Rubin Report - Dave Rubin - Tucker Just Crossed a Red Line & Betrayed Conservatism | Dinesh D’Souza Aired: 2026-03-26 Duration: 08:00 [00:00:07] All right, Dinesh D'Souza. [00:00:08] What brings you to Hungary, my friend? [00:00:11] My first time here. [00:00:14] It's kind of a wonderful place with a great history, and yet it's been somewhat sidelined in Europe for a long time. [00:00:22] And now I think on the verge of a big election, they have a chance to establish themselves as a conservative beachhead in Europe, which is needed. [00:00:36] Europe has become so decadent across the board that to find a little outpost that has that what we and Mayor call the pioneer spirit, very encouraging. [00:00:46] And Victor Orban was on this morning, and at the first glance, the guy looks like he's a, you know, he's like a salesman. [00:00:57] Yeah, he's just some kind of a guy who owns seven Dennis. [00:01:01] But then you realize that this is a guy with not only great political savvy, but I think he's got the shrewdness to realize that you have to win not just the political war, but the cultural war. [00:01:14] And his party fights the cultural war. [00:01:16] I mean, they have think tanks, they've got publications, they don't concede permanent authority culturally to the left. [00:01:24] Yeah. [00:01:24] It must be very refreshing, as it is for me, for you to come to a city that is as clean and pleasant as Budapest. [00:01:31] I mean, you travel probably more than I do. [00:01:33] I mean, to just come to a place that's working, you don't have a lot of that in Europe, and we have less of it in the United States than we used to. [00:01:40] Yeah, and it seems like the people here have patriotic attachment to their country, and they are. [00:01:52] They're fighting for it. [00:01:53] It's nice to see that spirit in the people. [00:01:57] And of course, this conference brings a lot of the right wing from all over Europe. [00:02:02] And so you run into the guy from Estonia and the guy from, you know, and what's cool about it is that those guys, I mean, the left does this so routinely that they're coordinated globally. [00:02:15] The right is not. [00:02:17] I remember going back to the Reagan years, you know, you'd find some commonality with the right-wingers in England, right? [00:02:24] But if you met a right-winger in France, you felt like you're not even on the same planet with that guy, because that guy's talking about throwing an altar. [00:02:33] Why the French Revolution was a mistake. [00:02:35] And so the European right seemed very alien to us. [00:02:41] But I think now there's a mega movement that is global. [00:02:44] No, and it clearly has all circled around the immigration issue. [00:02:47] But let me, since I've discussed that with almost everyone else, and that's what much of the conference has been about, let me ask you something that you and I have been focused on back home, which is some of the infighting on the right. [00:02:57] It hasn't really leaked into this, which has been nice. [00:03:01] But we're seeing some, you know, people are calling it the podcast wars or whatever now, you know, Tucker and some of these other people have become. [00:03:08] You've been pretty outspoken on this stuff. [00:03:11] You have to be because, you know, it started out as a fight over Israel and it started out what seemed to me a very distasteful, unseemly, [00:03:25] malicious attack on the Jews and on Israel. [00:03:29] I did not expect to see the second phase of it, which is now in full flower, and it is a taking the side of the radical Muslims. [00:03:39] I mean, not just taking the side of Islam, taking the side of the radical Muslims. [00:03:44] I mean, if you look at the Iranian regime and what it represents, it doesn't even represent Iran. [00:03:50] The mullahs will happily say it's about Islam. [00:03:53] It's not about Iran. [00:03:54] And so defending them Makes nonsense of what the right has been talking about in foreign policy for half a century. [00:04:06] Because Iran, going back, first of all, Iran represents radical Islam getting a hold of a major state. [00:04:13] It's been a thorn in the side of America and the West for 50 years. [00:04:19] And so this is well understood by a guy like Tucker, maybe less so by some of the others, but Tucker for sure. [00:04:25] And so the willful repudiation of the conservatism that Tucker himself represented along with us for many years is eerie and disturbing at a very personal as well as ideological level. [00:04:43] Do you think in some way the hyper-libertarian political position always ends up siding with America's enemies almost by accident in some cases? [00:04:54] Like if you were trying to give the most generous version of this to some of these guys. [00:04:59] I think that may be true. [00:05:00] And that would explain a guy like Rand Paul. [00:05:03] Right. [00:05:03] But it doesn't explain a guy like Tucker. [00:05:05] Because, you know, if you flash back to the Reagan years, Reaganism was based on three principles. [00:05:11] One, the world is a dangerous place, and it has a lot of bad guys in it. [00:05:16] And we need peace through strength to deal with the bad guys. [00:05:18] We need to be strong. [00:05:20] Free markets in domestic policy and an appreciation for civic order, civic virtue, traditional lifestyles in social policy. [00:05:30] Tucker was on board with all three. [00:05:33] So if he had come out of the Murray Rothbard Rand Paul tradition, then I would say, all right, that's where he's always been. [00:05:42] But this would be a new discovery for him. [00:05:46] Do you think we can end on this? [00:05:47] Do you think there's anything Donald Trump should do right now to heal some of this? [00:05:52] Or does he just need a big win in Iran and a big win on the economy and a couple peace deals and then he can sort of sail towards the midterms and feel good about everything? [00:06:02] I think that the chance for any kind of personal diplomacy with Tucker, Candace, and the others is probably past. [00:06:10] Yeah, yeah. [00:06:11] So Trump has really two choices. [00:06:14] He can ignore them or he can crush them. [00:06:20] I'm not sure it is, he needs to do more than he already has. [00:06:24] He's taken, I think, a pretty clear stance. [00:06:27] And the Tucker play, we've talked about this a little bit, you and I privately, may be post-Trump. [00:06:34] It may be aimed at steering the Republican Party via JD Vance in a different direction post-28. [00:06:41] It seems to me that it's going to be, it has to be anti-Vance in a weird way because I don't see JD abandoning the president. [00:06:48] So that means Tucker's got two and a half years to hit JD, too. [00:06:54] Yet that's not conventionalism on that, but it just seems weird. [00:06:57] I don't see how JD abandons Trump on this. [00:06:59] I don't think he can. [00:07:00] And already the ground seems to be shifting, at least to some degree, toward Rubio. [00:07:05] And so for JD to be secure in that position, he needs to be in the Trump lane. [00:07:10] I totally agree. [00:07:12] But his resolute silence, if I can use that phrase, so far, makes you think that he is not sure what to do. [00:07:22] And too much indecision, I think, will cost him going forward. [00:07:27] Unless Tucker really wants JD to stick with Trump so that he can take him out. [00:07:32] Well, the idea of Tucker becoming the president, I have always seen it as absurd and far-fetched. [00:07:36] I mean, Tucker has a better shot at being the next supreme leader of Iran. [00:07:40] Well, that one might be in the work. [00:07:42] You know, they're running out of people. [00:07:43] The list is getting pretty short of candidates, so it is possible. [00:07:46] It is possible. [00:07:47] Yeah. [00:07:47] Good to see you, Mother. [00:07:48] Good to see you. [00:07:49] Okay. [00:07:49] If you're looking for thoughtful political conversations that won't raise your blood pressure too much, check out our politics playlist right here. [00:07:56] And if you don't want to miss any future videos, make sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell.