The Right Is Going Woke? Why Are So Many Right Wing Voices Disagreeing With Each Other | Dave Rubin

From 2014 to mid 2023, there were over 1,000 documented attempts to get college professors punished for their speech. Nearly 200 of them lost their jobs. That means cancel culture has now officially taken more jobs than McCarthyism did during the Red Scare in the 1950s. America is in trouble. What once looked like a phenomenon on the left now feels like a split personality disorder where each half of the country views the other half as an existential threat. They're both looking at the same thing and seeing something completely different. My guest today, Dave Rubin, warns that with the rise of the woke right, American values are now being attacked from both sides. And that is a recipe for disaster. So, what would we need to do in order to save ourselves? We're about to find out. Who is the single most influential figure that's driving the rise of the woke right? >> Well, I mean, Tucker is the obvious answer to that. You know, there's no doubt. You know, the Tucker thing. I don't like talking about people that I've considered friends over the years or or colleagues to some extent or even former guests. You know, I really try not to do that. This has come up a couple times obviously lately. Um, it it really genuinely gives me no great pleasure to talk about. But I I whatever has happened with Tucker, um I wish it had not happened. Um the sort of hysteria that he's offering people, the rabbit holes he's pushing his audience down, the the big the big things that he's missing, you know, all of us, you, me, everybody in this biz that talks for a living, you're going to get things wrong. You absolutely are going to get things wrong. I get things wrong on my show while we're doing it live. I love it when my guys fact check me or I'll say something. and I'll be like, I don't know if that's quite right. Could you remind me? And I'll I have no problem issuing a correction or anything like that. There's a difference between just kind of getting something wrong and really taking your audience on on what I would say are are fantastical adventures in nonsense. And that that really is unfortunate. You know, look, you could even just look at just one of the recent ones, you know, with this Iran thing. He was telling his audience that this was going to bring on thermonuclear World War III and America would likely lose and there would be thousands and thousands of deaths and all sorts of sleeper cells would be woken up and all these things. Now look, you can get stuff wrong, but where's where's the apology? Why is it that you can look at my tweets, you're welcome to find them if you want. you know, even weeks before the Iran thing when it started to feel like it was something was gonna happen. I was tweeting out basically like I think Israel is going to do it in a couple days. Maybe it maybe America is going to have to drop a few bombs at the end, but that'll be it. There could be some sleeper cell stuff. Like I think partly what's happened with with what you referred to as the woke right, cuz I don't go to everyone's awful motives all the time, right? So, the easy way to do this would be to imply that everyone's racist or everyone's anti-Semitic or everyone whatever. But you and I, we've played this game long enough. I've been in the internet long enough. The label thing doesn't really work. Uh, and it's too lazy. You have to really, and you're very good at this actually, one of the best. Really try to engage with what people are doing where they're at in some sense. Um, I think a lot of what they're doing is not necessarily because it's all born out of hate. Like that would just be an easy version of it. And I'm not saying there's nothing there, but I think a lot of it is just it's it's a cold calculated business decision. You can take your audience wherever you want to. If you want to fill your audience up full of fear and paranoia and conspiracy theories and everything, the internet is rife with opportunities to do that. I I try not to do that. Um >> would you define that though as like the cornerstone of the woke right is just the WWE theatrics or is there something more going on? >> No. So it's it's two things at once, right? So there is a strange racial element happening. There's a lot of weird stuff with their obsession with the Jews and obsession with Israel for sure. There's also a lot of obsession with people that aren't white. That's just a fact. The some of the things they say about Indians and blacks when it rates, you know, Indians as it pertains to taking white jobs, let's say, or black people when it pertains to IQ or whatever. Um, so there is some racial element, too. But I think I think just focusing on that is actually a little myopic. I think what what rides next to that if you're kind of looking at two rails going in the same direction is just the business opportunity that relates to that. There is a [ __ ] ton of clicks and money and fame and all of that stuff as it relates to this. You know, the big thing that they're always saying, this whole set of people, I'm just saying the thing you can't say. Except they're all saying it. Nobody's paying the price for it. They're being algorithmically boosted and all sorts of things. Um, and they're getting clicks. They're making money on all of these things. It's not like they're losing sponsors. I'm I'm not calling for anyone to lose a sponsor or be censored or anything else. Um, but the idea that I'm just saying things that no one else can say while you're saying those things and making money and gaining popularity while doing it, I think is a little thin. I I would also say it's a pure in some sense look at it this way someone like Tucker and again I don't really like making this about Tucker but he created his he has his own network I suppose the Tucker Carlson network I'm not aware of any other shows that are on it but he's going for a network right well if you're going for let's say a rightle leaning network right leaning digital network who do you have to go for you have to go for number one who's number one Daily Wire who's the who's the avatar of Daily Wire it's Ben Shapiro Ben who's the number one sort of orthodox Jew in America, it's Ben Shapiro. So, there's like a throughine that I don't think is just purely based on ethnicity or skin color or religion as much as like some some cold hard business decisions that go with that and and that's a tough thing that the rise of anti-semitism I found um very strange and worthy of consideration. Do you think that this is them leading that pack or them recognizing this is where the pack is going and so I better step out front? >> Well, look, I can't speak to what's in anyone's heart or mind. You know, I can only speak to what I see as the action. So, when you say them, you're talking about broadly like whoever the leaders are, the thought leaders on this woke right thing. It's probably a little bit of both, right? So maybe they have a little you know anti-semitism it's the oldest hatred because at the end it's like wait a minute why is this tiny minority of people how have they existed for so long despite being pummed and holocausted and inquisitioned throughout history how did they not only survive but thrive amongst that and become successful and maintain their traditions and blah blah and I think there's a jealousy attached to that you know Thomas soul was once asked about you know why is there all this hatred of the Jews. And he's like, "Well, look, they're successful." It's not much more complicated than that. Um, if if they were unsuccessful, if if they didn't thrive, if they didn't have hold on to any culture or any history or any of those things, nobody would give a [ __ ] about the Jews. It's as simple as that. So, the question is, do you want to thrive and survive and be hated or do you want to be dead and loved? I think the answer to that is fairly obvious. >> There's obviously a reason that people are using the idea of the woke right. So, you've got a parallel to the woke left. Uh, when people first started saying the woke right, I actually couldn't wrap my head around what they meant. What's going on on the woke left? What are they attempting to do? Is it about It's for where I'm sitting, it seemed like people were trying to say, "Look, this is a power grab. They're using um purity tests and censorship as a way to get people to conform." And so, when I first started hearing people say the woke right, I had not yet encountered online what they were talking about. But as you start looking at, oh, okay, there is a version of the right that is also about purity test, censorship, conformity of thought. Is that what you think the parallel is or is there something else going on here? Well, I think it's that with a dash of ethnic stuff mixed in, right? So, the the ethnic stuff on the left has been very obvious for a while because they believe in identity politics, right? So, if you're this color, you should believe this. If you're, you know, white, you're at the lowest end of the totem pole. all the stuff that you and your audience know very obviously like the the woke left stuff clearly everyone grasps. What what I think surprised people on the right was there really was going to be an element of that too that was going to turn into I guess what you could like kind of broadly call like a white grievance thing. Now I'm in some sense this is going to sound weird but in some sense I am sympathetic to some of that. If you say to a set of people, particularly young white men, if the entire culture for the last decade says you are awful by definition, it's going to be harder for you actually to get into that college because of your skin color and your gender and potentially your sexuality. It's going to be harder for you to get that job at that company. Everything that we show you in media, you're bad and everyone else is inherently good because they're they're the other skin. They're the other in essence, but always about skin color and sexuality particularly. Well, then you can understand why a certain set of people that probably would have been nominally nothing or largely a-political, you could see why a 15-year-old, 15-year-old kid who's getting blasted with those messages sort of ends up in a weird right frame of that. So, you could potentially the two ways you could go. So, let's just say you're a normal kid growing up in the culture that we've been part of for the last 10 years. A lot of them went left, meaning they they just chose their I, you know, they said, "Okay, my identity means everything, and if I'm a white kid in this, well, I'm really low on the totem pole, but I will bow to it." And we see a lot of that, right? We we see this all the time, actually. Um, or you see what has become like the really psychotic version of it, which is the trans version, where young girls, 15-year-old girls, have now the social contagion where they think that they're boys and that's their entry into it cuz otherwise they're just 15-year-old girls with all the problems that an adolescent girl would have. The boys, I think the white boys and girls or boys are are biologically and psychologically different. A lot of the boys, it seems, were pushed the other way where they were like, "Okay, now I'm not part of that thing, but I will make my ident, you know, my outward