. | ||
| I've had an incredible experience. | ||
| As a son of immigrants, I've had an incredible experience. | ||
| My father-in-law tells the story of it. | ||
| They came through the process. | ||
| My father-in-law tells a story about how he came here in the 1960s and 70s and people would give him a place to stay for free. | ||
| Americans are very charitable people. | ||
| And I don't think it's unreasonable for us to say, we just want to know who's coming in before and knock on the door and have a process to bet. | ||
| I think that's perfectly reasonable. | ||
| The point is, though, we have people here now. | ||
| Many of them have been here for years. | ||
| Some of them are working. | ||
| They've got young kids. | ||
| They're paying taxes. | ||
| And then the question is, how do we deal with them? | ||
| And if they're violent criminals and convicted, fine, deport them. | ||
| But for the vast majority, that's not the case. | ||
| My view is we've got to have some path. | ||
| I believe a path to citizenship, but at least let's have a path to legalization so they can have some status so they're not depressing wages and they're working here in a transparent way and not living in fear. | ||
| And can we get to that? | ||
| And what would you say to the person? | ||
| Genuinely not saying this is my position, but I am sympathetic to the argument. | ||
| What would you say to the person who said, well, they broke the law. | ||
| It does not matter how long they've been here. | ||
| It doesn't matter if they got married and are paying taxes and everything else. | ||
| We either are a country or we're not. | ||
| And we just know if I showed up in Mexico and they found out I'd be kicked out, if an American showed up in China or an American showed up in Canada for seven years and then they found out he was legal, they would just be kicked out. | ||
| I mean, what would you say to that argument? | ||
| I would say I understand. | ||
| I'm not condoning the breaking of law, but I want to see how we move this country forward. | ||
| And even the person who's ran on the most anti-undocumented immigrant platform, Donald Trump, is in his first term, there were still 12 million undocumented people. | ||
| My guess is at the end of his second term, there'll still be 12, 13 million undocumented folks. | ||
| And the question is, do you want them living in the shadows of society? | ||
| Resenting the country, living in fear, or do you want their kids and them to become integrated into the American One of the great things about America is we integrate people to believe in America. | ||
| And unlike France, right, where you go there in the Algerian community, there's still generations of Algerians who aren't American. | ||
| Here you have a son of immigrants, an Indian American, literally representing the most economically consequential place in the world, Silicon Valley. | ||
| That's possible in America. | ||
| And I would just say as a nation, we have to find a solution to it, though I don't condone the initial entry. | ||
| All right, let's take a quick ad break, and then we'll have more on Trump's first 100 days. | ||
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| All right. | ||
| I hope we showed people you can have some disagreements on things and still be able to do it in a civil way there. | ||
| So far, I think we're doing okay, Congressman. | ||
| Let's jump over to Trump's 100 days, because I think we're day 102 right now. | ||
| Victor Davis Hanson, I think, has been probably the leading intellectual backer of Trump. | ||
| I read him all the time. | ||
| I read Victor all the time. | ||
| Well, let's find out what you think of what he said here about Trump securing the border. | ||
| And then we're going to cut directly to Chuck Schumer, one of your guys, basically saying he doesn't trust the numbers. | ||
| He has completely reversed 10,000 people coming in a day, over 300,000 a month, 12 million in four years, to essentially 97, 98% of the border is secure. | ||
| In fact, there is no open border now. | ||
| Now he has pivoted to try to... | ||
| Address the 12 million people that Joe Biden not only let in, but scattered all over the United States on often state, federal, local subsidies. | ||
| That's going to be a task. | ||
| But he has shut the border. | ||
| No comprehensive immigration reform. | ||
| None of the things they said was necessary. | ||
| None of the things that said that it was impossible that hampered by. | ||
| He just did it. | ||
| We've never seen anything like it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On border security, the White House and the Republicans are doubting the claim that illegal crossings are down by 95%, Godways as they call them are down by 99%, and only nine plus four nations are released into the country. | |
| I'd say one thing to you. | ||
| I don't trust Trump's numbers. | ||
| OK, so you said earlier maybe around 8 million people. | ||
| Victor Davis Hanson said 12. The numbers are very confusing. | ||
| Some people say it might be as high as 15 million. | ||
| But OK, so let's say it's somewhere between even 8 and 12. It does seem very, very obvious that the border crossings have completely closed. | ||
| I mean, what do you make? | ||
| Well, I guess, do you agree with Victor Davis Hanson? | ||
| And what do you make of Schumer's response? | ||
| We're all watching the same movie and just having two very different emotions. | ||
| It seems to me that he's taken provisions on the border that have brought down the numbers. | ||
| I don't know the details, but there's obviously a decline. | ||
| But the problem I have is that's not what he's... | ||
| The only thing he's focused on, he's doing things like the Abrego case of deporting folks without due process. | ||
| This kid, this mother, who I understand that she was deported because she was undocumented, but she's got American citizens, two-year-old, four-year-old, seven-year-old, and then they are pushed out of America because the mother says that I don't want to be separated from my kids. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Do we have to deport the mother? | ||
