Oct. 4, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
42:08
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Now I saw the video from a distance. | ||
| That's one of the most terrible, heart-wrenching moments or things that I've ever seen in my life. | ||
|
unidentified
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Charlie Kirk has been shot. | |
| I hire more black people. | ||
| Nobody cares about how many people in the government are a certain color or gender or sexual orientation. | ||
| Is the government producing majority of the black community said, no, we want police. | ||
| We need police. | ||
| Brandon Johnson is putting on a front to attract the low IQ, emotional black people in his community. | ||
| And the white liberal who suffers from white guilt. | ||
| Yeah, there's people jockeying for the new spot. | ||
| I think that's what we're seeing. | ||
| And some people are doing it overtly and some people are doing it covertly. | ||
| People are trying to find their identity to be the next Charlie Kirk or to absorb that audience that's hungry to hear something. | ||
| What do you make of the class of people that are endlessly obsessed with Israel? | ||
| All right, joining me today is the host of the Officer Tatum show, my old friend Brandon Tatum. | ||
| Brandon, welcome back to the Ruben Report. | ||
| Hey, Ruben, thank you for having me, man. | ||
| It's uh it's been a long time since you've been on the show, but it's been an even longer time since we've seen each other in person. | ||
| And I'm wondering if you remember. | ||
| I think I know the exact last time, and there's a reason I'm asking you up top. | ||
| Can you jog your brain and see if you can figure it out? | ||
| We've we've done a lot of my memory is so doggone bad, it's insane. | ||
| So I don't have a couple. | ||
| But I feel like it's been a long time, Dave. | ||
| It it has been a long time. | ||
| We, you know, we've done plenty of events together over the years, but I think the last time I saw you or you saw me, and there's a reason I'm mentioning this, was at Candace Owens' wedding. | ||
| And we we were sat between you and your wife and Charlie Kirk and his then girlfriend Erica. | ||
| And I thought that would be an interesting way to start the show today because uh obviously, you know, to the backdrop of about two weeks since uh Charlie's assassination, that everything's been kind of crazy. | ||
| Candace has clearly gone in her own direction. | ||
| How do you feel about generally before we'll we'll get into all the political stuff and everything else, but how do you feel generally about what's going on in our space at the moment and the personalities and obviously losing Charlie and just all the stuff that we're all kind of going through, just like you and I, we go through this stuff real time on camera. | ||
| It's it's kind of nuts. | ||
| Yeah, Dave, you know, it's perplexing to me. | ||
| I think I'm I think I'm starting to lose my mind at how crazy all of this stuff is going. | ||
| The conspiracies are out of control. | ||
| The lack of support, love, and commitment, or I would say integrity as it relates to Charlie Kirk, his family, and TPSA. | ||
| The stuff that's being said is so inappropriate and so uh nonsensical to me. | ||
| Out of disrespect for Charlie's life and legacy, I don't understand why people are coming up with these conspiracies. | ||
| They're coming after Erica, they're coming after Turning Point USA. | ||
| It's just mind-boggling to me. | ||
| And I've never experienced anything like this in the, and I haven't been doing this probably as long as you, Dave, but in the last what, six years or seven years of me doing content online, I've never seen anything so crazy. | ||
| Also, my support of Israel, I'm a Zionist. | ||
| Uh, people have their own opinions. | ||
| You don't have to be a Zionist, you don't have to like Benjamin and Yahoo. | ||
| I would never once go on somebody's page and and accuse them of being paid by somebody to have an opinion. | ||
| I don't go on people's page and talk about their opinions about Israel anyway. | ||
| Majority of what I do is defend myself. | ||
| And to see people coming out against me, celebrities, people in my DMs, they're they're they're making the declaration that I'm getting paid. | ||
| It's insane to me. | ||
| I've seen uh I did a quick scan of your Twitter feed right before you jumped on, and just some of the things people, you know, people say horrible things to me all the time, and it's just part of the game. | ||
| We all know that. | ||
| But I mean, just saying awful, racist, actually racist stuff to you. | ||
| I mean, and these are people that are public people, not just anonymous nobodies, and and it's just crazy. | ||
| We'll we'll get to the Israel stuff in just a sec. | ||
| Uh, but I want to a little bit more on Charlie for a moment because we met through Turning Point years ago. | ||
| Uh as I said, we sat next to each other at the wedding with Erica and Charlie. | ||
| Uh, you you were, right? | ||
| You were the urban ambassador for Turning Point. | ||
| Is that not currently? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| They did we they dissolved that position and made it just more universal. | ||
| And so when I left that position, I was no longer employed by Turning Point, but I've been working with them in partnership to do events on campus and all of that ever since then. | ||
| So I have been working with Turning Point or for Turner Prince since 2017, all the way till today. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| So tell me a little bit about your your relationship with Charlie and just uh and just the human side that you've been dealing with for the last two weeks. | ||
| Because you're right. | ||
| We've seen, I've tried to, I've tried to avoid a lot of that, the people using it for their own advantage and you know, leaking text messages, all this horrible stuff. | ||
| Uh, but but you knew him quite well. | ||
| Yeah, I knew him pretty well. | ||
| You know, Charlie to me was one of those guys, and most people real have relationships with people like this where you don't text every single day, but you have that respect mutually man to man of when you need me, I'm here. | ||
| If you ever need things, you know I have your support. | ||
| I'm fighting for you on my side. | ||
| And we don't have to text every day. | ||
| So I don't have a bunch of text three as a me and Charlie going back and forth every day. | ||
