The Daily Signal - Why Talk-Show Host Dave Rubin Walked Away From Left

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

Dave Rubin, the host of "The Rubin Report" on YouTube and BlazeTV, was a liberal for many years before he realized the political left no longer represented him or his political views.  “For me to tell you that I'm not a conservative at this point doesn't really make sense,” Rubin said. “It was a long ... journey to get there, but I don't mind saying it now.” Rubin began to question the political left when he saw that the same people who preached tolerance were not willing to accept those who did not embrace the radical ideologies the left was promoting. Rubin, who is also the author of "Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason," joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss how wokeness infiltrated progressivism and why he chose to walk away from the left.  We also cover these stories:  President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson meet to confer on a new Atlantic Charter, which details eight different areas of collaboration between the U.S. and U.K. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., is seeking to join the Congressional Black Caucus, but Democrats are reportedly blocking his membership. House Democrats call out Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for saying the U.S. and Israel are similar to Hamas and the Taliban.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, June 11th. I'm Rachel Dahl Judas. And I'm Virginia Allen. Dave Rubin once called himself a liberal, and now he promotes conservative principles. Ruben, host of the Rubin Report, joins the podcast to discuss why he chose to walk away from the left and the effect of wokeness on American culture. He also discusses his book, Don't Burn This Book, Thinking for yourself in an age of unreason. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure. sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

Today's interview was recorded during the Heritage Foundation's Resource Bank, so please excuse the background noise and chatter. And now, on to our top news. An 80-year-old agreement between America and the United Kingdom is being updated this week. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson met Thursday to agree to a new Atlantic Charter, which details eight different areas of collaboration between the U.S. and U.K. The agreement is modeled after the 1941 Atlantic Charter. Though the world has changed significantly since the 1940s, a preview of the updated charter states that the values the U.K. and the U.S. share remain the same. Those values include defending democracy,

reaffirming the importance of collective security, and building a fair and sustainable global trading system. The charter also lays out intentions to combat climate change and growing cyber attacks. The agreement includes plans to bring an end to the pandemic and reopen travel between the two nations. Biden and Johnson are meeting ahead of the G7 summit, which begins Friday. Republican senators Marco Rubio, Marsha Blackburn, and Tom Cotton are asking President Joe Biden to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to Biden, or saying he, should resign because he has lost the confidence of the American people.

Here's what Blackburn had to say about Fauci via Newsmax. Dr. Fauci has to go because he had information early on and he had questions early on. But was he sharing those with President Trump and with Congress and the American people? No, he chose to share it with Mark Zuckerberg. And what he did was to choose big tech, Mark Zuckerberg, the China, the Chinese, Communist Party and protecting a Chinese Communist Party-run lab over giving that information to the American people. Florida Republican Representative Byron Donald's is seeking to join the Congressional Black Caucus,

but Democrats are reportedly blocking his membership. Donald's reached out to the Congressional Black Caucus earlier this year asking to join. On Wednesday, anonymous sources told BuzzFeed that the Black Caucus was in intentionally keeping him out. Donald's joined CNN Thursday to explain why he believes he would be a strong addition to the caucus that is currently composed of Democrats. It's important for your viewers to understand that when I served in Florida's legislature, I was a part of the legislative black caucus for four years.

I've actually been to a couple of the CBC conferences in Washington, D.C. I'm a poor kid from Brooklyn, New York. I'm 42 years old. I've been able to be successful in my life. So whether it was talking about jobs or yes, even voting rights or anything that the CBC wants to talk about, I have a perspective being a 42-year-old black man who's come up in America after the lot of the battles through the civil rights movement that I think is actually will be helpful and a helpful perspective to the CBC. Whether they want to take advantage of that is really up to them. The current agenda of the Congressional Black Caucus includes passage of the election bill, HR1, police reform, and promotion of critical race theory.

among other progressive policies. House Democrat colleagues are calling out Representative Ilan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, for saying the U.S. and Israel are similar to Hamas and the Taliban. In a joint statement with Illinois Representative Brad Schneider and 11 other Democrats, the group said, equating the United States and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban is as offensive as it is misguided, Schneider and the 11 other Democrats said, ignoring the differences between democracies governed by rule of law and contemptible organizations that engage in terrorism at best discredits one's intended argument and at worst reflects deep-seated

prejudice. The United States and Israel aren't imperfect and, like all democracies, at times deserving of critique, but false equivalencies give cover to terrorist groups. We urge Congresswoman Omar to clarify her words placing the U.S. and Israel in the same category as Hamas and the Taliban. The lawmakers responding to a Monday tweet from Omar, which said, We have had the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked Secretary Blinken where people are supposed to go for justice. Nearly 40 Baltimore business owners signed a letter to the city threatening to withhold tax payments if policing doesn't improve.