| I mean, you know, he's doing things like that that I think have... | ||
| Distracted and taken away from efforts that were bipartisan that said we had to do a better job securing the border. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, I think a case with the mother, with the two-year-old kids, this is why the sort of meme of bleeding heart liberals, like she was illegal. | ||
| That's just the truth. | ||
| Whether it's 99% down or 95% down, I mean, we don't see videos like this anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is from two years ago. | |
| Who do you blame for that? | ||
| Because when you talk about your parents coming from India, my great-grandparents that came from Eastern Europe, it was people with one bag, people that were not of fighting age. | ||
| It was a mix of men and women and children and old people. | ||
| This all seems to be somehow 20 to 40-year-olds, often with young kids. | ||
| Who do you ultimately put the blame on for what has happened here? | ||
| Well, of course we need it. | ||
| More border security. | ||
| I mean, that's obvious. | ||
| But we also needed, in my view, some path to having an ability to work legally in the United States. | ||
| Many of the people want to go back to their countries. | ||
| And, you know, George W. Bush actually was trying to propose that, to say, you know, people should be able to come here, they should be able to work, they should be able to make some money, and then they can go back to their countries. | ||
| And I blame the Congress for not having... | ||
| I know the comprehensive immigration reform is kind of a platitude, but the point is there has to be some solution. | ||
| Vast majority of people often are coming here for economic reasons. | ||
| It's a good thing that America is the place that everyone in the world still looks up to. | ||
| And there aren't lines to go to China. | ||
| There aren't lines to go to Europe or Canada in the same way. | ||
| But we need to have a process. | ||
| And we should figure out what that process is, both so that there are legitimate asylum claims, there's a secure border, and then there's an economic ability to come here to work. | ||
| To work with dignity and to go back. | ||
| Now, there are people who may say, we don't want that. | ||
| I disagree with them. | ||
| I think if they're of an ability to come here for folks to work, to make money, and then to go back to their families, and if there's a legal process for doing that, that we should explore that. | ||
| So how is that different from what Trump is doing right now? | ||
| He's trying to close the border, figure out what the process is, and figure out who is here legally and illegally. | ||
| I mean, how is that different? | ||
| Which again, it's wildly different from what the previous administration did. | ||
| But how is that different than what Trump is doing right now? | ||
| I think he's swung too far in that he is denying people in this country Due process. | ||
| Now, you may argue, well, that's a hard thing to do because there's so many people who are undocumented. | ||
| Are we going to give everyone due process? | ||
| And I would say yes and start by focusing on people who are committing violent crimes or felonies and then make sure they have due process and have some sense of deportation. | ||
| And don't send them to El Salvador. | ||
| I mean, you know, why are you... | ||
| So Abrego Garcia, I mean, you saw, I assume, the court documents from his wife, who said he repeatedly beat her, and her ex-husband, who said that he was a threat, and she claimed he beat her with a boot. | ||
| He is in El Salvador, which is his country of origin. | ||
| That's the country that he is a citizen of, is it not? | ||
| Yes, but the court said that there was a genuine fear of persecution for him. | ||
| And that El Salvador prison, that's just not who we are as Americans. | ||
| I mean, Bukele is not America. | ||
| That's a different standard of justice. | ||
| But he's a citizen of El Salvador, correct? | ||
| And not a citizen of the United States? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| But the court said that we could deport him, but we couldn't send him back to El Salvador. | ||
| That was the exact order because... | ||
| He had a genuine fear for his life. | ||
| And so in that case, we follow the courts. | ||
| Now, I understand that it's easier as a country, in cases that have bad facts like Abrego, not to follow the rule of law and to relax the standard. | ||
| And that's the temptation. | ||
| But that's not America. | ||
| We hold ourselves up to the highest ideals. | ||
| We hold ourselves up to this ideal that if someone is innocent... | ||
| I mean, someone is accused of a crime, they're presumed innocent. | ||
| Even if many of us, we see these things on television, we think, of course that person killed the victim, but we believe they should have a trial. | ||
| We believe they should have the presumption of innocence because we're an extraordinary nation. | ||
| And I don't think we have to tear at that fabric because of the challenge that we have with people who are undocumented. | ||
| I think we can still afford that due process that makes us the most exceptional nation in the world. | ||
| Do you think optics-wise, when the Democrats then go to El Salvador to meet with this guy who by all accounts was in MS-13, who was beating his wife by her own account and everything else, and then they're there basically, you know... | ||
| Singing his praises, at the very least, that optics-wise this is a problem. | ||
| There is an American citizen named Eden Alexander who is somewhere under Gaza right now. | ||
| I don't see any Democrats talking about him whatsoever. | ||
| He's an American citizen who did not commit a crime. | ||
| Yeah, but our standards are not Hamas's standards. | ||
| I mean, if you're asking me, does Hamas have the rule of law? | ||
| Of course they don't. | ||
| And of course we should be advocating... | ||
| No, I'm asking you, where are the Democrats fighting for an American who's kidnapped and somewhere under Gaza for over 500 days? | ||
| Well, we absolutely should be speaking out for that and speaking out for the release of those hostages and passionately speaking out for the release of those hostages. | ||
| But I think your broad point... | ||
| I was in rural Nebraska, and I was talking about the cuts to farmers and the funding that was being cut, and people kept bringing up this question of due process and the Constitution and the Obrego case in a room full of... | ||
| Largely white Americans, not a community with that many immigrants, because they care about the Constitution, and they care about believing in the Constitution as patriotism. | ||
| And they believe that, okay, if it happened to Obrego, it could happen to someone else, and that this is just not a road we should go down. | ||
| And so to me, it's not about Obrego. | ||
| It's not about having sympathy for his particular facts. | ||
| It's about standing for the Constitution at the hardest times. | ||
| So do you think that an illegal immigrant who is in the United States, for whatever reason he is in the United States, however long they've been in the United States, however nice they are, that they should be afforded all of the rights that a law-abiding American citizen should be? | ||
| I mean this philosophically. | ||
| The Constitution requires that they have... | ||
| Basic due process, and they have the same First Amendment rights that the First Amendment says to all persons. | ||
| The due process applies to all persons. | ||
| Now, if people want to amend the 14th Amendment, amend the First Amendment, they can try. | ||
| I think they've served us very well. | ||
| And now, I think this is a legitimate debate, because, you know, here's the thing I give the Vice President credit for. | ||
| He's not obfuscating. | ||
| He's not saying, well, we... | ||
| We sent a plane to El Salvador, and it's not up to us whether we get Abrego back. | ||
| I mean, that's a bunch of, come on. | ||
| Do you doubt that if Trump wanted Abrego back, Abrego would come back? | ||
| I mean, people see through that. | ||
| Vance at least is saying that, okay, he just thinks that Abrego should be given a lesser standard of due process. | ||
| I disagree with that. | ||
| I believe the courts will disagree with that. | ||
| But that's a debate we can have in this country. | ||
| So speaking of the debate, let me read one line on the specifics of what the Supreme Court did. | ||
| The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration must facilitate, but not necessarily effectuate, the return of a Salvadorian national deported in March, that's Abrego who we're talking about, stopping short of the full remedy sought by the court's liberal justices. | ||
| In essence, we can't force, I get what your point is right there, but Trump can't force the president of El Salvador to kick out a citizen of El Salvador and send him back to | ||
| Look, I get what the Supreme Court is saying. | ||
| Obviously, we can't force the president of the United States to declare war on El Salvador to get someone back. | ||
| But as a practical matter, I mean, come on, you would acknowledge that if Donald Trump wanted Bukele to send Abrego back, within an hour, Abrego would be back. | ||
| We were paying El Salvador to have a break. | ||
| Well, at the very least, he could stop the payment. | ||
| It's not like El Salvador came and captured a break. | ||
| Oh, we sent him there. | ||
| And I think most Americans, one thing the American people have is a lot of common sense would say, yeah, Trump can bring him back. | ||
| him back. | ||
| Now, the Supreme Court is saying something-Right, but it's the country of his origin where he is a citizen and he is not a citizen of the United States. | ||
| We're agreeing on that, correct? | ||
| He is not a citizen of the United States and he is a citizen of El Salvador? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But we have asylum law. | ||
| I assume you support asylum law. | ||
| Asylum law says, basically, if you really fear persecution, you shouldn't go back to that country. | ||
| And the courts here... | ||
| There'd be no concern. | ||
| And there should be a concern because he's in a prison that some people describe as a torture prison. | ||
| We don't know the conditions in those prisons. | ||
| And I guess the question is, why not just give him the due process? | ||
| And probably, if he has the court proceedings and he really is a part of a gang or he really has committed horrendous crimes, then he'll be deported through the appropriate channels and deported somewhere other than El Salvador. | ||
| Okay, I think we can leave that there. | ||
| Let's talk about Rumble Premium for a minute, and then we will get to perhaps an impending impeachment. | ||
| Free speech is under attack, but Rumble refuses to back down. | ||
| We've always believed in empowering voices, no matter how unpopular, and now we're taking that fight to the next level. | ||
| When major advertisers conspired to pull their dollars, even brands like Dunkin' Donuts turned their backs. | ||
| But we're not here to fit a mold. | ||
| We're here to defend free expression. | ||
| To strengthen this mission, we're excited to offer Rumble Premium, a completely ad-free experience with exclusive benefits for viewers and creators. | ||
| You'll find exclusive content from creators like Russell Brand, Dr. Your voice matters. | ||
| Join Rumble Premium. | ||
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| Visit rumble.com slash premium slash Ruben and claim your discount today. | ||
| Whether you join Rumble Premium or simply keep watching, your support helps keep free speech alive. | ||