identity is now going to become part of my politics." And then that got mixed up with say some of these influencers I think I think taking them down places that that are I would say largely dark places. I would also say a lot of this again because I don't try I try not to give you the easy answer on everything. A lot of this is because of the absolute destruction, the self-destruction of the mainstream media that offered us so many lies and so little truth. So many people, so many institutions were so blown apart and COVID and all the rest of it that everybody failed so many tests over the last couple years that we cannot be surprised. Like the thing is, I'm not surprised by this. You may have seen the clip, and I know you you love him as much as I do, Jordan Peterson. Uh there's a clip of him on Rogan uh from about could be seven years ago talking about wokeness, you know, sort of at the beginning of when we were calling it woke. >> And Jordan says, "Man, if you think this is bad, wait till you see the reaction on the right." And that's what Jordan was predicting, the thing that you're now calling the woke right, which I also, you know, I haven't called it woke right many times on my show. I think I've maybe tweeted that phrase once. I kind of like [ __ ] right? I like alliteration. Um, and I've had, you know, James Lindsay is the one that really came up with the phrase originally. You know, it's it's tough because you start coming up with these phrases and then we don't want to you don't want it to be a catch-all for just everyone you disagree with. Um, but I think we discussed this once or twice before. You know, sometimes you need these labels just not because it's such the perfect label, but otherwise we all will just get lost in definitions all the time. So, it's a it's a tricky thing. >> Yeah, it's interesting. I think that people do get labels to the point where they're so fasile that you you're just cramming everything and oh, I know what that is and I don't have to think about it. But there is something fascinating about the way that the right now is diverging from uh having a cohesive narrative. I think about this a lot because my obsession is uh the fusidities trap that's set between the US and China. And I look at China and look, it's top down enforced rule in a way that I would not want to be a part of. But it certainly has advantages in terms of getting everybody to march in the same direction, not having to worry about re-election, just pushing everybody in one maniacally focused direction. And now in the right, you've got this rise of something, which I'm only just now beginning to really wrap my head around. This is the first time I think I've ever talked about it out loud. I think it's an echo of populism. Populism to me is born of economics. Economics makes people feel uncertain about the future being better than the present. And so they get into this like zero- sum mentality. They're very defensive. They tribe up. And so now it's about are you on my team? Are you not on my team? And they want control because they believe that the stakes are extremely high and that if they're going to get you where they want to get you, meaning the whole country, so that everybody can live the, you know, just and right way, that they're going to have to manhandle you a bit to get you there. And so it is wildly ironic to me that when the left was doing it, they were having an absolute seizure as they should have because they were being so sensorious, so wanting everybody to think in the same way. But to now see them do the exact same thing is uh it's very troubling in terms of I don't yet understand the principle they're operating under. >> So first off you just said something very important which I should have got to earlier which that the populism part of this particularly as it pertains to economics is extremely important because AOC and Tucker are becoming increasingly alike actually in a certain sense and that's a very weird thing. That's what people call the political horseshoe theory. you know, if you go one side too many ways, you're going to end up over here where you're basically together. Look, if you look at the last Trump's been president now for, you know, six plus months, there are an incredible amount of wins, right? There are trade wins. Absolutely. Look what's happened with the EU in the last couple days on top of a series of other trade wins. There's absolutely a border win and a deportation win. Now, now these I'm saying I consider these things win and the people who elected Trump consider them win. Maybe not all of America, but you can point to an awful lot. We've we've removed wokeness from a lot of our institutions. We've started to rebuild the military. Um I think we've although it's we're not there yet, I think actual something approximating peace is heading towards the Middle East. The Russia Ukraine thing, we keep getting close and then it gets further away. But like there's movement, right? We at the very least like lowest common denominator stuff. We know who the president is. That's pretty good. Um, you know, Donald Trump, his his staff and his press secretary, Carol Caroline Levit, they take questions. Again, we have done an incredible amount of good things. And we I I mean the Trump administration, they have competent people. You may not agree with all the things, but if you don't think Marco Rubio is competent, if you don't think JD is competent, Caroline Levit, RFK, all the things we've done with food and maha. So the white pill here, what I would give you is in the last six months I go I do my show every day and it's very easy for me to talk about a lot of good things because these good things are happening right in front of our eyes. Now there's bad things too. They're shooting in New York City. Uh you know there'll be a riot here or a mob there or whatever. There's always that stuff. But there's a lot of good things happening right now. And I would say particularly economically the markets are at basically all-time highs right now. We completely rebounded from those couple bad days after the tariffs were announced. I did not freak out over the tariffs. It happened exactly like I thought. It was a negotiating point. The reason I'm mentioning all of this is because the only way you get the people on the right to join the people on the left is if they think everything's falling apart. And Trump actually is the antidote to all of that. What stops the crazy fringes? You know what stops it? It's goodness. It's success. It's America. It's freedom. It's economic and capitalist success. And actually, we're writing the ship right now. So, the strange thing to me for Tucker and some of these people, if you were to go, you could do it right now if you want. If you were to go and look at Tucker's last 30 episodes, has he done anything that seems pro America or proTrump even? Actually, there's a ton of stuff that's wildly anti-Trump actually. And and a bunch of stuff. He does all these now I would say historically revisionist kind of things. But why isn't he if he likes Trump and if he's for Trump and supported Trump, why isn't he doing what I do every day, which is talking about all of the great opportunity that's happening in America or talking about the exciting horizon that we're on with AI and how it's going to expand human flourishing or any of those things, but in a weird way. And this is why I honestly think Tucker will end up allying with AOC by 2028. there will be some weird coalition around that he's using the same methods that she used in essence they're against you capitalism doesn't work for you blah blah blah where actually Tucker you should be completely for what else do you want Donald Trump to do right now I I don't know what else he could be doing to make America better I look I would like the the interest rates to go down he's trying to get Powell to do it right now but by and large there's so many good things out there but if you keep people thinking this is what the left's done forever. AOC 12 12 years ago said we had what was it 6 years ago had said we had 12 years to go you know before before the climate was going to collapse. Of course it was nonsense. They're really good at oh systemic racism is going to kill everybody or America's fundamentally evil. They're really good at all the hysteria blah blah and now that's popping up on the right. There's no reason for it. But I'll give you one other white pill on all of this. Not only is America the the big white pill, the other white pill on all of this is that in reality, not online reality, but in reality reality, I don't think a lot of this is actually hitting people. I see a very different world out on the streets than I see online. And that's a challenge for us, I would say, because of the algorithms and everything else. But do you see that? I mean, I see a huge disconnect. You know, >> I do, but I I have a shovel full of black pills that I'm going to be feeding you throughout the episode. Uh, but I actually think you asked the the right question, which is why is he doing it? >> And I think to avoid the madness that will inevitably ensue if we have a bunch of pied pipers that are leading people down a path of either entertainment or a desire for control without at least having the check of saying, "Let me explain that phenomenon." And then the people that want to avail themselves of it at least have going back to this idea of categories can say, "Oh, I get the category. Why is he doing it?" We'll get back to the show in just a second. But first, let's talk about what's quietly destroying businesses in 2025. It's death by a thousand small decisions. Tariffs change, trade policies shift overnight, supply chains get squeezed, and you're trying to lead with fragmented, outdated data spread across a dozen systems. That's how you fall behind while your competitors pull ahead because they've got something you don't. Real time insight. 