| But we had a really close relationship. | ||
| There's never been a time that Charlie has ever reached out to me and asked me to do something for him or for turning point, and I never said no. | ||
| He's the only person in the movement that I've never said no to. | ||
| Because I respect him, I loved him as a brother. | ||
| He's always had my back and I've always had his back. | ||
| So we had a good relationship. | ||
| So when he died, it was traumatizing for me instantaneously. | ||
| I mean, I remember I would never forget the moment that my team showed me because what happened was Fox called me first. | ||
| I had no idea that this had happened. | ||
| Fox called me and they said, hey, we want you to come on the show. | ||
| Uh can you come on now? | ||
| Charlie just got shot. | ||
| And I was like, wait a minute, hold on. | ||
| I don't want to come on. | ||
| I I want nothing to do with your show right now until you tell me what you mean Charlie got shot. | ||
| What are you saying to me? | ||
| Is he is he okay? | ||
| And my heart dropped. | ||
| Now I saw the video from a distance, and it looked like Charlie got shot in the shoulder and he kind of leaned off to the side. | ||
| And so I was very optimistic about it. | ||
| I said, you know what, he he got shot, he's probably gonna recover, everything's gonna be okay. | ||
| You know, Charlie's gonna make it, we'll pray for him. | ||
| And then obviously the horror horrific moment that I never saw, but my team saw first was a close-up shot of what happened, and they literally gasped. | ||
| And I said, Don't show me, I can't, I don't even want to see it. | ||
| I can't watch it. | ||
| And I went on to be a little bit more. | ||
| You're a former police officer, by the way, so it's not like you're unaccustomed to seeing some terrible stuff. | ||
| Well, I'll tell you this. | ||
| That's one of the most uh terrible, heart-wrenching moments or things that I've ever seen in my life, even in law enforcement. | ||
| And I've seen some of the craziest things that you ever seen. | ||
| But to see what happened to Charlie in front of the world was one of the worst things that I've ever seen. | ||
| I could not imagine somebody being in person and having to deal with the security team, the video team that was literally watching it happen to him. | ||
| I can't imagine that. | ||
| And so I was horrified at what happened, and it really hurt me, man. | ||
| I mean, on the show, the first time my wife ever seen me cry ever was when I cried because of the thought of Charlie losing his life, a young man who had a lot of promise, who was just a good dude. | ||
| There's a lot of shady and shisty people who have bad intentions in our movement on our side and the other. | ||
| And those go and act in ill with ill intentions, they hate other people and they project that hate on other people to get clout. | ||
| Charlie wasn't that guy. | ||
| If anything, I wanted him to go harder on certain topics with people. | ||
| But he was a good guy. | ||
| They went after a decent individual that's that's willing to bridge the gap with them. | ||
| Not somebody that's that's gonna want to take it the distance with violence. | ||
| I mean, Charlie was a very peaceful guy. | ||
| So watching it happen to him, knowing I couldn't get revenge for him. | ||
| You know that that was my first thought was like, I'm gonna go down there to Utah and I'm not waiting for anybody to do it. | ||
| You can't do my friend like this and us not get revenge. | ||
| But you know, the guy they mean said, Brandon, slow down a minute. | ||
| That's not how we fight fire with fire. | ||
| That's not how we fight fire with fire. | ||
| Charlie Kirk wouldn't have wanted this. | ||
| You need to compose yourself, be the voice of reason for the people at a time like this, and let's move forward and let's see where this thing, how this thing pans out. | ||
| But it was it was very heartbreaking for me. | ||
| And to this day, I'm still confused at times. | ||
| You know, I have my moments where I'm let's cute, let's do it. | ||
| I'm speaking all around the country. | ||
| I'm I'm fighting for Charlie's legacy, I'm fighting for turning point. | ||
| But then there's times where I go, wait, wait a minute. | ||
| This really happened, man. | ||
| Charlie's never coming back. | ||
| And it's, you know, it's hurtful at times. | ||
| That's really well said. | ||
| I've had the same thing. | ||
| There are these moments where I'm like, oh man, I've never been more focused on doing this, and let's get in and keep going, go, go, go. | ||
| And then these other moments where you're like, whoa, this thing just happened. | ||
| And did we, and because we talk about it for a living, and just like you, I was actually on Fox Business when it happened live on air, and I saw it out of the corner of my eye while I was on camera. | ||
| And it's like, man, you won't you almost have to like disassociate. | ||
| Anyway, well, I'm sure that'll be a bit of a theme of some of the things we're gonna talk about. | ||
| For those for those that are watching that that aren't that familiar with you, can we do the one-minute recap of our first hour-long interview where you gave me the whole uh Brandon Tatum bio? | ||
| Because you have a really interesting story related to how you got into policing and how that kind of woke you up politically, and then and then we'll get to all the other stuff. | ||
| And and I hope that people go back and watch that because I look very different. | ||
| I think I was finally 50 pounds lighter, and and you know, I was still young in the game. | ||
| You were running my first major interviews. | ||
| So it was it was incredible. | ||
| But you know, the people that don't know me, I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. | ||
| Um I was an all-American football player coming out of high school, so football was my thing. | ||
| I went to the University of Arizona, played football there, and my career didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. | ||
| And I never thought about being a cop, which is my next succession of where I ended up going career-wise. | ||
| I was in the 2010 NFL draft and I didn't get drafted. | ||
| I had a draft party, my family was there, my agent told me that Oakland Raiders were gonna draft me as the only safety in the draft, and they passed on me, man, and it broke my heart. | ||
| And just rewinding back during my college career is when I found Christ, I got saved, and I it changed my life. | ||