The small business owners wrote, when it comes to prostitution, public urination, and defecation, and the illegal sale and consumption of alcohol and illicit drugs on the streets, we know these crimes are not as serious as the carjackings, shootings, and homicides that have become routine. The business owners are asking the city to pick up trash, enforce parking and traffic laws, stop the illegal sale of drugs and alcohol, and provide the city's police department with the resources needed to enforce the law. The businesses say they will put their tax dollars into an escrow fund until their demands are met, Frankly, it's pathetic that we're having to ask for these basics, but this is where we are,

the letter states. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Dave Rubin, as we talk about why he chose to walk away from the left. Virginia Allen here, I want to tell you all about a great way you can stay in the know on all the news the Daily Signal covers. Social media. The Daily Signal has an active presence on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We are constantly posting news, stories, clips from interviews, videos, and more across all our social platforms. Follow the Daily Signal on social media so you can get all the latest content from Reels

on Instagram to video clips on Facebook and political commentary on Twitter. I am so pleased to be joined by Dave Rubin, host of The Rubin Report, and author of the book, Don't Burn This Book, Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason. Dave, thanks so much for being here. It's my pleasure. It's good to see you again. And you just reminded me, we saw each other last about a year and a half ago. It's a long time ago.

At a turning point event. But, you know, in this last year and a half, that was right before COVID. It's like time feels like it has stretched and pulled and shifted. It feels very, very weird to just be around people again. I mean, I'm very excited to be here, actually. Yeah. No, it does. It's a bizarre feeling.

And you kind of feel like you've aged about five years in the past year and a half. It's all been inside. But, you know, since, even since we had our last conversation. we had talked about in that last interview we did, we talked about cancel culture and, you know, this kind of woke mob arising. Well, we've only seen that increase. And Dave, I know for you really seeing, you know, this extreme far left arise was one of the reasons that you politically started to move away from the left. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, well, it's one of those things where when you see something early, people kind of think you're crazy and then you go five years later and everyone's just repeat.

the things that you were saying five years ago, which is kind of nice at some level. And in another way, it's like, I wish more people had just listened, even though I know a lot of people were listening, obviously. It's been interesting for me, because when I was, say, four or five years ago, going to college campuses, as a liberal,

not sort of, I don't think I was, even when I was with the Young Turks years ago, I don't think I was really sort of a crazed lefty, like running around calling everyone racist and everything else. That being said, I was a Bernie supporter. I admit it. You can judge me accordingly.

I had a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues. But I would say I was fundamentally liberal in a JFK sense of liberalism. And I would go to these college events and I'd be talking usually with other liberals. I would have, you know, philosophy professor Peter Bogosian with me or Christina Hoffsummer's first wave feminist. People like that. These were liberal people and we'd go on stage and they'd be screaming at us that we were homophobes and misogynists and racists and all.

of these things. And I couldn't believe it. And I kept saying to people, I mean, I would literally say to them, hey, if you just listen to us, give our talk. When we do the Q&A, if you disagree with us, come up first. Let's talk it out. Let's see what's what. And there was never an argument to be made. It was always to shout us down, to scream all those things. And what happened was I would go back. I'd come home. I'd go on my show and I'd tell people what happened. And a lot of people would say, oh, Dave, you know, these are college kids. And when they get out into the real world, well, then they'll find out what the truth is. And what's happened clearly over the last four years is that the real world just folded. The real world basically was like a wet paper bag and they just punched right

through it. It just had no resistance. And now wokeism, Marxism, intersectionality, all of these buzzwords that we can now link together, in a sense, a new racialized collectivism, it has basically taken over all of our institutions. And now there's a couple of us that are fighting it. And I think we're making some headway. But it's a weird thing for sure when when you're warning about something because there were times where I was like, maybe I'm exaggerating this. Maybe I'm not seeing something that other people are seeing. And sadly, I guess I was correct.

That is sad. And a little frightening when you're like, wait a second, I thought we were on the same page. And then all of a sudden those are the people that are shouting you down. Yeah. Why do you think there has been this folding so quickly? Like where, where did this wokeism come from? And gosh, how is it, you know, taken root so quickly? Yeah, you know, this is, it's an important question, and it's a tough one for me to answer, because I think that I can't disconnect a weakness in liberalism with what has happened with wokeism. And what I mean by that is that liberals pride themselves on being open-minded, being tolerant, we will talk to people, we love open inquiry and all of these things. And they love tolerance. That's the main thing. Liberals love tolerance more than anything else. But at some point, you cannot be tolerant of intolerance. And I

think what the wokesters saw, the progressives, who were basically like liberals on steroids, they saw the soft underbelly of liberals, mostly at educational, you know, universities, things like that. And they were just like, let's just get in there and say all of this crazy stuff. Men are not men and women are not women. And, you know, we should have equity instead of equality, which is completely countered to the American dream and ethos, all of these things. And the liberals were just kind of like, oh, well, they're just different than us. They just say things.

And they're so passionate, they're so gosh darn passionate that they must be right at some level. And then what happened was, well, I would say wokeism is a mind virus and a virus. Think about COVID. A virus is very easy to catch and very hard to get rid of. It becomes something where young people are just suddenly like, oh, yes, the system is evil. Racism is here. 1619 project. Like they just link all of these very bizarre things together.

And it basically becomes an entire worldview. And I would say that that is not discisealienable. connected from a purely secular liberalism, which is actually why in my book I make a pro-God argument because I think the missing piece, unfortunately, for liberals is that they didn't want to make an argument for God. And then next thing you know, everybody's arguing everything all the time and everything's equal and there's no actual truth. There's no empirical truth. So I think the the wokesters to their credit, as you know, I toured with Jordan Peterson and he would always say, you got to give the devil his due. And it's like, to their credit,

They saw that weakness in liberalism and they went at it. And we've watched all of our liberal institutions crumble. And the conservative ones are fighting, which is why I'm happy to be here with Heritage. Because it's like, oh, the conservatives, who may be at this point I have some marginal disagreements with. I'm not even sure anymore. It's like they're fighting. They're fighting. And they're not letting this stuff in.

So they have a chance. But the liberal institutions are gone. Well, I have a lot of empathy for classical liberals who are stepping back right now. And they're saying, whoa, what happened to my party? Yeah. Gosh, that's got to be hard for those people. Well, they're conservatives now. I mean, that really is the truth.

For me to tell you that I'm not a conservative at this point doesn't really make sense. It was a long journey to get there, but I don't mind saying it now. And I actually, I think if I'm going to help with anything in the next year or two, it's that I do want to help fix the word conservative. Because a lot of the old school liberals, they know that at this point, they're conservatives. They know that liberalism in that sense has been destroyed. They know that the left has just run ramshot over. all the things that they cared about, but they're very, very worried about being called conservative. The C word to them is the worst thing you could possibly be called. And yet what I've tried to say to

them is, you know, conservatives are now trying to conserve American values. If you believe the Constitution is a good document and the Bill of Rights and the founding of this country, if you want to conserve 250 years of a pluralistic multicultural in the best sense of multicultural society, then you're a conservative. Does that mean we all have to agree on the margin of tax rate, obviously not. I actually think that even on the conservative side, there's a wide tent on all sorts of issues. So you could even take an issue like abortion, which for conservatives is like, you know, usually thought of as the one that you must be pro-life. Well, look, there's people like Rudy Giuliani, who's obviously a conservative, who obviously worked for President Trump. He's pro-choice.

He's begrudgingly pro-choice with he wants very specific limits on it and things like that. No one's running around saying he's not a conservative. So I want to show people that conservatives actually in many ways are acting much more liberal than the lefties. Conservatives are open-minded. Hey, let's talk about this stuff. And at the end of the day, if we agree to disagree on some issue, well, we both want to live in the same country. That's not how the left is operating anymore.

So I want to be the Moses for those liberals that are like, oh, no, we got to leave Egypt. We got to leave the Democratic plantation. But we just, we're afraid. We're afraid. Yeah. Well, and I think what you're saying essentially is a theory that I have, which is that a lot of people are actually conservative. They just don't know it.

They don't know it. They, you know, they've been told all their life. You know, if you care about people, then you're probably liberal and like all of these things. Yeah. And no, that's not accurate. And we need to be able to communicate the ideas to them in a way like you're saying, that, you know, they can understand and not be scared off by the terminology or whatever. Yeah.

Well, that's why I think I could play an interesting role in this because that is interesting to me that I think people, especially that are your age, which is younger, younger than me, I'll be 45 in a couple weeks. That's not that old, but I'm not 20, right? And I think for young people, it's like, nobody wants to be 19 and like, I'm a conservative. It doesn't sound right. It doesn't really make sense. It's sort of like, and there's a reason for that in terms of age and in terms of wanting to change the world

and wanting to understand that there are time-tested traditions that are true and that family means something and continuity means something. But it doesn't sound cool for a 19-year-old to be like, I'm a conservative and this is why. But what we have to show conservatives, and especially young conservatives, is actually the things that conservatives are now fighting for, fighting for freedom and liberty and choice and family and tradition and all these things, these actually are cool. They really are the cool things.

They may not feel like it because that's not what the celebrities are showing you, but I don't even know who thinks celebrities are cool anymore. I mean, they're a bunch of whiny, preachy, pathetic. I'm trying to be nice. I'll leave it at that. Well, you know, I so appreciate the platform that you have, Dave, on the Rubin Report. You have such a skill for meeting people where they're at.

You're willing to talk to anyone. Is that something that's always come naturally for you? Or did you have to kind of train that muscle? You know, I would say we're all wired a little bit differently. I think I'm wired somewhat cool. So it takes a lot to really get me to be outraged about something. You know, over the last couple weeks, as the news has gone sort of crazy and riots in the streets and people being attacked,

there were a couple days where I was doing my show where I was definitely like a little hotter than I normally. would be. But I would say my wiring's kind of cool. And because of that, and because of actually my good liberal roots of tolerance and decency, I don't mind if you said something to me that you had a deeply held political or religious belief that was different than me. Like I don't mind that. I actually, I enjoy that. It's like, oh, there's 350 million people here. It's okay. I'm not God. It's okay. We could disagree on some stuff. That's just fine. So I would say it was a little bit just sort of how I am and then a little bit, it was a little bit just learning it.

You know, I didn't go to class to learn how to be an interviewer. You just start doing it. You know this. You just start doing it. And then you kind of just figure out what your thing is. But, you know, as far as, you know, I'll talk to everybody. I would say the caveat to that is I won't talk to people who have relentlessly and sort of mercilessly personally attacked me.

So I see this with a lot of these lefties. They'll attack me for weeks, you know, call me all the worst things in the world and then say, see, he won't debate me or he won't talk to me. And it's like, well, actually, if you would have just reached out to me and said, hey, Dave, I have some differences with you, let's talk. That would have been fine. But if you're going to call me a sellout and God knows what for weeks, it's like, no, I don't need to do that.

So even my tolerance has its limits. For sure, for sure. That makes sense. It has to. Now, as you began to shift more to the right politically, what was the response from your audience, from your listeners who were with you from the beginning, who knew you as being a liberal? Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, I saw it happening and I saw some people were like, oh, this is amazing. Some people were like, oh, you're selling out to the dark side.

You know, I saw sort of every version of that. But I always felt that if I did what I thought was right, that it wouldn't fail. Something like that. Like, if I just said what I thought was true and I was honest about what I was thinking, that wherever it was going to get me was going to be something decent in the distance. And I guess that is how it turned out. look I've definitely lost fans for sure I would say my more lefty fans at the beginning you know people will send me messages every now and again it's I used to love you five years ago and then you supported Trump it's like all right yeah I did and I've explained why a million

times but it's like okay you don't have to like me anymore like that really is okay and then I would say the the new people I think they've really a lot of them for a lot of them it's very validating because I think a lot of them were watching me you know as more of a liberal and then they saw me eventually get closer to their position position so for them it was like oh this is kind of cool like this guy actually you know took that full journey across the way but i think the most important thing you can do as someone that does what we do is you you must do what you think is right yeah really you can't do it any other way you can't well you can but it won't be authentic and it really won't work ultimately because people will see through it if you do what you think is right

and say what you believe the audience that should find you will find you and the people that that you lose along the way, you probably shouldn't have had in the first place. Yeah, I really applaud you for that. It does, it does take a level of courage to say, okay, even if I have to change my views, I'm gonna always speak what I believe to be the truth and stand by that.

Well, you know, one of the funny things is when the show started really becoming successful and I was making more money and things like that, I would see the lefties saying, oh, he's such a sellout, he's a sellout. And it was like, if I had to, first off, my show is fan funded mostly, But putting that aside, if I was going to sell out, I actually don't know which way it would be more profitable to sell out.