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That's fine. I'm just trying to do this. I was doing it privately on text. And Ben immediately agreed to do it. And Tucker said that he said he said to me, "We don't need you, Dave." And then he said, um, Ben's welcome anytime, but refuses to invite Ben, but he talks [ __ ] about Ben on every other episode, basically. So, again, I don't know exactly what's driving him, but I would say this. If I was Donald Trump, I would be pretty damn pissed at him right now. And I think Trump is actually. I think you can sort of see this with a little bit of what's happened with Trump over the last couple months. Like, everyone on the right, you're getting all of the things you've asked for. What what could you possibly want out of Donald Trump? Everyone can figure out like whittle it down to like one little thing or something. But you are Trump has so writed the ship and if your goal now as an influencer on the right is to destroy that or tell people how horrible everything is or to focus on something that happened 50 years ago or to suddenly tell me Hitler was a good guy, I just think your aim is just completely off. So again, I can't speak to that. But I would also say this. I mentioned Jordan before. Do you remember when Jordan had James Lindsay on and they discussed this a little bit about two months ago? >> They did a >> I I saw one that they did maybe a year ago, but I didn't see one a couple months ago. So I misremembering, but >> yeah. So they did one a few months ago where they talked loosely about the woke right and Jordan Jordan actually did something that I respect, which is what I've tried to do probably failed here a little bit, but he said he didn't really want to name names because he didn't think that that was going to be fruitful. Like let's just try to talk about the ideas or whatever. So here we've talked about Tucker. Okay, it is what it is. But, you know, after that interview, and it was done with the same exact class and thoughtfulness and and deep knowledge that Jordan does with everything, and I think James is brilliant, too. James is a little bit more of a troll online or whatever. But it was but it was a wonderful conversation. But after that conversation, I saw so many people, you know, on the right going after Jordan. Jordan's a fraud. Jordan's a fake. He's not a conservative. I don't want him part of this. These are the same people that were going after Douglas Murray when he went on Joe Rogan. And it's like, if you don't want Jordan Peterson as part of your movement, if you don't want Douglas Murray as part of your movement, if you don't want Ben Shapiro as part of your movement, if you don't if you don't want me as part of your movement, well, good luck. I I would say good luck. And I don't think you're a pro-America movement at that point. And and perhaps they're not. If if this thing is what you fear it might be, well, maybe it's just a radically anti- America movement and it just be coming it just happens to be coming on the right. But I would also say, don't you si sense this? There is way better push back on the right on this than there was on the left last time. >> Yeah, I'll definitely give you that. I think that the right doesn't have a problem with disagreeing with each other. Um they certainly there is a contingent of the right that is so diehard free speech. I would count myself among them that you're going to have a very hard time um getting people that either find themselves in the center where I like to believe I sit or find themselves leaning uh to the right that they're just not going to conform to anything that asks them to be quiet or to uh align with a narrative. But it it is very revealing to me that the revisionist history is taking place. So let me I'm going to give you my sense of what's going on and then please correct me where you think that this goes crazy. But when I try to map and like you I I can't see inside anybody's heart but I can draw conclusions based on the things that they do. And when I look at what's happening in a populist moment where people have deep uncertainty about what the future is going to hold economically, they become very emotional because they are scared once they're in their emotions. >> Wait, can I can I can I pause you there for a second? Do you think we're in that moment? Do you think we're in that moment? Because I think that's a key piece of this because if aggressive Oh, so okay. So you aggressively think we are in as scary an economic moment as they are purporting to believe. We are probably in a worse economic moment than most people will tell you. Uh I do these things called deep dives now every Monday where I go in and just look at stats figures about uh it could be uh Mandami promises to freeze rents. So I'll go in and look at okay what's the reality of the history of rent freezes? What do they do? Uh looking at books like uh the creature from Jackal Island and going in which parts are true like what's provably true? what's more or less false. So anyway, going through and you look at all the stats and it's like, hey, there's a way back out of this, but it isn't going to be easy. And if people do not wake up to the fact that we are full throttle right now headed towards a fiscal cliff that you get into a debt spiral that is so devastating and has played out so many times over the last 500 years, there's just there's no question about where this goes. Um it's only a question of how we respond. any um country that has stayed over 130% of debt to GDP ratio for a long period of time has ended up either in civil war or um a revolution. So we're at 122% right now. So one country has avoided it. That's Japan. Japan is a very unique culture. It's not impossible and there is something that you can do to back out of it. But anyway, I don't I don't think that's where we're at. I think though that we have the setup that is very bad. >> Okay. So, you think we're in a very tenuous position regardless. >> We are in a horrible situation and that that has it it is literally a loop in history that repeats based on fiat currencies. It it is um Ray Dalio has done such a phenomenal job of mapping out the six phases of that cycle, the big debt cycle. Man, it's really crazy when you start walking through it. you're like, "Oh, I see we're in in phase literally 5.5 and phase six is total collapse." Uh people don't think that it can happen. It happens all the time. Uh it's happened all over the world. It happened in Argentina, which is one of the most fascinating ones because they're now finally backing out of it, but it lasted for 100 years. Anyway, I say all of that to say I think we are in a very difficult economic position. Our debt is so outrageous. uh we have continually borrowed from the future and the only way to make the payments on the interest is money printing. Money printing steals from everybody but only benefits bankers and people with assets. So that means 40% of Americans don't own assets at all and the top 10% of Americans own 95% of all assets. It might be the top 1%. I I always forget. So we'll just say the top 10%. That means 90% only own 5% of the assets. And that's why the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poor. That's the setup. But now with that, what I think is happening is it pushes people into this emotional thinking. Once they're fearful and thinking emotionally, now they believe, okay, I'm fighting for my life. The other team is the enemy. And it starts being about I need to get control of this narrative. Now, the bad news is they're right. And there's this book called on Xihinping about how he has talked privately about the if we're going to make it as China, if we're really going to push forward and become the country, we have to control the propaganda. We have to give people a national narrative. I mean, this is like a tale as old as time. >> And so, we're watching China do it to tremendous effect. The US has completely lost belief in itself. And you have the left and the right both trying to cement a narrative to get people to believe in. But when I look at that, I look at, oh, they think they have the narrative that um the part of the reason they're always going down the rabbit holes of conspiracy, part of the reason that they're blaming the Jews is they don't understand the economics. And so when they go to try to figure out, okay, I can tell the future is set up poorly for me and my kids, who the hell is doing this? And so instead of understanding as a structural thing that I won't bother getting into right now, but instead of recognizing as a structural thing, they want to point to a person, a boogeyman, whatever. And as Thomas Soul said, you have a successful minority, very easy to point to them. And PS, >> you if you look into banking, you will find a lot of Jewish people. So that doesn't help their cause. So now it's like people have mismapped the problem. They have found an easy scapegoat and now it's like to get everybody to understand what's quote unquote really going on. They're just taking you down these constant rabbit holes which are great for clicks, gets people really hopped up. Even I find conspiracy theories fun. So there's something like they really do juice you really like what's going on whether they're doing it consciously or not to me is about defining a new narrative about what America is so that we can all get on the same page. >> Right. So you there's a lot there. I really like that analysis by the way and it again it actually um I think you gave me a nice piece of color I would say there for when I come back on the grid and obviously this issue is not going away. Um, if anything, it gives me more of a reason to to do what I presented earlier, which is be for Trump and for America. I'm not You're more of an economic expert than I am. Um, so and I don't purport to be an economic expert. I think I'm if if anything, I'm probably a media expert or something. So, I like the narrative stuff more than like the the specific uh economic stuff that you could point to here. But what I would say is Trump as someone that is trying to reinvigorate the United States economy, trying to bring manufacturing here. I was just last week at the all-in AI crypto con uh AI conference uh that Trump and JD spoke at. JD was unbelievable, unbelievably knowledgeable about this stuff. Trump was great, too. It seems to me that Trump, whether you liked exactly all of the things of the big beautiful bill or not, and Elon didn't because he's worried about some of the things that you addressed. Yeah. It seems that Trump is trying to do all of the right things to write the ship. Now, >> maybe you disagree with that premise. Maybe he's not. Maybe we just don't have a freaking clue. Trump has one bet, grow. That's it. He's perfectly willing to drag us into more debt, which was very black pilling for me. But yeah, his whole bet is growth, >> right? his bet is growth that eventually that will overcome the debt in essence. You know, something like that would that would be like the most easy version to say it. To me, I just don't see any other alternative. But I would also say Trump deserves I think I think he deserves some leeway on this. The guy has been right about so many things way before anyone else. He's fought the entire system. He's brought in competent people. They're doing a million things that I already laid out here. So, I'm not saying he's going to do it all right. But what I would rather, it seems to me that if you were Tucker or any of these other people right now, unless you had the magic bullet that I don't think you or I seem to have, unless you had the antidote to all of this, you might be like, you know what? We got the president we wanted. We we actually are fighting the deep state. We are cutting government. We are doing better trade deals. We aren't going to be in endless wars. Uh we're going to we're going to exert American exceptionalism. And again, I thought Trump's speech in Saudi Arabia was one of the most incredible speeches I have ever heard. He said, "We are not here to bomb you or tell you how to live. But if you want to be part of America's success, then join us in that. If you don't, that's okay, too." To me, the these are all the things that any of us could have possibly ever asked for. So why if you are an influence influencer on the right, would you not be part of that? Doesn't mean you can't be critical when when there are things to be critical of, right? when he took the plane from Qatar, like I I questioned that, you know, that seemed a little if if for no other reason than optics, it seemed kind of strange. >> But it seems to me that the the the bulk of everything, and I mean the the massive bulk of everything is so in the favor of Trump that to be on the right and get the like who else do you want? Unless you