| All right, Congressman, your congressional colleague, AOC, who is fighting the oligarchy while flying first class, often in premium private planes, with a millionaire with three houses. | ||
| Yes, I'm talking about Bernie Sanders. | ||
| She is also considering impeachment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, we should never take impeachment off the table. | |
| We should never take where we see lawbreaking. | ||
| We should never take accountability off the table. | ||
| And I think that, I don't think that we should be. | ||
| You know, promising anything the way that Trump tries to promise certain, you know, locking up his political enemies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I do believe that our legal processes exist for a reason. | |
| Impeachment exists for a reason. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it should absolutely be on the table. | |
| It should be on the table for every president. | ||
| Congressman, is she the future of your party? | ||
| She's an important voice in the party. | ||
| Obviously she's... | ||
| She's a passionate progressive. | ||
| She has a lot of people who believe in her. | ||
| And that's the great thing about our party and about the country, is that we have a wide variety of ideologies. | ||
| But she's certainly an important voice in the party. | ||
| When she's out there with Bernie fighting the oligarchy, do you find it ironic that she had no problem that actually more billionaires backed Kamala Harris than backed Donald Trump? | ||
| I think that's a fair point, David, that more billionaires did back Kamala Harris than Donald Trump. | ||
| And I think it's hypocritical if we don't call out the spending on all sides. | ||
| I think what we need—and Maine actually proposed this and passed it, 70 percent, and it said that— You can't give a super PAC more money than you can give a candidate. | ||
| So if you're a billionaire, why is it that you're limited to give only $3,500 to a candidate like me, but you can go and spend millions of dollars on a super PAC? | ||
| There were millions of dollars spent on Donald Trump's side. | ||
| There were millions of dollars spent on Kamala Harris' side. | ||
| It's all wrong. | ||
| We should get the super PACs out of the business of Democratic politics. | ||
| But we shouldn't be on our high horse saying somehow that Trump's side did it and our side didn't. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So when Democrats talk about impeachment, and we'll get to your colleague Shree Thanedar in just a second, who's bringing articles of impeachment again. | ||
| We've already done this twice and nothing came of either one of them. | ||
| Do you think this helps your party ultimately? | ||
| Even if, say, some of the legal stuff that you were arguing a moment ago about deportations, even if you disagree with the Trump administration on that, do you think that this ultimately helps your party? | ||
| Do you think that this widens the tent that now is the Democrat Party? | ||
| No. | ||
| I think we need to be focused on what is our future as a party on the economy. | ||
| How are we going to help people? | ||
| How are we going to bring new jobs? | ||
| You know what I think is the best contrast for the Democrats? | ||
| It's to say, look, Howard Lutnick and Trump, they kind of have this romanticization of William McKinley, Andrew Jackson, James Polk. | ||
| And, you know, if they were in the 19th century, maybe expansionism and high tariffs would have worked. | ||
| But we live in the world of AI and technology. | ||
| And what we really need to do is figure out how we're going to have technology supremacy, how we're going to have the new generation of jobs in Lorain, Ohio, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania. | ||
| And Democratic Party, I call it a new economic patriotism. | ||
| Here's our vision. | ||
| of how your families, your kids are going to have economic security and independence in the 21st century. | ||
| Put our ideas out there and then let the American people see who has better ideas. | ||
| And that's, I think, what the country wants as opposed to just back and forth political theater. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's interesting because, again, it seems to me that a lot of the things that you're saying... | ||
| I mean, we have Elon helping us lead that. | ||
| X is now merged with the AI company. | ||
| So I just see those things as, again, sort of like the immigration thing. | ||
| It's the stuff that Trump's doing. | ||
| But let's stick with this impeachment thing for just a moment. | ||
| So Sri Thanedar from Michigan is bringing articles of impeachment against Trump. | ||
| Here's what he said. | ||
| "The president is attacking me "because I filed articles of impeachment "asking what the hell did I do?" It's all in my seven articles of impeachment. | ||
| One, defying a 9-0 Supreme Court. | ||
| We just referenced that. | ||
| Two, dismantling federal agencies. | ||
| Three, imposing damaging tariffs. | ||
| Four, violating the First Amendment. | ||
| Five, creating an unlawful office. | ||
| Six, dismissing criminal cases of donors. | ||
| Seven, denying due process and other constitutional violations. | ||
| This is not normal. | ||
| Impeachment is how we fight back. | ||
| I will always defend the Constitution. | ||
| I mean, I guess we don't have to go through all seven of those, but I mean, it's very obvious that several of those have nothing to do with an impeachable offense. | ||
| Cutting departments and cutting budgets of things have nothing. | ||
| You may not like it, but it's not an impeachable offense. | ||
| I mean, are you for impeaching Donald Trump? | ||
| What do you make of this move? | ||
| I haven't co-sponsored it. | ||
| Do I think that some of the firings of things like the NIH, which does medical research and now I'm told is only at 30% efficiency, is wrong and possibly unconstitutional? | ||
| Yes, but we fight that in the courts and we fight that through congressional action. | ||
| What would be the unconstitutional part? | ||