Even right now at this very moment, like would it make more sense to sell out to the right? I also live in L.A., so I should just be hated by everyone that I'm around and I'll sell out to the right. Or wouldn't it make an awful out of sense if I was going to sell out? I mean, the social justice grift, the BLM grift, this is the greatest grift in the history of the world. There is an insane amount of money and corporate backing and all that stuff. You want to sell out. That's the way you sell out. I always thought it was funny that they're like, yes, I sold out to move to L.A. to be hated by like all of the intelligentsia here so that I can go to heritage events in Texas.

Like it doesn't. It's just like completely bananas. It doesn't quite add up. So do you think that we're going to continue or see a greater shift of individuals like yourself who, you know, maybe have been liberal all their life, identified with the left, start to say, nope, I don't think I fit in that box anymore. I hope so. I hope so. I think it's happening. You know, I think that the same. success that I've had is an indicator that it's happening. We need more and more people to do it. And, you know, I think one of the challenges of the next couple of years is as we watch the mainstream media just completely collapse at this point, just completely collapsed. I saw a tweet this morning from CNN about a study, they were quoting a study that said that, you know,

right-wing people are more susceptible to fake news and following lies. And it's like, well, wait a minute, At CNN, you guys push the Jesse Smolett hoax, you push the Russia hoax, you push the Covington kids hoax, you push the very fine people on both sides hoax. It's like, who's fallen to what now? But so I would like to see as mainstream sort of collapses, more and more people just, I mean, it's the subtitle of the book, but think, just think for yourself.

You don't have to come to every single conclusion that I came to in my book. And by the way, to your earlier question, my more conservative leading audience, when I took a position in the book where I said, you know, first trimester abortion and I'm not denying that it's a life and all of these things. A lot of my conservative audience, they said, Dave, you know, love the book, disagree with you on that and look forward to continuing hearing you talk about it.

That is very fundamentally different than if you were to take one position counter to the woke. I mean, what position are you allowed to take as a lefty that's non-woke without them destroying you? I don't know. I don't think there is one. And that's a fundamental difference right now. Yeah. Well, I know that you have that passion to have dialogues across the aisle for unity. You know, this year, or this past year, I was really hoping at the start of the pandemic, I think like so many Americans were, that it would actually be an opportunity for us to kind of come together. Yeah, we didn't do that well. And we didn't do that.

There was the hope and unity and the healing. When they said healing, H-E-A-L-I-N-G, they really meant H-E-E-E-E-L. You know, they meant heal, heal, bow in effect. Yeah, yeah. So talk a little bit about that. How do we actually start to encourage Americans to block out the noise of the media that's driving us apart and start to have these positive dialogues where we can say, hey, maybe we disagree here. But we agree here. Let's talk about our things that we disagree on.

Well, first of all, I think most people are doing it. Actually, at the kitchen table or within their local communities, whatever that is, I think most people are doing it. It really is, this is just about the woke. This isn't about conservatives arguing with libertarians about states' rights or something like that or taxes. This isn't about conservatives arguing with liberals about any old issue that we would have argued about 20 years ago, right? This is about a horrific set of ideas that has infected the system that is telling you, it's telling you, it's here to destroy the system. There was a moment in the Democratic primaries when Pete Buttigieg turned to Bernie, And he said, you want to burn down the system.

I don't. And that was probably the most honest thing that Pete's ever said. Now, I suspect he actually kind of does want to burn down the system. But what he meant was, what he meant was Bernie, you're here to burn it down. And that's what the progressives are here. They're not here to fix the system. Do you think AOC or Ilhan Omar, Rashida-Talib, are here to marginally take a good system and what can we do to slightly change it?

No, they want to tell you the founding principle of America was 1619 project, was racism. They want to tell you it's systemically racist. They're the ones actually injecting racism into the system with all of their laws. I mean, do you know that every single Senate Democrat basically voted to continue to allow Harvard to discriminate against Asian people? Every Republican voted for it, meaning we're going to stop discrimination at Harvard at universities, but it's specifically happening at Harvard. They said, the Democrats said, no, we're going to actually allow these universities to continue to discriminate. So they love systemic discrimination. They're going to continue to bring it, by the way, even the COVID relief bill.