think that you can, you know, basically pull off a I think I can make this reference with you. If we're in 1985 and you know, uh everybody's had it with Cobra Commander and Dr. Mindbender says, "Okay, we're going to take DNA from six of the most evil people and create Serpenttor and he'll lead us." Well, maybe you could do that and create the greatest leader of all time. But that didn't work out well for Cobra either, by the way. >> Shocking. Yeah. Uh I I have a slightly different take on >> he it's by the way, deep cut G.I. Joe references will get you everywhere with me. Uh I have a different take on Trump. So I think that he is the only person that could be elected in this moment because uh both sides are weaponizing the DOJ. Both sides are going after their political opponents. We are in full populist mode. Again, if people really believe the other side is an existential threat, which they both do, then they're going to go after them. And so you try to shoot him, you uh try to arrest him, imprison him, like you need somebody that has that tenacity that's going to push through all of that. Um, you're right that this moment isn't going to call forward a or that's not even the right way to think about it. This moment isn't going to elevate the kind of person that we would I that I would, let me speak for myself, that I would want to lead us that has the ability to go, you know what, they came after me, but I'm not going to return fire. This is where we have to unite. We have to come together and we have to move forward. That's just not going to happen in a populist moment. In a populist moment, you're going to get the guy that's willing to fight that wants to slap the other side in the mouth so that you feel Yeah. Yeah, like get those guys. They suck. And that's why I keep coming back to this is about narrative control. And when I see the right, the woke right, going after Trump, it's because Trump does not validate their narrative. Their narrative is very much what you were saying that uh whites have been hard by and we were being taken advantage of by this cabal behind the scenes, which by the way isn't untrue. It's just not the cabal that they think. like you can really round this to politicians and bankers and you were you're not going to get all the way there, but boy oh boy are you going to get close. And once you realize that bailouts are the point and that that is ultimately how we've created this wild runaway inequality and it's really the inequality that's creating the problems. Like if I could just get people on board with that, I think a lot of these pieces begin to fall into place. And so if I'm right that Tucker and other people on the woke right, they simply can't map the economics of it. And so they get to, okay, I've got a narrative. It's cohesive. It allows me to understand myself how to move forward. It allows me to rally my base. Uh, and now it's like, cool, I've got the package narrative that I need. But if Trump or anybody else is going to collide with my narrative, that's an existential threat to the leadership that I'm trying to deliver to the right. And so now you've got all these factions that are trying to like lead the way forward, but they're having a war of narratives. >> Yeah, I that's good. That's good. I think it's true. And then I think if you again the thing that I don't like to do is automatically go to they're inherently racist or anti-semitic or something. But then if you take the portion of that that is real because obviously there are actual racists. There are actual anti-semmites. there are actual people who hate people based on creed and religion or whatever. If you take a dash of that and then you take what you said, so there's like this map that they can't map to the to the reality map, right? So these things are not finding themselves and then the the racial element probably just puts this thing on steroids. So as the maps are trying to now I'm definitely doing a Jordan Peterson here, but as the maps are trying to come together, so you could sort of Indiana Jones and be like, "Oh my god, that is the thing. I just needed to step back and see it." Well, now this map is kind of shaking because this map now has the racial element into it and it has sort of like an actual hatred element and that's not going to work from an American perspective. I mean, we are a country that is here for everybody whether you like it or not. And and you know, unfortunately, that comes with a lot of things because we now do seem to have certain groups that don't want to assimilate, that don't want to do what your grandparents did and my grandparents did and don't want to be part of the melting pot and seem to want to turn our country into the countries from whence they came, which is an unbelievable uh disaster. And we know that the newer generations then become more radical than the the grandparents who survived all the stuff. So there's there's a a cacophony of issues that we're trying to deal with here and uh and I think this is the only way we're going to get anywhere with them. >> I mean, we'll see. This is uh I I am haunted by the quote that the uh moderates, the elite moderates are the first ones to get killed in a revolution. So uh I am so hyper aware of that. But the part that I have not yet come up with a compelling um hypothesis for is why the rewrite of history as it relates to Churchill. What what is it about Churchill that makes him a a cornerstone figure that they have to like re- um imagine? >> Okay. So, let's slightly remove all of the specifics from the conversation that you're talking about. That was obviously when Tucker had Daryl Cooper on. So, I don't want to cuz we're not going to quote him perfectly and that's where the internet will grab us. So, let's just try to talk about the idea that you're talking about. Why rewrite versions of history and why does so much of it seem to be around uh Winston Churchill? I think there's a couple kind of fairly obvious reasons actually. First off, World War II, if we're to connect it to the racial element of everything we're talking about here, right, it was the war in essence that started unfortunately to exterminate the Jews. So there's a weird racial element around World War II. It exterminated or attempted to exterminate or otherwise killed an awful lot of other people. Ask the Russians about that. Um so it's not just about that, but there when most people think of World War II, you think of the fact that 6 million Jews were killed. So there's a there's some element of focusing on that. And if somehow Churchill, the guy that really turned the war around for Europe, could somehow be the bad guy, then it kind of starts bringing some Hitler's sort of good stuff around, too, which they've also danced around. I mean, Daryl Cooper, somebody tweeted at him something about the national uh what was it? The nationalist the national socialists were right. And he posted that uh you know, that image of uh what's his name as the Joker from the great Batman movie. Uh not Christian Bell. Heath Ledger is the Joker and and what does he say? You know, I'm just ahead of the curve. Something like that. Like that's kind of like basically saying I am a Nazi pretty much and that's the guy that, you know, Tucker says is the best historian in the country or something. So I think there's a weird racial element to it. But I but I would say the better version of that is that Winston Churchill was a man who whether you like him or not, whether you like everything he did or not or anything else, he stood up for his country. And that damn well is the truth. And as the Nazis were marching through Europe and did have a plan to take all of Europe and wanted more living space and everything else, he stood up for his country. This is post Chamberlain basically cutting a deal with Hitler and thinking that if you just put something on a piece of paper that they'll be nice, which obviously Churchill believed in peace through strength and he stood up and he and he stopped an invasion of his country and and Europe at large. And in some sense, connected to what you said earlier, if you don't really like the Western world now, if you don't like what America's turned into, well, then you kind of have to start back there. You can always go back further and further and further. That's a pretty good one because it's it looms World War II. There's still people that are alive that live through World War II. So, I think going after Churchill, the guy who, you know, helped stop the invasion of Europe, to say the least, is a pretty good one to go after. It helps. It helps rewrite all of the history around all of this. >> Man, we'll see where this goes. Um, if this really is a fight for the narrative of what America is, uh, I find narratives are really meant to give people a frame of reference, encapsulate a value set that allows them to move forward with confidence, uh, or in the case of the narrative on the left to um, disempower the people that have created all the problems as they would see it and empower those that um, are going to pull us out of that history of sin. Um, if this is a battle, >> how do you gauge the the thing that I mentioned before, the online version of this where a lot of it seems burning very hot. You know, if I open up X, it looks like, oh my god, the Nazis have returned versus what's going on in real life. Cuz I can tell you, I'm going to play basketball when we finish up. I play with this incredible group, 25 guys. I'm down here in Miami. We got it's a lot of um ethnically Latino people. So, we got a lot of Cubans down here and Venezuelans and but Puerto Ricans and everyone's speaking different languages and they come and I got Canadian white guy and just this whole crazy group of guys. I don't think anyone's thinking about any of this stuff. And these are guys that care about politics, but I don't think any of them are suddenly like maybe I am a Nazi or maybe the Nazis are back or anything like that. I just don't and I'm really trying and it's partly why I go off the grid actually. It's because we're caught in the algorithmic manipulation and the digital world and it and and it's real. It is real. I'm not denying the power of that. Um, but it's very hard to we're doing that map thing. It's very hard to map that to what's happening in reality. I I How do you do it? >> Okay, so the way that I think about this is it takes a very small number of very um shrewd people to create policy that can make the world better or way way worse. But it's all downstream of narrative. So I think you're right. I think the average person doesn't think about it. I think the average person is absolutely lovely. uh and we should all remind ourselves of that and have a great time. At the same time, I think that policies matter a lot. And when I look at one policy in 1913, the Federal Reserve Act was passed. I think it was done through manipulation and spin. And I think that we are now paying a catastrophic price uh for that decision. So I think what's happening now is um you have the masses who feel something is wrong. They can tell the system is rigged against them. I think the average person feels that that things are not moving in a great direction. It's harder to make ends meet. Inflation is 25% up in the last 5 years. Like everybody is going to feel that. And so now people are just waiting for like okay well what's the