| And it helped me come out from under all of the uh the garbage of hatred and resentment and racism that I felt in my heart growing up in the all-black community. | ||
| My first experience with police officers, mind you, was me getting arrested at eight years old for smoking marijuana in a vacant house. | ||
| So I had a really diverse past, but going to college, getting away from home, becoming a man, you know, and uh uh being saved helped me. | ||
| And then I ended up joining the police department after doing the rot-along and became political, became conservative, went to a Trump rally, went viral, started doing content online. | ||
| Colin Kaepernick scenario made me even more virus, 70 million views. | ||
| I joined a conservative organization, met Candace, met Charlie, and the rest is history. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So you were you were basically early in on some of the beginnings of what shifted culturally, where now, yes, obviously you can be black and conservative, nobody cares except the lefties, they still seem to care. | ||
| Uh, and judging apparently some people on the right that are talking to you on Twitter seem to care as well. | ||
| But for the most part, you were ahead on that, which which just shows you the strength of MAGA and all of those things. | ||
| So you're doing your show now, and you talk a lot about a lot of things that we're talking about. | ||
| And one thing you've become very passionate about, as you mentioned, is Israel. | ||
| And I want to throw to this clip, it's from about a week ago. | ||
| We we didn't play it on my show, but I referenced it. | ||
| You were on Piers Morgan's show, which I go on frequently, it's a bit of a circus, it kind of is what it is. | ||
| Uh, and you were on with this guy, Dave Smith, who basically has made a career of just hating Israel. | ||
| That's his entire existence. | ||
| Uh, and I thought what you did was quite good because you just laid out truth, not nonsensical talking points, but just truth. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| Even if you say that, hey, look, Hamas goes down into the bomb shelters and leaves the civilians up there to be bombed. | ||
| Okay, but then ain't there a moral question about whether it's the right thing to do? | ||
| What they should do is embrace a two-state solution ultimately. | ||
| You know, it it sounds cute to act as if they're just indiscriminately bombing people. | ||
| They're doing strategic strikes. | ||
| They have to get approval to do strikes. | ||
| We know that they're doing it, people don't like it. | ||
| It's ugly. | ||
| I get it, I hate that it's happening. | ||
| I would have ended the war 48 hours and it would have been a mass casualty situation. | ||
| However, we would have been done quicker and it would have been two years. | ||
| The two-state solution idea. | ||
| There's they don't, why are we lying to ourselves? | ||
| They don't want a two-state solution. | ||
| They want Israel to be absolved. | ||
| They do not want a Jewish state. | ||
| They made it clear, I don't know for how many years. | ||
| Netanyahu, they removed Jews from Gaza and gave it to them. | ||
| And what did they do in return? | ||
| They elected a terrorist organization that extracted funding and resources from them to build tunnels to create terrorism against Israel. | ||
| They cannot live in peace with these people. | ||
| They continue to fight against Israel in a Jewish state. | ||
| And I don't understand why we're acting as if that's not so. | ||
| They've given them uh their own sovereignty to a certain degree. | ||
| Imagine if they had so you did a couple interesting things there. | ||
| First off, the part that you almost said as a throwaway, I would have gotten ended this in 48 hours. | ||
| Um I thought what do you what did you mean by that? | ||
| Because I think there's an absolute argument that that's what they should have done, and it would have been extremely bloody as you hinted. | ||
| Um, but that would have not led to this extracted situation that we're in right now. | ||
| Or the first I want to say this because Dave Smith tried to call me out online and say, because I used the word absolved and I meant dissolved. | ||
| I misspoke. | ||
| You know, but um the 48-hour thing is, you know, it's easy for me to say because I'm obviously not a politician, I don't run a country. | ||
| So I don't know if legitimately it would have gone well. | ||
| But my my sentiment behind that is saying when they come out and attack you in the way in which they did, they video recorded it, they beheaded people, they took hostages. | ||
| Your response has to be so overwhelming and violent that this never happens again. | ||
| You know, America in Pearl Harbor. | ||
| I mean, like, we have to go overwhelmingly with force. | ||
| And unfortunately, and I say this with respect to the hostages. | ||
| There could be a scenario where the hostages don't make it, but you have to pursue in order to save the reputation of the country, to save in defense of the country of all the people of Israel, that you may have to sacrifice a little bit to thw and eliminate Hamas immediately. | ||
| Because when you wait too long, man they're in tunnels going all over Gaza. | ||
| They're not just in Gaza City, they're everywhere. | ||
| And they're spreading the hostages out. | ||
| And having to go find them a month later, a year later, they have now gained resources, they have now been able to present propaganda, and now you have to go through so many more people to get to them. | ||
| So if you can just retaliate immediately with all the force you have in that first 48 hours, you would have probably had all the Hamas soldiers and the hostages all at one spot. | ||
| They wouldn't have had an opportunity to spread the way they have. | ||
| And therefore, the the overwhelming force would have been so so much televised that the world would see that you better never try to do this to Israel again, or this is what will happen to you. | ||
| Now, I I honestly feel as if it's easy for me to say. | ||
| So I'm not saying that that is gonna work out the way I think it will, but the sentiment behind it is that overwhelming force, like America would have done, is what what I'm trying to say. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's also interesting, and and this is the bargain that they've had to deal with, which is they've lost, I think 900 soldiers. | ||