If you're black, you get certain benefits. It's completely countered to the American experiment. So it's everyone versus the woke. And I think that is a huge swath of people. Unfortunately, it's a swath of people that are afraid, especially the ex-libs that you're talking about or the liberals that are waking up. They're really held hostage by these things. They love the New York Times. They love CNN.

They love Harvard. They can't believe that these things. are as evil and corrupt as they are, but they are. So we have to just show those people, hey, there is something over here. And it's wide and it's open and it's decent. And I always tell people it's like, all you have to do really is just be a little bit better than them.

And that's actually not that hard. Yeah. Well, I really respect you for the fact that, you know, you're very comfortable in saying now, yeah, I'm conservative. You don't agree with everything, though, that many conservatives agree with. You and I have different differences of opinion, but you're still comfortable with that.

Yeah. How did you get to that point? Well, I'm okay with that. I guess I would say that that is a liberal principle, actually, to be okay with someone else's opinions in many ways is a truly liberal principle. So I would say I haven't let go of that. I would say really the main one, I think, that I would disagree, it's not even a disagreement with conservatives.

The position that I take on abortion is I know not the main conservative position. However, a lot of conservatives privately will say that they actually are okay with something similar to what I've laid out in certain circumstances at least. And I know we could talk about this for hours, but I go into it in the book if people want a little more of the specifics. But what I've found is when I talk about this with conservatives, and by the way, I've debated this on my show with Dennis Prager and with Ben Shapiro, there's an agreement. sort of at the end that again we want to live in the same country so I'm not here like I'm not here

at a heritage event to get up there and say you know conservatives should be pro-choice first of it's not it's not one of the the main things on you know if I was looking at my top five issues it's just not one of those for me personally but what I want conservatives to say is hey there's just room for people like you and I think conservatives have done that for example at the turning point student action summit last year they had an atheists for liberty group there I thought that was pretty extraordinary. It doesn't mean that the atheists should overtake the party or that they should be railing against God

or trying to confuse traditional religious conservatives about religion or anything. But what it showed me was, oh, here are Republicans or conservatives, whatever you want to call it, saying, yeah, here are some people. They believe in liberty. They believe in freedom. They believe in the Constitution. They don't happen to be believers.

Perhaps most of us are. But they're welcome here. They are welcome here. That is what a wide tent is. That is what America is. So there's just more room there. There's more, it's just obvious to me. It's like, you know, if you're just looking down the road and it's like you got a fork in the road and it's like, man, scorched earth.

Scorched earth over there. Or, I don't know, these guys, maybe they're a little scary sometimes, but they're not that scary, actually. And you just go down there. And then you next, you know what? They treat you nicely. And it's all okay. Yeah, room at the table. There's room at the table, yeah.

I love it. So let's talk a little bit about the book. Yeah. Don't burn this book. I love the title. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to like the second title, but I haven't announced it yet. Yeah, excited for the new book that's coming out.

So talk a little bit about, you know, the decision to, okay, I need to put a little bit of my journey, my beliefs on paper. Yeah, well, I was on tour with Jordan Peterson when I got the call from my agent who said, you know, there's a bunch of publishing houses that want to do a book with you. The Playboy had just written a piece about me that I think got them all interested. And I had sort of been thinking about it for a while. Jordan actually had been nudging me that I should be writing something. And, you know, we got, took a couple days.

The deals sort of got put on the table. And then I was like, all right, I'm going to do it. And I signed a deal. And then once you signed it, then you really got to write. And I have to say, I loved writing it. I didn't know that I was going to love writing it. But I would basically wake up. I would have, I would walk the dog, I'd have my coffee.

And then I would go into my office, shut the door. And I found that I could just write and write and write and write for hours and hours. Sometimes it would be like 3 p.m. I hadn't even eaten. And then when I was done, I was done. So if it was like 3 p.m. and I got to where I needed to get, close my computer, and that was it for the day. Sometimes it didn't make it all the way to three.

Sometimes I would, you know, sit there for two hours and I couldn't really get much going. But I love the process of it. And I think what I'm most, I would say, pleased about, you know, the book did well and all that. But I would say what I'm more pleased about is that it really helps you make your thoughts fully concrete. Like when you, it's one thing when we sit here and talk about these things and, you know, there could be a little gray area on what specifically we're talking about or something like that. But when you put it in book form and you see it on the paper, it's like I want people to, I want to be clear about these things. I want to really be clear about what I think about these things. So I think it's made me a better speaker as well because I really had to refine the thoughts that I put out there.