answer? Like what do we do about this? and they're going to be handed. >> I'm sorry to interrupt, but if you were on the right and felt all of those things you said, wouldn't you be for Trump right now, wouldn't you think, my god, at least I got a portion of the answer. That's why I think what they're doing is so bizarre because >> it comes down to who has the better story. If Trump can make them money, yes, they'll drop all the other stuff. >> I completely agree. American success is the antidote, >> completely. That's what the antidote is. And and again, that's why it's not hard for me to defend Trump. And this is as as I think you I was not a Trump supporter the first time around. Um I'm I'm a two-time How many other times did I vote for him? A couple other times I voted for him very proudly. But you're right. That's the only thing that stops the horseshoe. The only thing that stops the extremes is American success. So what I see is a guy trying to bring back American success. Bring back America's borders. Bring back the jobs. Lean in on innovation and AI and do all those things. So to me, because my motives in this are American success and human flourishing, and I want America to be great and wonderful and fulfill the promise of our ancestors and all those things, I it's very easy for me to defend him as you can see. And what >> here's the problem. Like, and I have I've literally never said this out loud before, so I reserve the right to take this all back if an hour from now I'm like, "This is terrible." >> That's not how the internet works. >> That the what Trump has to offer people from a narrative perspective is simply America's like a business. we can all be entrepreneurial and we can make this great again and everything's going to be wonderful. The problem is right now the vast majority of humans think that entrepreneurs are completely corrupt that uh business is extractive and that that's not a positive vision for them. He doesn't know how to articulate what it means to be an American. He doesn't know how to encapsulate the values and give me like that rahrh speech. Even the speech you were talking about in Saudi Arabia which was an amazing speech. If you're at all entrepreneurial, you heard that speech and we're like, "Yeah, word. This is America, Inc., baby. Run it like a business." Like, show people how we can unite around uh common interests, that we can build a positive world where we can do trade and make money and create beautiful things for the world. As an entrepreneur, I'm here for it. I love it. But if you're looking at the masses who are somewhere between neutral and h I just have a general sense the business guys are bad, that's that's not a winning narrative. And so the other two sides have an emotional narrative that they can really get you excited about. And that like on this side, if you're going to take the Jordan Peterson angle of like, okay, you might be white, you might have original sin, but you can step into the messiah complex and through sacrifice and elevating others and putting yourself down and accepting that you're a fallen individual, you can do something extraordinary. So go save the world via that vehicle. over here. It's like, "Hey, you're being manipulated by this secret cabal of Jews. Go get them." And it's like, "Cool." Like, either one, I get to do like my thing. I get to have meaning and purpose in my life. And Trump's over here. Like, I cannot believe that between those two, Trump actually seems somewhat moderate. Uh cuz boy oh boy, he speaks like a lunatic. But he comes across as like, "Hey, I'm a business guy. Like, we're just here to like all do some trade, make some money." >> Well, it's interesting. I think I completely hear you on that. I think you're slightly discounting some of the more I would say positive narrative stuff about what America really is about that Trump has done. But we can agree or disagree on that. >> No, no, I love that. >> Oh, well I I I don't know that I can give you like an exact quote, but I mean Trump often if you listen to his State of the Unions and talks about what America really is and and and does try to push some of the extremes to the side. But even even setting that aside, let let's say let's say you're basically directionally right about that. Um, I would say that, you know, years ago, I think I said this to you the first time I was on your show, one of one of the things that helped me come around to Trump was I realized at one point that Trump was the last thing in America that was trying to save liberalism and conservatism. It was obvious how he was trying to save conservatism as a Republican, meaning he was putting on, say, you know, conservativeleaning judges to reverse Roie Wade or something like that. But he actually was defending liberalism in the truest sense also because classical liberalism is about free speech. It is about largely about lazy fair economics and getting the government off your back and everything else. So he was and he didn't care about the social issues either really. No one Donald Trump was the first first time president to come in being for gay marriage. I don't even think in his heart of hearts he really cares about abortion that much. He he used it in a certain way. Uh right, whatever. Again, I don't know what's in his heart either. the po I felt he was the last thing defending both of those things and you want some of that healthy tension right you want a government that's that I would say is limited enough that if it gets pulled too far towards the left which used to be associated with liberalism although now has nothing to do with actual liberalism but if it gets pulled too far this way that's actually okay because the government is is limited in scope and the same way on the right what you might end up here with if Trump if the if the MAGA thing and the Trump thing falls apart, which I I guess I'm a little more bullish that it's going to succeed than you are. But if it falls apart, I think then you're you end up right, that the black pill that you're offering ends up right, that all of the people that have just come together, this incredible coalition that he brought together that includes people that were literally running for president as Democrats two years ago like Bobby Kennedy or four years ago like Tulsi Gabbard or a guy like Joe Rogan who's a pot smoking, mushroom eating MMA guy who endorsed him. This is the craziest political coalition of our lifetimes. I think it's the thing that can save America. I think he has the right people around him. But you're right. If that can't hold, then the next thing that you're offering up is probably what will happen. We'll get back to the show in a moment. But first, here is the brutal truth about scaling. Most entrepreneurs don't outright fail, they plateau. And if you're stuck right now, you know how true that is. It could be that your revenue flatlines every time you step away. 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Now, back to the show. >> Yeah, I mean, we will see. The the economy is so complicated that uh I know when I explain it, I'm oversimplifying it to the point where it sounds easy. It is very much not easy. >> Uh so, we'll see. But yeah, if it works, then we're going to have a much better shot. And if it doesn't, then we're really going to be in trouble. Okay. So, uh going back to this idea, we have a narrative collision. What should the narrative of America be? like what should the values be that we're trying to get people in America to embrace? >> We're about to roll into our 250th year in America. We're we're a very young country, but 250 is a pretty good number. It's a pretty cool number. Yeah, it's pretty good. Like, we've done pretty good in 250 years, right? We fought to free the slaves. We did some bad things along the way. Women couldn't vote. Okay. That we had issues, but the arc always bent towards more justice, towards more people. to the point that right now in America, unless you know something I don't know, there is no law that stops anyone from doing anything uh based on immutable characteristics. It doesn't mean we're all born into everything equally. It doesn't mean some of us have born into a lot of money or have certain abilities or blah blah blah blah. But we got to we have we have set the table, I would say, as well as any society ever has, not withstanding some of the obvious corruption and other things that that you've brought up. Okay. what I think we really have to sell and I think that this may again I'm it's funny I've become a white pill guy which I maybe never thought I would be. Um but I think America as we roll into 2026 our 250th anniversary and there's going to be a lot of stuff in the media kind of celebrating America again. I think a lot of people are exhausted over the hatred of America. I don't think the woke thing worked because it burns real hot but things that burn hot burn quick. And I think people don't like thinking that America was fundamentally founded on slavery, which it was not, or that the 1619 project was real, which it was not, or any of those things. Our hatred period in some sense in the hatred of America, I think, does not work right now. And if if enough of us get on board that it's going to be the 250th year of this country, how about how about we try to do like a national project? Maybe this is what you want from Trump. Maybe Trump should give a speech beginning of 26, State of the Union, and say, you know, a national project should be this. How about one person in every household ask everyone in their family what they know about their ancestors, write it down, and we're and mail it to the White House, and we're going to do something with it. We're going to create an incredible collage from all of the letters or we will have actors read your stories or will the will AI tell the something something so that we could just reconnect with all of our ancestors who came here. My great-grandfather it's my my on both sides of my family it's my greatgrandparents that came here first time. my grandfather who passed away when I was two years old. Uh my grandpa Arty, who I will never forget, taught me how to play golf when I was in second grade and then was gone the next day. He uh grew up in a uh in a tenement house on the Lower East Side like so many people did after coming in through Ellis Island. Um his father died when he was about a year old. They were in a one-bedroom with six kids. Then they had to take all of them out because my great-grandmother couldn't afford it. They had to move them all to Brooklyn where his I think it was his uncle lived and they had like five more kids in a two-bedroom. So they basically had three adults, like 11 kids, twobedroom, nobody, you know, barely making it by. He became a lithographer, kind of lowerish middle class. I remember he told me his first job was for a quarter. Um, and then and then my dad after that, my dad ended up going to college. They moved to Brooklyn, which at that time was some sense of the suburbs in some way. Uh, and then my dad eventually after becoming middle class then moved to Long Island. I grew up pretty good. I've now taken that. I hope to give more to my children. I don't and I don't mean it in the purely monetary way. I mean it in the more more robust opportunity for success so they can accomplish all of their dreams. If we could com if we could reinvigorate