| I mean, that's that's young men, basically 25-year-old strong men trying to save these hostages, and at some point it becomes a numbers game. | ||
| It's a horrific negotiation to have to figure out. | ||
| But what do you make of the class of people that are endlessly obsessed with Israel? | ||
| This tiny little place, always just saying phrases, okay, two state solution. | ||
| Of course, you were right in your analysis. | ||
| Like it's just another terrorist state. | ||
| They ripped every Jew out of Gaza, the Israelis in honor, you know, in in effort to get peace. | ||
| That didn't work. | ||
| But it's just like this endless class of people that wake up every day and that's the thing to focus on. | ||
| I think that what happens is they have what we call a parasitic mind. | ||
| They have a parasite in their mind. | ||
| I don't know if it's natural or spiritual or both. | ||
| But it's something that happens to people, Dave, and you've seen it, and we know people personally that we have fallen off the cliff. | ||
| Once they go down that path, they don't end the path reasonably. | ||
| They go off of a cliff. | ||
| And I don't know how they get to that point. | ||
| It's not, it's it's reasonable for people like you and I to question things. | ||
| You know, why did it take so long for the retaliation? | ||
| Why are we lasting for two years? | ||
| What, you know, are they bombing this indiscriminately? | ||
| Are they killing people at the feed zone? | ||
| Like we can have questions and go through those questions and get legitimate answers. | ||
| But for some reason, these people with not acting in good faith and asking real questions, they consume themselves. | ||
| And I think God gives their mind over to evilness, and they begin to be consumed with it. | ||
| Because I don't understand how a person can get on their platform, had never really talked about the Israel issue to a certain degree, but then they obsess with it. | ||
| That means that all roads lead to Julane or you know, Israel Boulevard. | ||
| I mean, I think from Charlie's death to the cost of goods to Donald Trump's actions to everything is Israel's fault. | ||
| And that's not normal. | ||
| And I think that's what's happened to people. | ||
| They they have a parasitic mind. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, it's kind of like there's like an algorithm version of it. | ||
| You're just gonna get clicks, which are largely just foreign bots. | ||
| So there's like some financial aspect, but I don't like to just put it in that. | ||
| I do think you're right. | ||
| There's a spiritual aspect. | ||
| It's like at the end, in the in a way, it's like, oh yeah, if if I can just connect everything to the Jews, oh, and I can make some money along the way. | ||
| It becomes like this really really, really insidious thing. | ||
| What's your what's your take on uh on doing Pierce's show over there? | ||
| I'm gonna have him in studio next month. | ||
| And I need to, I do the show. | ||
| I like Piers as a human being, but in terms of what we're all doing with discourse, I mean, he sort of came in in the middle of all this and was like, I'm gonna make it all the worse. | ||
| And I, and again, I kind of like him. | ||
| That's why I'm smiling when I say it, but it's not helping. | ||
| It's not helping, I don't think. | ||
| Yeah, I I get what his approach is. | ||
| It's very strategic and smart to me. | ||
| And I actually want to replicate something that he does, but I think I can make it a little more polished because I think it's good to have different people from different walks of life actually having a conversation. | ||
| Does that really occur on Pierce Morgan the way it should? | ||
| No, it doesn't. | ||
| I mean, I've been on there where times where I'm like, there's no way I'm coming back on the show. | ||
| Yeah, it's it's counterproductive. | ||
| These people are talking over, everybody's talking over each other. | ||
| It's nothing there. | ||
| But but I also understand the value in planting seeds because there are people that probably listen to the debate with me and Dave Smith. | ||
| The radical side is saying, I won and he won. | ||
| But then there's people in the middle that had never heard some of these things presented, and maybe just maybe they'll say, I think I got something from this debate, even though I only watched five minutes of it, 10 minutes or clips that are produced from it. | ||
| So if I were to be asked to go back on, I I believe I will continue to do it unless it becomes a situation where they're not acting in good faith. | ||
| Pierce Morgan, and to his defense, he gave me plenty of time to say everything I wanted to say for the most part. | ||
| At the very end, I would have liked to say a couple things. | ||
| I would like to rebut some of uh Dave Smith's points a little bit more, but I cannot say that he didn't give me a fair chance to just unload on everything that I wanted to initially put out there. | ||
| And I thought that was fair. | ||
| So I'd go back on, but I I think these conversations need to be had. | ||
| People cannot be in the echo chamber. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you make broadly about uh what's going on on the right right now? | ||
| Like I know we can spend all day kind of diagnosing uh, you know, what's wrong with the left and identity politics and woke and all that stuff. | ||
| Um my feeling on the right right now is Trump created this unbelievably robust wide 10 thing. | ||
| I'm fighting very hard to hold it as much as possible. | ||
| I I'm I've been I think what he's done almost across the board has been phenomenal. | ||
| Uh but there's definitely a lot of pressures in that, and I think post-Charlie, that now has added some weirdness to it. | ||
| Yeah, I'm uh unfortunately, I think that the right is divided tremendously, and there's a fraction of the right that have come out as the stupidest, most ignorant folk I ever seen in my life. | ||
| I'm shocked when I see certain people get online and say stuff, and I'm like, where have we gone? | ||
| We used to be the party of dignity, respect, uh, and actually abiding by truth. | ||
| We have now devolved in part. | ||
| I'm not saying all of us, I'm not saying most of us, but we have devolved in part, where you have people that say Donald Trump is the is really the person who saved this country. | ||
| We voted for him three times already. | ||
| We believe in him. | ||
| He's done all these tremendous things, but then you have people that say, now he's bought and paid for by Israel. | ||