And, you know, it was a little bit personal and it was obviously, it was obviously political in nature. but I felt it was the right sort of first foray into that world. Yeah. And as you have talked with individuals who have read it, what are the stories you're hearing from them? And what do you hope that people really walk away with? Well, I would say the walk away would be that I want people to think for themselves. Just don't accept the mainstream narrative just because it's the mainstream narrative.

Don't just accept that because CNN says something that it's true. I mean, in most cases, we learn three months later that it's not true, whatever they're telling us, right? So I want them to walk away with that. And what most people say to me usually is I've been on a similar journey. You know, even more conservative-leaning people, because, you know, even though the journey that I went was, say, from left to right, more conservative people usually have some liberal beliefs or some lefty beliefs

and then they either shed them or whatever it is. But like they appreciate, oh, this is why a liberal thinks what they think, something like that. So it's been, you know, and I like more than anything, I like the fact that people laughed. I mean, you know, I like the people that they got the references and some of the silly stuff that I put in there. Yeah, that's important to include. That makes a read much much more enjoyable. Those were the comments that I liked more than anything.

Some people, oh, you know, you change my political leanings, blah, blah, blah. But if it was like, oh, if I made you laugh, that seemed more fun to me. Well, and you have a background in comedy. I used to be funny a long time ago. Yeah, yeah. Well, and you toured with Jordan Peterson, and that really started from you being funny. You kind of opened for him during one of his talks. Talk a little bit about his influence on you personally.

Well, he had a huge influence on me in Chapter 9 of the book is about finding a mentor. And it wasn't that Jordan sat me down like a Padawan and a Jedi, like, oh, I'm going to be your mentor here like Obi-Wan and Anakin. But it was really that after a year plus of traveling with him and seeing someone at the top of their profession, what I would say the most influential public intellectual that we that we have on earth even right now to see that night after night to see him expand his his knowledge base every night. So, you know, on some nights he would talk about something and then he would say at the end, he'd say, you know, I think I've taken that as far as I can take it tonight.

But then I would watch him the next night take it a little bit further because he would think about it after. To watch that, it completely seeped into me. I remember sitting there actually one night we were about half, way through the tour. And I had the best seat in the house every night because basically I was on a chair on the side of the stage. So I could, I was sort of behind Jordan and I could see the whole crowd. I mean, it was an incredible view that I had. And I remember sitting there and thinking, man, if I can't take something powerful from this, then something is really wrong with me. Like, here's this guy changing thousands and thousands, actually millions of people's lives through his

words, through his beliefs. I'm on the ride. So something has to change in me throughout that. And I think he did help me crystallize some of my thoughts around belief, which I get into in the book and around family and some other things. That's so neat. Yeah. That is such a gift to night after night. Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. Who are some of the other leaders who have influenced you, whether it be authors or thought leaders? Well, it's interesting. I would say now, you know, Dennis Prager is definitely, become a, he's become a good friend of mine, but also, also a mentor in a certain respect. I think in many ways now he sort of sees me as a younger version of him. Now that he, he's seen my evolution, let's say, I think he now sees that, oh, here's someone

that is fighting for the things that I've been fighting for all of these years. It's also extraordinary what they've done, obviously, with Prager You, and that he's been able, you know, Dennis is 72, but, you know, it's his project, really, that has been able to wake up millions and millions of 18-year-olds. That's pretty awesome. So I would say Dennis has really affected me. You know, my one chat with Thomas Sol, which is, you know, like caught the Internet by fire. Like, that was like, I knew in the moment, like, I know this is important and great and seminal. I mean, give you a one or two others.

Well, I would say, you know, chatting with Ion, Herssey Ali. who's also become a friend, you know, someone who just has lived through such brutality to now move to the West, to fight for freedom and to look at us and say, guys, you're missing the boat here. Like something bad is happening. Like, I've seen it before. I just, I absolutely adore her and respect her. And then, well, I would say Larry Elder also, you know, there's the famous moment where Larry and I got into it and I said, well, what about systemic racism? and he pointed out that it does not exist.

And really that was one of the moments where the crack in the ice got a little bit bigger. Yeah, yeah. Dave, thank you. I want to encourage all of our listeners to check out the Rubin Report. Go on Amazon, buy your book, don't burn this book thinking for yourself in an age of unreason. Dave, thank you for your time. It was my pleasure. It got loud out here.

I think we got to cry. Is that for us or for the food? I'm not sure. It's for the food. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us your review and have five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you all on Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailysignal.com.