that idea, reconnect back to our history. Man, everyone's got that in America. Virtually everyone in America has that one way or another. Now, your story might go back to your ancestors who were brought here as slaves, and that is damn well true, but you're not a slave. So, that's still a pretty good story. So, there is a way to connect people to the reality of their past that actually might be the thing that blazes the trail to the future. How was that? >> That's great. Now, uh if you >> I got I got applause over here. Okay, >> I like it. Let's go. Now they are presumably on the payroll. So we we'll take it. >> I do pay them to applaud once and Oh yeah. It's actually right at the time. Yeah. >> Uh if if you were going to distill that as a value, is it just meritocracy? Like how do you >> Well, I think I Yeah. So meritocracy is kind of the one that Trump's good at talking about and that the machine or not the machine that the most of us are good about talking about meritocracy at this point because that's the reverse of wokeism, right? Like that's the reverse of ordering us based based on all these things. So just we're colorb blind qualifications but but that does get to what you were saying before is kind of weak that you can just speak to these things as a business person. I think what I tried to do there is connect it to a I think you have to connect it to a personal history. The personal history that we all have in this country is the thing that I think maybe we have to tell the story about. What about people though that just rolled up like a a first generation or somebody that came here for work? Like do you see a value system that incorporates them or is there an element of heritage that is important to you in like the idea of American values? >> Well, no. If you can't Well, let's remove illegals for just a second, but let's say you're first generation and you just came here. So, pick a country. Give me any country. Where do you want to Where do you want this person to come from? >> Uh, let's have them come from Trinidad. >> All right. They came here from Trinidad. You're first generation. That's pretty great. You're a first generation American. And if you do it right, it's going to be better for your great-grandchildren. And there's a reason you came from Trinidad. You just left Trinidad. That's your home country where all your ancestors came from. You probably look more like most people from Trinidad than you do if you moved to Kansas, but you came here. So, your story already is pretty good. Your your origin story already starts off at a good point. So, I think that story is just as easily sold as reminding people. I I'm very very aware in case it's not obvious. I am very very aware that my ancestors had it much much worse than me. Much worse than me. And they fought and in cases died. I had family on both uh on both my mom's side and dad's side that died in the Holocaust. I am very aware of that. We we live it we live in the most blessed miraculous human experiment ever. So we might as well try to defend it for as long as it can be defended. So I I don't think it's very complex. So it's not exactly that there's a heritage piece connected specifically. I think it's easy to get pe people are interested in their own lineage. You know, everyone goes through a certain age, maybe in college or in high school, you start asking more. You start asking your parents about your grandparents a little bit more. You start trying where did we come from and what what's that all about or whatever. I think there's a way to connect something that's very human there. But the first generation one is sold just as easily. Like if the guy came here from Trinidad and is pissed, well then I would say go home. >> Man, it's interesting. I want to give people like a document that says, "All right, here's what America is all about. America is about uh personal freedom, personal property, uh freedom of speech, hardcore work ethic, meritocracy above all innovation. uh and you put all of that together and we are not about um making sure that everybody has a safety net. We are about making sure that everybody has an opportunity. We are going to educate the life out of our youth regardless of background. Nobody should be trapped by their zip code. You should have access to getting yourself educated like to death. And I'm not talking about like going to college and all of that. I think a lot of that ends up being a waste. I'm talking about learning how to think, interfacing with the real world, learning uh novel problem solving, like the things that are actually going to be useful to people and not relegating that to like, well, if your parents are rich, then you're going to do just fine, and if they're not, you're screwed. Uh but I that that is so unpopular. The part about like every time I bring this up, I I'm waiting for someone to really freak out at me because the idea that I'm saying I don't the whole safety net idea is creating problems for us. I'm not saying no safety net. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying push that local like instead of the government making sure that everybody uh has a place to sleep and eat. It's like that should be regional. That's exactly the kind of things that churches are for. I think we should be focused on creating opportunity, making sure that somebody that has the abilities, no matter who they were born to, no matter where they were born, no matter what race, ethnic, background, doesn't matter. Like, if that person's got the goods and they put in the work, I want to make sure that they're able to innovate and continue to make America like that place, the shining beacon on a hill where we make things that the world cares about. >> By the way, the story you just told there is the story everybody loves, right? That's the story. That is not the story. That is the story we're fighting about. >> The story. No, no, no. The story that you want to exist is the story that everybody loves. Everyone loves the story of someone who, you know, basically had nothing and created something, right? Like >> now I know why you're white pill. So, let me see if I can introduce you to the blackest of black pills. That story is so divisive. >> That's why we're in this moment right now. There are people, look at mom Donnie, who actually want to control your rent, give you free access to transportation, make sure they have free healthcare or not free healthcare. Well, that I'm sure as well, childare, all of that. And I'm saying that stuff like it obviously you're headed towards socialism. It doesn't work. >> And so I am so like for people to understand me and where I'm coming from, they have to understand my obsession with what is happening with lucidity trap between us and China. like this is not for play and people are acting like it it doesn't matter and like we can just go the way of Europe. Terrible. >> Well, first off, when you when you said you want the document, you you wish you had the document that you could give everybody. I mean, we have it. It's called the Constitution. The Constitution actually lays out much of what you just said right there, except for the social safety net part. Now, the problem with the Mandanis and all these other people is they want the social safety net. It's actually way more than a social safety net, actually. They want a social program that would lead us to living much more like China. like it just starts with this minimum, you know, they have no basic understanding of anything. Like, you know, years ago it was $12 minimum wage, then it's 20, then it's 25. Well, then the next press progressive will come tomorrow and say 50. And none of it's it because it's just based on how nice you are with someone else's money. It has nothing to do with actual economics or can someone create anything with this? And guess what it is? My biggest fear with Mandani, by the way, is that if he wins that for a year things are going to go pretty well because you know the Democrats, they control the foot soldiers. So they can get all the Hamas guys and the Antifa people off the streets. They can make New York City look real nice again. You could run probably uh governmentr run grocery stores for about a year where it'll basically be okay. You can kind of fake it for a while, but eventually you won't be able to fake it and then it'll all come collapsing. But in that year, could that thing spread to Minneapolis where they have this guy Omar Feta who's now their mom Donnie? Yeah. Could it start spreading to Portland and Seattle and a couple other places? And then we have a much bigger problem because it's scaled. So that that's what I'm worried about as it pertains to that. You're also completely right obviously on the general um the general premise of local versus the government providing all these things. And this again a lot of what we're talking about gets down to education. Like if you taught young people the right things um they wouldn't be so reliant on the state. It's very sad. It's very very sad that so many young people seem to think that socialism is a good idea and and the idea that they grew up in a time of COVID to only think that the government is the answer to all of their problems is deeply deeply uh troublesome I would say and it also leads to what I think will be the next kind of bifurcation of America which is you know we've had a huge separation between red and blue I live in Florida you live in Cali we live under wildly different conditions we've gone into that before I I pay a lot less in taxes than you do my friend and my roads are better and my infrastructure is better and my policing is better and all that stuff >> but okay I don't want to I don't want to black pill you don't want to rub it in yeah I don't want to rub it in you're offering the black pills today but I think the next bifurcation will be that the cities basically will will cease to function there will be a lot of people living in cities but they are going to be they're going to be like Gotham City style like endless crime craziness and then all of the producers and the good people and everything else they're going to be moving out of the cities and we're going to see a lot more movement in the middle of the country. You'll see a lot more in the suburbs. But cities as functional structural places, I I don't see how that can work much longer because all these bad ideas are being imported in places where people live on top of each other and they demand more government control and everything else where then the rest other people are just going to kind of check out. You know, I don't mean they're going to get off the grid altogether and all live on farms in the middle of nowhere, but they'll largely be outside of having to interact with the entire system all the time. Yeah. Uh everything boils down to economics and everything is downstream of policy and policies create very weird incentives. And watching us in this populist moment really start to reconsider socialism is so wild to me. And there are plenty of countries that people can look at and go, "Okay, does the experiment work?" But there's something about that idea that people just cannot stop themselves from touching that hot stove. And it is going back to Thomas Soul, he's got a quote that sums this up so perfectly, which is the last 30 years have been marked by exchanging what works for what sounds good. >> And uh it sounds great. The problem is that no one will work for free. And once like I always want that dime to drop for people where they realize, oh, I'm the problem. I'm the one that won't work for free. And therefore, because if you want me to drive your bus, you'd have to pay me. Suddenly the bus has to cost money. And now that it costs money, we have to generate that money from somewhere. They will say tax the rich. Here's another terrifying stat for you. The bottom 50% of the country only pays 3% of the taxes. 