| Now he's a warmonger. | ||
| Now he's he's evil. | ||
| Now I don't trust him. | ||
| He appointed Cesh Patel, Pam Bondi, Dan Bungino, who we loved. | ||
| We I've never had a problem with Dan Bungino. | ||
| All of a sudden, because they don't give people the results that they want, because they bought into a conspiracy too deep. | ||
| Now they want to turn on him. | ||
| I'm okay with saying, hey, man, the information that's been disseminated is not good enough. | ||
| That's fair. | ||
| Um, you guys dropped the ball with the binders and all that stuff. | ||
| That's complete complete stupidity. | ||
| Donald Trump is completely out of his mind when it comes to the way he presented the Epstein thing. | ||
| Like, dude, he's tone deaf. | ||
| It's okay to say that. | ||
| But to say these people are corrupt and they're part of the deep state, I mean, what are we doing to our own side? | ||
| We're cannibalizing the very people that have been fighting for the same movement that we've been fighting for for over a decade. | ||
| And I and I find it to be horrific. | ||
| And the Jew thing is is is really what's causing a lot of it, which is weird, that a lot of the division is on the Israel thing. | ||
| Dave, I didn't think it was a big deal, dude. | ||
| I was like, it's common sense. | ||
| They're a terrorist, a terrorist attack them and they're fighting the terrorists. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| But then when I saw the fake videos come out, I begin to get irate and I begin to go hard against all the lies. | ||
| But I've seen so many people on our side turn on me. | ||
| I'm getting paid, I'm a shield. | ||
| They call me a couple some some dude, I don't want to say his name, which he'll never say this to me in person. | ||
| Call me a monkey. | ||
| I mean, these are mainstream people saying stuff that they've never said online in a racial manner because they hate Israel so much. | ||
| So those things are causing a big riff. | ||
| And I think this that Charlie's death is creating it too. | ||
| You got the conspiracy conspiracy side that think the government is in turning point is in on it. | ||
| And you have reasonable people that's like, let the investigation unfold. | ||
| Trust that in good faith, something is gonna come out. | ||
| The defense is gonna argue the same thing that Nacyers are arguing, but they're gonna argue it from a point of fact and evidence. | ||
| So wait till it come out and make a judgment on it. | ||
| But it it's sad to say, but it's a very it's a lot of division going on on our side. | ||
| Yeah, it's weird because in some ways it's like Charlie was kind of the uh the door. | ||
| He was the fence that was stopping a lot of the crazy because he was able to talk to people on both sides, even on the right where little things popped up. | ||
| He could kind of do a little dance on both, which I think you sort of said before. | ||
| Sometimes people were frustrated with him because of that, you know, trying to be able, you wanted to go harder on this or that or the other thing. | ||
| So without him, it does feel like there is there's a missing, uh, a missing piece of all this. | ||
| Yeah, there's people jockeying for the new spot. | ||
| I think that's what we're seeing. | ||
| And some people are doing it overtly, and some people are doing it covertly or whatever case it be, but it's a jocking, right? | ||
| There's a vacuum, and people are trying to find their identity to be the next Charlie Kirk or the other, or to absorb that audience that's hungry to hear something. | ||
| That's why people are going to the conspiracy. | ||
| I've seen people online that I have trust for years. | ||
| I've seen people in the military, and they're they're they're saying that the lapel mic blew up and that's what killed Charlie. | ||
| And it's like, why are you doing that? | ||
| And then I look at their views, Dave. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They got a million one point two. | ||
| And before this, they had 25,000 views, 10,000 views. | ||
| And and I'm I'm I think that that's kind of what's creating some of this. | ||
| And that's by the way, that's why I always mention the bot thing or the click thing, the algorithm, that's part of it. | ||
| It's definitely not all of it, as we said before. | ||
| But it's interesting. | ||
| Like at the end of the day, if you were someone and you were just like, oh, the crazier things I say, the more clicks and money I make, like almost everyone would do it. | ||
| It's you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, I don't think I would be immune to it in some sense. | ||
| Like, oh, now over the years, I've learned the game. | ||
| I see how it plays out. | ||
| But if you were just somebody that was kind of nominal, average YouTuber, and the next thing you know, you're like, oh, the lapel mic blew up a million views. | ||
| You're gonna do it again the next day. | ||
| It's it's pretty free, it's nuts. | ||
| And these people don't need to prove anything. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| That's the thing of conspiracies. | ||
| You just throw out stuff to the wind and say, allegedly, my sources say I heard this. | ||
| It could not be true. | ||
| And this is a it's a tactic that people are using as very evil to me. | ||
| To know and intentionally put a theory out and say, I didn't really say that. | ||
| That's evilness to me. | ||
| You you you need to be very clear about what you say. | ||
| In a time like this, I have an incredible platform. | ||
| I'm a former law enforcement officer. | ||
| I have enough integrity to say I'm not gonna jump off the cliff out of respect for Charlie Kirk's legacy. | ||
| I'm not gonna jump into conspiracies. | ||
| Even if I have questions, I want to measure the things that I say so I'm not producing false hope and false information to people because it hurts people. | ||
| Erica is being hurt by the things people are saying about her and about turning point. | ||
| Turning point employees, you know, Dave, you spoke at plenty of instance. | ||
| These young people are so innocent. | ||
| They want her to fly. | ||
| They lived to serve Charlie Kirk in many areas. | ||
| And the security team that I see travel with Charlie everywhere he goes, to make rumors and speculate about their integrity while they after they watch their good friend whom they served him with their lives die in front of them and they couldn't, they couldn't stop it. | ||