| I can accept that you might think it's wrong, that firing the people is wrong, but what would be unconstitutional? | ||
| Is it not within the president's purview to decide who's running the agencies and how they're going to run it? | ||
| Well, there are two things. | ||
| One, we have an 1883 Pendleton Act in this country, which gives civil servants protections because we didn't want them subject to the whims of the political class. | ||
| And there are many people who believe that they weren't afforded those protections and were fired because they disagreed for political reasons. | ||
| The President, because the President disagreed with them on COVID, Robert Kennedy disagreed on vaccines, and they're firing people on those views. | ||
| I don't agree with having civil servants fired based on political ideology. | ||
| That was the whole reform we had in the Pendleton Act. | ||
| The second thing is that Congress has appropriated funds for some of these positions. | ||
| And I do think that the president can't just say no to what Congress has appropriated. | ||
| There's some conservatives who believe that Congress just gets to define what the highest amount of spending | ||
| Let me tell you, if you're a conservative, this could be a horrifying mistake. | ||
| What if you had a liberal progressive president who thinks that we should only spend $100 billion and not a trillion dollars on defense? | ||
| Do you think if Congress appropriates a defense budget, that president should just say, okay, we don't have to spend any of this? | ||
| I don't think that's how the Constitution works. | ||
| These are complex issues. | ||
| I believe I'm on the right side of the law, but I also have confidence in the courts and the process to figure it out, and that's where I think our energy should be. | ||
| Okay, so again, so you're not for impeachment, but you would be for having some of these issues hung up in the court. | ||
| That's consistent with what you said as it pertains to deportation. | ||
| I have confidence. | ||
| I mean, even though it's a conservative court, I have confidence that on these fundamental issues that the courts will vindicate our point of view. | ||
| And I think let's have this debate go all the way to the Supreme Court. | ||
| Does the president have to support, have to spend the money Congress appropriates? | ||
| I think the Supreme Court should take this up soon and just issue the ruling. | ||
| My view is it's pretty obvious that the president should have to do that. | ||
| And what are the protections for civil servants? | ||
| Let's make sure that we get... | ||
| Claire Dinan's on this. | ||
| As it pertains to the courts, and I really do appreciate that you've repeatedly said that if the shoe was on the other foot, how would people feel? | ||
| How would conservatives feel about some of these things? | ||
| Are you worried that part of the issue here, and I know a lot of Trump supporters strongly feel this, that basically any lower court judge can get virtually anything the president does hung up in courts, and thus that actually puts us in a constitutional crisis? | ||
| Not necessarily that what the president's doing is illegal, but that the judicial... | ||
| I think a lot of people really do feel that and see that that is what's happening to some extent. | ||
| Look, even Elena Kagan, the liberal Supreme Court justice, said that there is some challenge if a single federal district court judge could just have a blanket national injunction on a presidential action. | ||
| And if there's going to be an honest debate in this country about what it takes of making sure that a president is checked by the Constitution while understanding the president has popular support, I'm open to having that conversation. | ||
| Maybe there's an expedited review of the Supreme Court. | ||
| It's expedited review of the appellate circuit. | ||
| But I don't think that the answer to that is just defying court orders. | ||
| I mean, the answer to that is figure out how you reform the system. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| Let's talk about Tax Network USA for just a moment, and then we'll have a bit on academic freedom. | ||
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| Congressman, I know you're tight on time here, so I'm going to try to read this quickly because you mentioned Harvard up top and academic freedom. | ||
| I'll stay longer if we have to be a little bit. | ||
| I don't mind. | ||
| Oh, there you go. | ||
| All right. | ||
| You're very civil, so I... | ||
| I genuinely believe we need more conversations like this. | ||
| I was so disappointed last time we came on, we had this great conversation. | ||
| The only clip that went viral was a conversation on transgender rights. | ||
| You were very fair. | ||
| You put it all in context. | ||
| But I was like, fine, if that's what you want to talk about. | ||
| But how about these broader conversations? | ||
| How do we get this country talking and debating about serious issues in a way that is substantive? | ||
| That's what we used to do in America. | ||
| I hate to tell you, my friend, the internet is not the most enlightened place, but we'll keep trying, and I'm happy to do this with you once a month if you want, and I'd rather do it in person. | ||
| All right, so let's jump to where Harvard's at, and we won't rush, as I intended. | ||
| Breaking. | ||
| Harvard just released its final report on anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias. | ||
| It's 300-plus pages and pretty devastating to read. | ||
| I thought I knew what was going on at Harvard, but even I wasn't prepared for this. | ||
| Let's break down the most shocking parts. | ||
| A Jewish student was told they couldn't share their story of their Holocaust survivor grandfather's rescue efforts because he helped Jews reach British Mandate Palestine. | ||
| Organizers said it was not tasteful and inherently one-sided because it mentioned Israel. | ||