3%. 50% pay 3% of the taxes. >> Look, I don't have to I don't have to tell you how many of probably your friends literally of your friends of that of that tax bracket have left probably that city that you live in, maybe living on your block, you know. Yeah. No, man. Look, it's wild. And I understand the impulse. I get what people are trying to do. And if it worked, I'd be all for it. My thing is it just doesn't work. And so trying to figure out the magic sequence of syllables that I can utter that will get people to go, "Oh, cause and effect is the name of the game here. We have to do the sequence of things that actually works." But, uh, yeah, I've not found that magical sequence yet. >> Look, as as Jordan always says, you got to give the devil his due. And I think this is where we have to give the the lefties and the people that have ushered in so much of this nonsense, we have to give them a certain amount of credit because they did it while while we were all out creating things and building things and making families or whatever it might be. They they ruined the brains of so many young people. Did you happen to see a clip on CNN this week? There's a girl who's I guess a famous Tik Tocker. She's like a socialist tick- tocker and now she's running for Congress. And she went on CNN on that panel show that Scott Jennings is on where he deals with all those dingbats the entire time. And she's going on and on about healthcare is a right, healthcare is a right and talking about all the things that that she thinks should just be free. And Scott's trying to calmly the way he does explain to her that it's not you. You can't just say these things. Yeah. Well, I guess you could just say them. You could just say them and a certain amount of people are going to be like, "Yes, that's brilliant. I Well, of course. Of course. Would I love everyone to have perfect healthare?" Yes. Would I love everyone to have a beautiful house? Yes. Would I love everyone? But it's just not how things actually work. So the frustration you have is, I think, what most thinking people are are realizing right now as this socialist thing encroaches. It's like, how do you how do you deprogram enough young people right now to make them realize that yes, would we all like to live in utopia? Sure. Does utopia really exist? No. So, how about we limit and constrain the power of the machine that can do an awful lot of bad at the same time? And how about you get a little skin in the game and see what you can do? And and how you do that, I mean, that's tricky. I don't know. >> I mean, there is a way to do it. I think one of my upcoming deep dives is definitely going to be about um Lie Kuan Yu, who basically was the guy that wrestled well, they got kicked out of Malaysia and they had to turn uh what is now Singapore into Singapore. and his whole thing was um I told the communists basically I'm willing to fight to the death. You guys are not getting control. Uh I told the unions they could not create problems for me. I made sure everybody got a house and that way people were invested in making sure that like things went well and they really wanted to uh think about personal property and invest in what they were doing. And I just thought, yeah, when once it is impossible for the average person to buy a house and you have a fiat currency, you are in a death spiral because the house will become unattainable and it's the only asset that people understand. >> Well, that's why now I'll offer a black pill, which would be that's why I think something very weird is happening with Jerome Powell at the Fed and not lowering the interest rates right now. Because for all of the good things that I just laid out that Trump's doing, man, if you could get those interest rates to go down right now, then you could get a whole bunch of people into the housing market. You could get young people in, but they can't get in at 6 7%. It's as simple as that. >> Yeah. Unfortunately, what Powell wouldn't have solved that problem. If he was going to lower rates, he should have done it a few months ago when um >> Why do you think he's not doing it? >> Uh I don't know. So, I'll use your card if I don't know what's inside somebody's heart. But Trump has been such a dick to him that even if he didn't want to be like political and anti-Trump, he's going to be just cuz people are like that. If somebody's treating you that terribly, the thought of giving them what they want, even if it's good for people, it's just not going to happen. Now, he may also actively not want to give Trump what he wants. But this is one part of Trump that where I'm just like, bro, you've got to understand that when you badmouth people that endlessly, you make them not want to help you. So, uh, that one's crazy. But now that prices, uh, inflation is beginning to tick up, he's definitely not going to. I mean, literally today he said they're not going to. So, um, we'll see. But, yeah, there was a narrow window there where he could have done it and then if inflation started going up, he could, um, crank rates back down, but we would have been able to lock in the refinancing for at least, say, 5 years, uh, which would have bought us some time. >> Yeah. Alas, >> no, listen, I get that. Look, I'm here in Miami where we're still booming right now. We have so many people still coming here. We're doing incred incredible amount of infrastructure projects. We've still have people moving from Cali, particularly New York, and there's a lot of new people thinking about it because of what's impending obviously in Manhattan and New York City. Um, but even here, it's slowed down a little bit because people can't get mortgages because even if you have a good amount of money and you want to get down here, well, it's still highly competitive down here. But if you're if you have to borrow money at 7% or, you know, 7 8%, it's like that's an awful lot where, you know, I got in right before all that. It's a lot easier when you're at you know, say 3.2% 2% and by the way that's higher than it was you know what was it 8 years ago we were in the twos right so that I do view as I'm completely with you on that if there was some magic bullet to solve that and just let because I like the fact that I have a low interest rate I like paying my mortgage I really do when it when I see my stuff every month I'm like yeah I paid so that I can own this house which I couldn't afford otherwise but I'm I also do a lot of we're doing constantly doing things here to improve the house and the neighborhood is booming because there's a lot of people coming here and one day this great asset, I'll sell it and hope maybe I'll move into something nicer or or I'll downsize at that point or something, but but I like paying it. It's like, yeah, I have to pay the bank a little something. They they're not doing it out of the generosity of their heart. They want some money, too. But once it's that 8%, then you're suddenly like, I don't think I could do this. >> Yeah, this is where uh I get very frustrated because the reality is that the bank created that money out of thin air and charge interest on it. Uh, so man, boy, I would love to have a product that cost me nothing to create, but people have to pay me for it. That would really be exciting. >> That's a that's a whole other thing. Are you Are you floating a mortgage on that beautiful house you got over there? >> No, we paid cash. I'm so terrified of debt. Now, admittedly, as I learn more about economics, I'm less concerned. There is a very narrow band of debt that can be extremely useful if you actually know how to use it. The vast majority of humans do not. Uh I have a very when it come because I've already made my money I have a very low tolerance for like massive risk. So the risk dollars that I have I put into the companies that I'm building and I put into Bitcoin just cuz it was like well this is uh certainly matches my thesis about where the world's going. But I'm not fooling myself like that is a highly volatile asset. That is part of the attraction is that is volatile. So uh up today but ask me again tomorrow. We'll see. But um yeah, so the housing thing is a big deal. If people really understood that housing, you have to have assets. If you have a fiat currency, you must have assets. Otherwise, you will get left behind. And the only asset that people understand intuitively is a house. And it's the only asset that you can make memories inside of, live inside of. Uh so everyone's going to push for that. Once a house is unavailable to the average person, that means that assets are unavailable to the average person, at least in any meaningful quantity. >> And so, yeah, you've created that death spiral. >> All right, enough about the the economics. Let's talk about what do you see? Okay, we're in my opinion, it is just obvious that we're going up against China. God bless them. Love them. Want nothing but the best for them. I do not want to be uh I don't mind being rivals. I don't want to be adversaries. And so right now we're in the rival stage. I think we're headed because of Thusidity's trap, I think we're inextricably headed towards becoming adversaries, but right now we're not. So what I admire about them is they are very good at long-term planning. If you were going to long-term plan for America, what would that long-term plan look like? >> Well, I would say broadly speaking, it would be it would be pretty close to the things that I've laid out here that I think Donald Trump is doing. I think getting fairer trade deals was an important thing. I think bringing back manufacturing here to whatever extent we can still manufacture or even need to manufacture things I think is good. You know, part of this EU trade deal is that we're going to bring bringing back a lot of the pharmaceutical manufacturing here. That's important postco um I think leaning in on all of the AI stuff. As I said, I was just at this AI conference and it's like it is going to so radically change the world and I'm a big sci-fi guy. I suspect you're a big sci-fi guy yourself. I am all Yeah. So, I am all about all of the the the uh ways that this could go ary. Like, we might be in the matrix right now and you and I are actually just laying in pink goo. That's possible. We might be in total recall right now and this is all, you know, we might be in the simulator. I can do all of that fun stuff. So, I I you know, I've read all the Isaac Azimov books. I've read every Philip K. Dick book and short story 20 times over. So, I can you know, Black Mirror, I'm sure you've watched all of them. Like I can go to all of the dystopian ways that this could all go crazy, but I would say we have to lean in on this stuff. It's it's going it's coming whether you like it or not. And you have to lean in and figure out how you can incorporate some version of it into your life. Like there are going