| They are dying on the inside. | ||
| And people are pouring flame on these young people. | ||
| There's young people across campuses. | ||
| I've been to probably 40 different campuses. | ||
| Young people volunteering their time and putting their life on the line, getting knocked in the head with bike locks and everything to support the movement. | ||
| And we're tearing it down and acting as if they had something to do with it, or are they a part of the problem? | ||
| And it's it's it's it bothers me, man. | ||
| I'm telling you, it bothers me. | ||
| No, no, I but Well, that was partly why I wanted to have you on this week, because I you were one of the people in the last two weeks. | ||
| I was like, this guy's just consistently making sense around this stuff. | ||
| Meanwhile, I'm watching other people that we both know that are literally releasing his text messages, private text messages. | ||
| It's like I have text messages from him. | ||
| Why that have political connotations, but I would never dare like it's just it's so psychotic. | ||
| Charlie, Charlie says things to me at events now that a lot of stuff is coming out that I was like, hmm, maybe he was hinting at. | ||
| I wouldn't dare. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Even bring this up the day he died. | ||
| The day after he died at his funeral, the day he was the day the memorial happened. | ||
| You have people sharing intimate conversations with him. | ||
| It's like I gotta right now. | ||
| I got so many messages between me and him, and but out of respect for that man, life and legacy, I don't need the clicks. | ||
| I don't need the drama. | ||
| I got my own platform and things that I'm pushing. | ||
| I'd rather spend that time promoting Charlie's legacy. | ||
| We literally spent the first six days uh that he was that he had died or after he had died raising money to write Erica a check. | ||
| I mean, our goal was to get to a million dollars, which which is which would be a blessing. | ||
| But instead of people saying, what are we gonna do to bless Charlie, his family, or whatever, they're dragging them down with conspiracies and it's wrong. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, let's let's leave that part there and then and shift a little bit to something else that's going on throughout many blue cities right now, which is your former area of expertise, which is policing. | ||
| So obviously we've seen, you know, just Portland and DC and Seattle and San Francisco, and I think New York is about to get much, much worse, and all of these places that have not done proper policing. | ||
| They've allowed for Sanctuary City, they've allowed for the drugs, all of the stuff. | ||
| Uh I know your policy on that uh you should have some policing in some of these neighborhoods, and usually you should have a little more policing, and the same people who hate the police end up destroying their communities a little bit further. | ||
| Are you shocked that more people have not learned that at this point? | ||
| Like when Trump goes in there and cleans up these cities, and then you have the mayor screaming that he's an authoritarian, he's basically just doing their job. | ||
| To me, they should say thank you and move on, but uh, of course we know that's not coming. | ||
| Well, you know what I think, Dave, is it's really the politicians that are trying to speak on behalf of the people that are the problem. | ||
| I don't think people in Chicago would be uh opposed to Donald Trump bringing in the National Guard so their sons don't get shot in the mid in the head in the middle of the street, or they seeing gunfire, they having a duck and dodge every day, you know, and their schools are uh run rampant. | ||
| The crime is crazy in the inner city of these inner city communities. | ||
| Ask the community, do they want it? | ||
| We they did a poll about this when they were defunding the police. | ||
| Mo majority of the black community said, no, we want police. | ||
| We need police. | ||
| We want safe environments for our children. | ||
| We want our house, our housing, the housing market in our communities to go up and not down. | ||
| We want stores and economic success to come into our communities. | ||
| It's the politicians, Dave. | ||
| It's the same thing with the white liberal. | ||
| Black folks, generically speaking, don't need somebody telling us that we oppressed and we can't do nothing. | ||
| It's the white liberal that's trying to speak on our behalf. | ||
| And black people are like, what are you talking about? | ||
| We we we can't get an ID. | ||
| I don't know a black person don't have ID. | ||
| And some of my family on crack. | ||
| And two stamps, roaches in their house. | ||
| And I ain't never known not to have a car and ID. | ||
| What are we even talking about? | ||
| And so politicians are doing that with their cities. | ||
| They're saying, we don't need you. | ||
| Trump is the enemy. | ||
| We don't want this in our city. | ||
| Crime is down. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| Go to these cities and you tell me crime is down. | ||
| Brandon Johnson, take your the detail and go to the community and do a food drive. | ||
| Brandon Johnson gets shot in the head. | ||
| He'll be it'll be because gangs and he'll get shot with a straight bullet. | ||
| He know it. | ||
| But these people are so evil and fake that that's why they're perpetuating it. | ||
| So what do you so I was about to bring up, Brandon Johnson, and you are definitely a better Brandon than that guy. | ||
| Uh what do you make of somebody like him? | ||
| So if you view, if you're a lefty and you view everything through the racial prism, this is a guy who's talking about race constantly. | ||
| I don't want black people to be shot. | ||
| I don't want white people to be shot. | ||
| I don't care who's doing the shooting or who's getting shot, I would prefer less people be shot. | ||
| But as someone that is constantly telling you uh that he literally hires more black people and he won, you know, he wants to fund more black business, all these things. | ||
| So he thinks it's important. | ||
| Okay, fine. | ||
| I think it's partly probably illegal, but he thinks it's important. | ||
| What do you think is going on in his mind? | ||
| Like, what do you think is going on in these mayors' minds? | ||
| Because if he cared about black people, we did it on my show this morning. | ||
| Uh, I think it was 16 uh people, they were all black shot in Chicago this weekend, only four killed, which is small for Chicago, but in a normal city, you know, that would be pretty significant. | ||
| He doesn't seem to care about dead black people. | ||
| Yeah, these people are caricatures of what they think is representative of the black community. | ||
| He is putting on a front to attract the low IQ, emotional black people in his community, and the white liberal who suffers from white guilt so much so that they will elect a man that don't have anything to promise the people, but just because he's black and it make them feel virtuous, and he's he's he's they are all doing this. | ||
| They are they are targeting, I would say, emotional manipulation, weaponized empathy. | ||
| Everything that you hear him say is a talking point to emotionalism, not reality. | ||
| I hire more black people. | ||
| Nobody gives a F if it's a black or a green person at the DMV or somewhere else in the city, or the DMV would be more government, but somewhere else in the city, they want services to be rendered properly. | ||
| Nobody cares about how many people in the government are a certain color or gender or sexual orientation. | ||
| Is the government producing, and if they're not, nobody cares. | ||
| But he is targeting that empathy part or you know, weaponizing the thoughts of virtue signals that that the white people want to put out there and say, look, I'm a black man and let me speak of how I'm representing my community when he's not. | ||
| These people should talk to people in the community. | ||
| They don't probably like uh Brandon Johnson. | ||
| He's not really doing anything for them. | ||
| And I will say this let's look at the totality of his uh tenure as the mayor. | ||
| What has he accomplished? | ||
| Why are we still talking about racism, prejudice, discrimination, violence, the education system failing in our communities? | ||
| And he has been leading along with other black people. | ||
| Lori Dirtyfoot is what I call her. | ||
| She was leading too. | ||
| She represents the black community. | ||
| She represents the LGBTQ community. | ||
| What does she do with you know her representation? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| And it's it's it's a shame. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you make of just generally? | ||
| I hate doing the race stuff related to all this. | ||
| It's just so stupid. | ||
| But but because it does exist. | ||
| What do you make of generally where sort of mainstream, if there was something like mainstream black thought at this point, do you think it really has shifted and gotten over most of this stuff? | ||
| Like any, and we're all in our own bubble, but any black person that I know is is over this nonsense. | ||
| Just it doesn't come up, it doesn't care. | ||
| I don't count my black friends or blah, blah, blah. | ||
| That's why that's why these conversations are so stupid in a sense, but they're important. | ||
| Do you think there's really been a breaking away of the Democrat Party? | ||
| I mean, we know black men that doubled towards Trump last election, but it's still a very small slice of the pie. | ||
| Like, is something still happening there? | ||
| And are you hopeful? | ||
| Yeah, the great question. | ||
| Uh Dave, I think that there's a lot going on there, and I think there's a lot of people waking up. | ||
| I I think more so than changing being activated is more of a term. | ||
| There's a lot of black, I don't know. | ||
| Growing up, I didn't know any black people that weren't conservative in the way they live their lives and the way they they structure their families, believing in God, going to church. | ||
| I mean, but I did live in the South. | ||
| I lived in Texas. | ||
| So I don't know how black people are in other parts of the country, but nobody I knew growing up was like a leftist that that supported all the leftist agenda things that are going on. | ||
| So what happens in my personal opinion are the activated voters in the black community are driven by emotionalism by in large and traditions and Martin Luther King and all the other civil rights movement and it be it has been co-opted, make them feel like, you know what? | ||
| This is the people that are on our side. | ||
| And they weaponized that. | ||
| But what's happening now is the people who believe a certain way but haven't been activated to speak on it, are the ones that we see changing and voting for Trump. | ||
| People that have always been conservative but realize that this side is actually not what they really believe, like I did. | ||
| Those people are being activated. | ||
| I don't think a lot of the people that are currently here are changing as much. | ||
| There are changes. | ||
| I just think people are realizing things more. | ||
| They are realizing they need to get active in voting. | ||
| They're realizing that they're actually on the Republican conservative side more than the left side. | ||
| When you were doing some of that stuff with Turning Point, did you find that, especially With young people, that they were basically just waiting for somebody to say something kind of sensible to them. | ||
| That's what I my feeling at all the turning point events was it wasn't that you know they put on a nice show, obviously, where there was a certain celebrity component to it, all that kind of thing. | ||
| But it was just like telling basic truths to people, and young people have been so bamboozled by everything, they come there and they can't believe it. | ||
| It's like you're doing a magic trick in front of them, and you're just like, boys and girls are different, you know, no big deal. | ||
| The the human brain has uh, you know how people in the body you have um CBD receptors, you have nicotine receptors. | ||
| People have truth receptors, and some people have been brainwashed in a point to block the receptors, so they can't receive truth. | ||
| But most genuine people are just looking for truth. | ||
| And what I noticed is that they had never heard the truth. | ||
| And so when they start hearing what they consider to be this other argument, it's actually them hearing truth. | ||
| And they're like, wait a minute, I like that. | ||
| That makes sense to me. | ||
| No, I want to be a part of that. | ||
| No, I have been fooled. | ||
| And I think that's what we see in these turning point events and when we do Blexi events is that there are a lot of people that are already conservative that show up there. | ||
| I mean, they make no mistake about it. | ||
| But then the people that we find that are in the middle are just understanding that what they're hearing is not truth. | ||
| And when they get to us, they go, I just at least want to hear something out. | ||
| I want to hear the other side. | ||
| And when they finally hear somebody telling the truth with facts, data without emotionalism, it caused them to go and rethink what they've always been told. | ||
| Some people immediately go, I want to be a part of Blexi. | ||
| Let me start a chapter. | ||
| I want to do something different. | ||
| I know I'm and then others go home and think about it, like, well, wait a minute. | ||
| I don't like what I heard, but that dude really had a point. | ||
| And and those seeds are planted over time, and that's why we see an influx of change people's change people changing their minds. | ||
| Yeah, and that really comes from the heart and mind of Charlie Kirk because he just wanted people to think for themselves, and then and then the truth will make uh most of the work, right? | ||
| Or do most of the work. | ||
| Uh, let me ask you one other thing. | ||
| Are you hopeful right now, or are you more skeptical about the future? | ||
| I'm I'm usually a glass half full kind of guy, and and I am hopeful, but I'm definitely vacillating a little bit with some of the things we've talked about. | ||
| It does feel like there's like a lot of competing forces right now. | ||
| The future of MAGA feels like it's a little bit up in the air. | ||
| You, you know, we know what the left is, the Mam Dami's about to be elected in New York. | ||
| You know, there's just like a lot of stuff in the system right now. | ||
| What's your general position on on the future? | ||
| Well, and the risk of coming off as selfish. | ||
| I'm very optimistic about my future, right? | ||
| You know, I got a lot of people on my team. | ||
| I'm hiring more people. | ||
| I, you know, I want to make this thing better, you know. | ||
| I have investments, everything else. | ||
| I'm living the American dream and I'm hopeful because I believe in God that God is going to elevate what I'm doing. | ||
| Now, the country, I am not as hopeful, although I do have remnants of hope. | ||
| Like the it can go in one or two directions. | ||
| I'm leaning towards thinking it's gonna get worse. | ||
| But I also don't want to believe in a reality with people like you and I out there, that it can go south without us putting up a fight. | ||
| With the MAGA thing going the way it's going, you know, at some point it's gonna subside. | ||
| At some point, Charlie uh will be remembered, but it won't be so, you know, uh intensed. | ||
| At some point, the investigation is gonna come to a conclusion, and the people who are spreading lies and they saying it's they're gonna get found out and it'll uh eventually dwindle down. | ||
| We will get a new spark. | ||
| When Donald Trump leaves office, JD Vance will be the new spark for a different direction for America. | ||
| When I say different, I mean going in the same down the same street but at a different speed. | ||
| And so I think that that could actually cause things to change a little bit. | ||
| The vitriolic behavior against Trump and MAGA will change a little bit because there will be no more uh Donald Trump frenzy because JD Vance is a little more polished in my personal opinion, the way he articulates himself. | ||
| He comes across as the future of America. | ||
| He's not an older guy who's stuck in his ways, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| He kind of come across as a person that can give uh a compelling speech of the future moving forward. | ||
| We saw that in part, and nothing against Trump. | ||
| I hope you don't get mad at me. | ||
| Um, but we saw it at Charlie's Memorial. | ||
| JD Vance's speech was on point, it was measured, it was heartfelt. | ||
| Donald Trump went on a rant, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| He couldn't help himself. | ||
| He went off the clip, and I'm like, we mean the wife are like, Trump, please just wrap it up, man. | ||
| Just think about it. | ||
| He got it, he did get some needed laughs though, by the way. | ||
| When he when he when he did that thing about how he hates his enemies and he knows Charlie's looking down, kind of pissed. | ||
| Like the audience at the end of a 10 hour, you know, memorial service, they they needed that laugh. | ||
| But I I completely hear you. | ||
| JD, it's it's controlled and measured. | ||
| Trump is still doing the the bigger dance all the time. | ||
| The optimistic part of that is I think that we have a future in a in a new direction and people can feel that. | ||
| And I don't know if it'll be as exciting as Trump, man. | ||
| Nobody can beat Trump. | ||
| The merge, the everybody wearing MAGA hats and stuff. | ||
| I don't know if JD got the juice like that. | ||
| But I do think it gives uh uh the country an opportunity to take a breath and see where we go from here. | ||
| So that's the only optimism that I see. | ||
| But uh, you know, the Bible says in the last days it's gonna get worse. | ||
| I'm hoping that the last days are a thousand years from now, like they thought then, you know, 'cause in the b in the Bible, Peter, Paul, and all of them, they thought they were living in the last days. | ||
| They thought Christ would come back in their lifetime. | ||
| And that was two thousand years ago. | ||
| So I'm hoping that we just are in a ebb and flow situation and that it's not the end coming, you know, in our lifetime, at least the whole time. | ||
| The it's usually the ego talking when you think that you're you just so happen to be alive at the end of time. | ||
| Brandon, it was good connecting with you again. | ||
| It will not be as many years as it was uh last time until we have you on again and uh and keep it up, man. | ||
| Well, Dave, thank you so much for having me on. | ||
| I'm sorry that at the beginning of the show I call you Ruben like 'cause you said the the the Ruben report and I said they'd be on Ruben and it just came out like that. | ||
| But I assure you I've been called worse things. | ||
| I can over your Twitter, it's way worse. | ||
| It's way worse. | ||
| Good seeing you, man. | ||
| Yeah, God bless you, man. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| If you're craving more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics, check out our politics playlist right here. |
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