| Some were asked to denounce Israel to be considered one of the good ones. | ||
| This came from every part of campus, including peers, instructors, and faculty. | ||
| At a Harvard Law event for families of the hostages, Harvard chose to move the Jewish students for safety reasons while protesters roamed around freely. | ||
| In a university-wide survey, most respondents said they do not feel safe expressing their political | ||
| So, okay, there's one portion, and I want to just show you this chart. | ||
| It's rather shocking. | ||
| Or not, I suppose. | ||
| This is a chart of Harvard applicants having different admission chances based on race. | ||
| If you are Asian and you apply to Harvard, you have a 12.7% chance of getting in. | ||
| If you are African American, it's 56.1%. | ||
| We know they discriminate also against Jews. | ||
| I have no doubt. | ||
| I don't know the numbers on this, but I have no doubt they discriminate against Indians. | ||
| So let's do the latter part first. | ||
| The Supreme Court ruled that... | ||
| Harvard and places of higher education cannot discriminate based on race, yet Harvard clearly has been doing this. | ||
| They've been doing this for decades, by the way. | ||
| Where do you fall on that? | ||
| Well, look, even our military academies, the Supreme Court has ruled for them that you can have diversity as part of the consideration. | ||
| I think you need diversity. | ||
| I got into, you know, I went to Yale Law School. | ||
| It's possible Usha Vance got into Yale Law School. | ||
| I'm grateful that my class there and my class at college were diverse classes. | ||
| Now, I think that that should be one criteria, obviously. | ||
| But did you get in with lesser grades than a white person? | ||
| And would that have been fair? | ||
| I think I did well as a student, but the point is that it's fine to look at the totality of a person, their resilience, their grit, their extracurriculars. | ||
| But does any of that have to do with race? | ||
| I mean, that seems to what it all boils down to. | ||
| Fine, you could take extra Spanish after school and you can volunteer and sell Girl Scout cookies, but what does this have to do with race? | ||
| Well, look, I do believe, as the Supreme Court said for our military academies, that race and diversity of race is an important consideration. | ||
| Why did they say that for the military academies? | ||
| Why can military academies take race into consideration? | ||
| Because they want our military to reflect the population. | ||
| Well, if you believe Harvard is a place where future leaders in different areas come out of, then you want it to have a reflection about... | ||
| But there shouldn't be quotas, and we certainly shouldn't be saving spots for people based on race. | ||
| But how is that different than quotas? | ||
| If race is going to be a consideration, I mean, if you had an Asian kid and a white kid, and they had exactly, or if you have an Asian kid, a white kid, and a black kid, and they all have exactly the same grades and qualifications, in essence, you're saying put the black kid in, correct? | ||
| I don't think it's that simple where it's just everything is equal. | ||
| I think you look at the life stories and the complexity of it, and you have race as one consideration, but you can't just say we're going to save X amount of spots for Black kids or Latino kids. | ||
| Do it the way the military academies do, West Point and the Naval Academy. | ||
| My view is, having talked to a lot of cadets, that they're very, very qualified, and they're also diverse, and they're doing extraordinary work for our country. | ||
| So if 56% of black kids that apply to Harvard get in and only 12% of Asians, do you see a problem with that? | ||
| Is that recent? | ||
| Is that after the decision or before the decision, those numbers? | ||
| Well, if it's legal, it has to be before, because now just in the last two years is when the ruling came down. | ||
| Look, I would want to make sure that they weren't saying X number of people of a certain race need to get in, and that it's actually a consideration, but not... | ||
| Not dispositive. | ||
| Obviously, I'm not involved in Harvard's admission, so I don't know the details, but I want to make sure that there weren't anything close to quote us. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I just don't understand. | ||
| Why do you think race matters? | ||
| I don't think race matters. | ||
| I think it has nothing to do with nothing. | ||
| Wouldn't you, if you were an Asian kid who didn't get into Harvard, if you had great grades, and you saw they were putting in more black kids just because they were black, wouldn't you kind of become racist? | ||
| No, because I would say that this story is a story of a multiracial democracy and that to really come together as a country, I would want to make sure that I understood different parts of the experience. | ||
| And if someone is coming for the Black South, for example, where we had... | ||
| And overcame 250 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow. | ||
| And coming from that experience, I would say, I want that voice to be part of the American leadership, just like I want the kid of Indian immigrants, just like I want someone who's grandson of the people who scaled the cliffs of Normandy or someone who traces their heritage all the way back to the Mayflower. | ||
| We need to have our leadership reflect. | ||
| The beauty of this country. | ||
| And I don't think we can look at it simply from, okay, I didn't make the highest scores. | ||
| By the way, I also don't think that it's the end of the world where someone goes to college. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But okay, so your kids, though, who are Indian, they will be considered privileged in this future world that you're talking about, where race will matter. | ||
| So you would be okay. | ||
| I mean, I just don't understand this notion, but I get it's something that Democrats really believe in right now. | ||
| But you would be okay with your own children. | ||
| I get you don't want quotas, so there's no number I can get you on, but you would be okay with your own children being discriminated against so that people of another skin color could get their job or get into the school, correct? | ||
| I wouldn't view it as discrimination. | ||
| I would be fine with that, their race being one consideration of a whole host of different considerations. | ||
| But I would also take account of people's economics. | ||
| I would look at, for example, someone who has been coming from a deindustrialized steel town or a town in... | ||
| In the white working class that has faced opioids, I would look at that experience very significantly, right? | ||
| I mean, I think rural America is underrepresented. | ||
| I think kids from factory towns are underrepresented. | ||
| But to put those, I'm sorry, I'm just hung up on this. | ||
| To put those kids in, I'm not against those kids having chances. | ||
| You're okay with your own children being discriminated against. | ||
| Indians do quite well in America. | ||
| I think they might be the highest economic bracket in the entire country. | ||
| It would be your own children that would pay the price, and you're okay with that? | ||
| I wouldn't call it discrimination. | ||
| I would say that they will have plenty of opportunities and that they will be judged on the totality of who they are. | ||
| And I'm confident in my own kids that they're going to have many opportunities to lead. | ||
| And I would want them in a university setting or in a workplace where they were exposed to I mean, how are they going to be effective as leaders in Congress? | ||
| I mean, how are they going to be effective as leaders in general if they weren't exposed to the diversity of this country? | ||
| Well, I think you're exposed to the diversity of country by living. | ||
| Once you institutionalize these numbers, I get it. | ||
| That's why you're not giving me the number, because there's no number that's going to really make sense. | ||
| But it will be harder for your children, literally your children. | ||
| Because Indians do well. | ||
| So Indians are going to be part of the oppressor class going forward. | ||
| It'll be harder for your children to get into school and get jobs. | ||
| And then don't you think we would have a systemic sort of lowering of all of our ability to do things once we keep bringing in people who are less qualified to do things? | ||
| No, because I think that the kids of Indian origin are going to have plenty of opportunities in this country. | ||
| And they will benefit from being exposed to the diversity of this country. | ||
| Many of them may not have met someone from the Black South or from the Hispanic South or from a rural factory town or a community. | ||
| And I think that ultimately will be more beneficial to them than going to a place where Indian American kids generally, I'm speaking in the general, are just focused on academics. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Okay, I don't want to harp on it any further. | ||
| I'll just ask you one other, just like as clean as possible. | ||
| So if your son was applying to Harvard or your son was applying to Google, and they were told that actually they got passed over because there was an exact equal candidate who happened to be black, you would be okay with that? | ||
| If we're talking about Indian Americans in general. | ||
| Kids of Indian American's origin. | ||
| If Google were to say we consider diversity as one criteria, I would be fine with that. | ||
| And I would be confident that Indian American kids are going to have plenty of economic opportunities and that they will be better served working in diverse environments. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, that one, again, I'm loving this conversation. | ||
| That one, I just can't imagine why you would be OK with your own children being discriminated against. | ||
| But we'll go. | ||
| Let's go to a white guy who's very excited that he's white. | ||
| He almost became vice president and he has an ability to speak to white guys, apparently, although I guess most people didn't buy it. | ||
| Tim Walls. | ||
| I knew I was on the ticket, I would argue, because we did a lot of amazing progressive things in Minnesota to improve people's lives. | ||
| But I also was on the ticket, quite honestly, you know, because I. I could code talk to white guys watching football, fixing their truck, doing that, that I could put them at ease. | ||
| I was the permission structure to say, look, you can do this and vote for this. | ||
| And you look across those swing states, with the exception of Minnesota, we didn't get enough of it. | ||
| Congressman, again, I think we could connect this to the previous topic, but like this obsession with race and that they brought him in because he's white and he's somehow a dude and could talk about football. | ||
| I mean, he seemed like a... | ||
| Kind of a clown to me. | ||
| But it strikes me as this is the position the Democrats are now in. | ||
| You have these white, sort of self-hating white people that are kind of in charge. | ||
| You have a really radical base. | ||
| You have the, you know, sort of the old school Dems that are trying to hang on. | ||
| It just seems like, well, basically it seems like you have a big mess on your hands. | ||
| Look, I go to rural and factory towns all the time. | ||
| I was just in rural Nebraska. | ||
| I'm an Indian American, a son of immigrants, of Hindu faith. | ||
| And let me tell you, I connect because I talk about how we're going to create good jobs, how we're going to bring technology, how communities have been neglected, how we're actually going to improve their lives. | ||
| And I've never felt that my Indian ancestry or my faith... | ||
| Was a barrier. | ||
| I think that this is the most open country. | ||
| And instead of figuring out how, quote, unquote, we talk to white people, what we should be focused on is how we enlist America and how we have concrete ideas to improve people's lives. | ||
| And if we do that, this country will respond to anyone, whether they're African-American, Indian-American, male, female, gay or straight. | ||
| I have great faith in the American people. | ||
| On that, I completely am with you. | ||
| That's why I think this thing about the obsession with race and that he can go... | ||
| Code switch. | ||
| It just sounds, I can talk to white guys, just sounds completely ridiculous. | ||
| I want to show you one more clip because everyone's curious right now. | ||
| I mean, the polls are not good for the Democrats right now. | ||
| I think there's a senator waiting for me. | ||
| I could keep House members waiting, but the Senate... | ||
| Okay, I promise it's the last one because the leader of your party in 28 might be a guy from ESPN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Even A. Smith may run for president, as you know. | |
| Do you have any advice for Stephen A if he launches the run? | ||
| No, Stephen A, he's a good guy. | ||
| He's a smart guy. | ||
| I love watching him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's got great entertainment skills, which is very important. | |
| People watch him. | ||
| You know, a lot of these Democrats I watch, I say they have no chance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've been pretty good at picking people and picking candidates, and I will tell you, I'd love to see him run. | |
| All right, there you go. | ||
| All right. | ||
| One minute. | ||
| Bring us home. | ||
| I mean, is the future of the Democrat Party, is it the more radical, progressive wing? | ||
| Is there any chance for the blue dog Democrat to come back? | ||
| Or is it just we will go into a circus and it will be Stephen A. Smith? | ||
| And I like Stephen A. It's not even a knock on Stephen A. I like Stephen A. He grew up the hard way. | ||
| He started out as a Philly sports writer. | ||
| I grew up in Pennsylvania. | ||
| So, you know, he didn't just... | ||
| He had to become a celebrity. | ||
| He had to work his way up. | ||
| And I had to go on Bill Maher's show with him. | ||
| And let me tell you, he got the better of the debate. | ||
| You don't want us debating Stephen A., the guy who's paid millions of dollars to give in 60 seconds his view on LeBron and his kid. | ||
| He can take that skill and make it about politics. | ||
| So, you know, look, I think here's the thing with the Democratic Party. | ||
| We've got to have an open election. | ||
| We've got to have 10, 15 people run. | ||
| We've got to have people willing to mix it up, have ideas out there, not have a coronation. | ||
| I think Stephen A. could add to that. | ||
| But what we can't do is just be stale, can't have some kind of pick in the back rooms by the DNC. | ||
| People want to see us mix it up and be out there. | ||
| And ultimately, we need a compelling economic. | ||
| But I really think that what the party has got to do is show a willingness to go everywhere, an authenticity, a spontaneity, and not be stale. | ||
| And that's, I think, why you see the reaction to Stephen A. and others who people say, look, we've got to get some new voices in there. | ||
| Congressman, I thank you for your time. | ||
| And I do want to say that if your kids are considering not go... | ||
| How old are your kids? | ||
| You know, I don't talk about kids these days on social media and stuff just because of the environment. | ||
| But I will say, in general, Indian Americans are... | ||
| Kids, you know, I'm fine with the diversity that benefits, even though we disagree on race being a consideration. | ||
| Well, I was going to say, at the Rubin Report, we don't take race into consideration when we're hiring, so maybe they can get a gig over here. | ||
| I appreciate your time. | ||
| Thank you very much, guys. | ||
| I'll finish up for a moment or two without the congressman, but really do appreciate it, Congressman Khanna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Look forward to being back. | ||
| Anytime, anytime. | ||
| All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed that. | ||
| You know, we got a little rushed there because we started a little late and it seemed like he had a hard out, but I do appreciate that he gave us a little more time. | ||
| I hope you found that thoughtful and sort of what we need right now. | ||
| I mean, I think in a lot of ways, it kind of proves why I can't be a Democrat anymore. | ||
| I think this thing with race and this... | ||
| I would say slight confusion. | ||
| I'm always talking about the shell game with the Democrats. | ||
| They're always worried about everyone else besides American citizens. | ||
| I just see as an issue there are some interesting legal debates to have as it pertains to the Supreme Court making decisions that the administration is going against and deportations and all of those things. | ||
| But I think that perfectly shined a light. | ||
| On exactly why the Democrats are kind of screwy at the moment, because Roe is, he is, for whatever you think of the Democrats right at this moment, he's a moderate for them, right? | ||
| That's why he's willing to talk to me. | ||
| But some of the positions don't quite line up, but I will give the guy absolute credit for being willing to have that conversation. | ||
| By the way, I will be at the University of Austin giving a speech and doing a debate and a bunch more on May 13th. | ||
| I don't know if that, is that open to the public? | ||
| All right. | ||
| I think there's about 50 spaces that are open to the public outside of the students at the University of Austin. | ||
| And on Tuesday, May 7th, I will be at University of Delaware giving a talk. | ||
| Also, I think I'm doing a debate there. | ||
| We've got a couple other things coming up soon. | ||
| Post-game show, 30 seconds, rubinreport.locals.com. |
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