to by the end of this year supposedly the Optimus robot is going to be sold retail. Now at first what's it going to do? I don't know. You're going to get it in your house and maybe it can I don't know fold a blanket or it's going to do some pretty basic stuff. But all it will need is a software update ultimately. Yeah, they'll pay obviously there'll be physical upgrades to it over time. But you can you can see how once we start getting it into the houses. It'll eventually replace the housekeepers. It'll eventually replace the gardener. Like these things are coming. So what I want to see happen is we have to lean into that. We have to do better trade deals. We have to control our border. I mean I think these are a lot of the good things. I think you mentioned local before. We have to stop doing so much top down education. we have to kick education back to the states, which we're massively doing. I mean, one of the one of the best lines that I've heard in the last year was when Linda McMahon took over the Department of Ed and she said, "You know why I'm here? To put myself out of a job." I thought that was incredible. Like, absolutely incredible. Um, kick that back to the states so that so many young minds aren't brainwashed by the centralized brainwashing machine. Um, I think most of the things that we are doing right now, uh, particularly as it as it goes in red states, you know, it's just wildly different. I I see it, you know, I know I talk about Florida all the time and I make fun of Cali all the time, but like it's so profoundly different. Uh, I don't know if you saw it yesterday, but D Santis gave a big speech talking about how we in Florida because we're coordinating with ICE and and Department of Homeland Security and all this stuff. We're actually because he empowered the local police to also make arrests that they can then coordinate with ICE to do deportations. That's what Alligator Alley basically is the holding center for. The the state of Florida is ahead of the federal numbers right now. Now, putting aside what you think about deportations or anything else, it just means that if you want to do something, you can do it. D Santis's line that I quote on the show every day is decline is a choice. We've chosen not to do it here. So there are blueprints to fix a lot of these things. Whether the whole country will do it, I'm not so sure, but I think but I think really you have to figure out how to do it at your micro level first in your life and and then we'll move it up from there. Um because the top down thing that I know you're wary of too, it just doesn't fly anymore. And that's the irony. The the socialists are promising through in their in their promise of utopia, what they're actually promising or what they're actually swapping it out for is complete control. Because once they the state controls the groceries and the state controls your health care and the state controls literally every other facet of your life, which is ultimately what that will all lead to. Well, they can turn it on and turn it off pretty easily. Dude, what's wild is there was a study done across a bunch of different cultures and they found that people that are into socialist policies, it isn't about helping the poor. It's actually about punishing the rich. >> And unless you take envy into account, you won't be able to map their behaviors. And so when people in the study were given the option to okay, you can reduce taxes on the rich and it will help the poor more. Or you can raise taxes on the rich, it will hurt them, but it will also hurt the poor. they chose the option to hurt the rich even though that meant that the poor were gonna be hurt as well. Like that is so wild to me. But then you really begin to understand, okay, what's driving a lot of this? And if people really want to be radicalized, read about Ma China. It it is just absolutely astonishing what he did. The number of people he starved to death, killed, murdered, disappeared. I mean, it it is very distressing. Tom, how much of that do you think is is just based on human biological wiring and how you actually come out of the oven? Because, you know, I've been around a ton of successful people, billionaires and everything else. Like the first time I went to your house, I was like, you live in such a cool place. You have a absolutely gorgeous house. I go downstairs, you've got your studio, all your people working for I was like, "This is awesome." Like that was my takeaway. This freaking operation is awesome. This guy's I know what you've done with Quest obviously and everything else, but I was like, "This is freaking amazing." Like it gave me my producer Phoenix came with me. I remember when we got in the Uber going out and you have this freaking gate outside is like the size of Castle Grey Skull and I'm like I was like this is incredible. How can we do this? And and it's one of those things that I've had many other times when I've been around people that are doing cool things. It's not like oh my god I have to have this giant house per se. That's a that's an ancillary benefit of doing something cool. But the reason I'm asking the question is I'm wired that way. I have never walked into any amazing house or anywhere and thought I and be jealous of it. I never have. It is not the way I am wired. I'm always like I'm either like incredibly happy if it's a friend. I'm like man this is freaking amazing or I'm like whoa how did you do this? I would like to learn a little bit about that. But your point to that study and Jordan talks about this a lot too about what envy will do to you is they'd rather hack away at those people and destroy those people. That's why this thing about billionaires. Remember Bernie used to go after millionaires. Then he became a millionaire. Now it's now it's billionaires. What do you think that is? Do you think that's pre-wiring in us or you think that that's social conditioning? >> It is both. So this is what I call frame of reference. Everybody lives inside of a frame of reference that's made of three things. Your biology. So we're roughly 50% hardwired and 50% malleable. So there's that. Then there's your values and your beliefs. And that makes up the not only what you look at but what you see when you look at something. And you can take control of your beliefs. And people don't people think that their beliefs and values are merely the reflection of objective reality. But we are not wired to see objective reality. We only see 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum. Colors don't exist in the world. They exist in our mind. Size doesn't exist in the world. It exists in our mind. Like you can look at all of the optical illusions. You are in the matrix. It's just that your brain is creating it. >> And once you realize that my brain is creating all these shortcuts, all these heruristics to make the world digestible for me, you begin to realize, oh my god, there are choices being made all the time. There's actually like a dimesiz hole in your vision that if you hold like a pencil in just the right place, you can make it disappear. It's super weird. >> Uh but your brain fills in that gap. And so you never see it. But that means that your brain is actually saying, "Oh, this is a curtain. This is a piece of a camera, whatever." And it's just filling it in. That is so wild to me. So, we're all shaping that frame of reference unconsciously for the most part, and then it traps us inside of a world view that then colors things emotionally, makes us resentful or not. So you can't manipulate all of it to your point about biology, but you can manipulate a lot of it. I just find that most people don't. >> Yeah. Right. So that that really is the bumper sticker there. It's like, man, and and isn't that actually even though you're dulling out the black pills in some sense, that's the ultimate white pill that you can have all of that pre-recorded [ __ ] and all of that stuff, >> but you still could overcome it actually if you want. >> The thing that motivates me is I would not get in front of a camera and talk if there was nothing that you could do. And I believe that we are automata. I don't think I can stop myself from coming on the camera. However, we are influencable. And so whether I can stop myself or not is irrelevant. It it will impact some people. Now, maybe not always in the way that I want it to impact them, but it will impact people. So, I mean, you always hope that some people take it and get as obsessed with cause and effect as I am, that they understand, hey, all of these problems are solvable. They're not going to be easy. But you have to make contact with the actual road before you can make those changes. >> Well said. >> All right, brother. You're about to go away. You're doing a whole blackout. Tell me about it. What What's the drill with this? >> This is my ninth year of off the grid August. Literally no phone, no TV, nothing. No computer, no uh no no news, nothing. I will avoid public places so that I don't have to walk into a burger joint and see the news or anything else. Um, I did this nine years ago. This is my ninth year. So, I did it eight years ago basically as a it was sort of a joke. I had just finally become a little bit successful with the show. I had one employee actually and I was like, you know what? Could maybe I could just do it. I'm in I'm trapped in the this flywheel all the time, this endless hamster race. I was like, what if I just disappeared for a little bit and saw what happened? And it was incredible. You know, there is there are things like crazy things that happen, you know, for yeah, at first there's like this anxious couple days and phantom buzzing in my pocket and where's my phone and oh my god, what's happening in the world? Will everyone forget about me and all all of that nonsense? And then days go by and then just out of nowhere, I'll just think of my friend Rich. What happened to Rich Canazi, third grade, we used to sit next to each other and then I'll think of him and I can remember everything. Suddenly, I can remember being in his basement playing with Transformers or whatever, like just some weird stuff. or I'll remember like literally like an entire album. I can think of every song that Billy Joel had on Piano Man album or or something like that. And then there's just the general state of neurosis and whatever that we all live in. I don't I don't have a lot of that, I don't think. But like we could all be more present. And I find, you know, if I'm if it's I'm doing something as literally as simple as going to uh the store to get food that my interaction with the cashier is more pleasant. I'm I'm giving more of myself in that moment because I'm not fiddling with this or that. You know, it's also gotten >> is it that people aren't you're not distracted? Like what what's the juice here? >> Um it's a little it's probably multiple things. I mean I think there's a distraction element that we all have because you know if you're doing this when you're around other people you're distracted but you know sometimes you put it away and your mind is still in the distra you know it's like you can endlessly scroll or you can just slide your finger like this well you put it away sometimes your mind is still doing that thing. So I think there's some element to that. I think there's some element of we are not our brains are not biologically wired to be intaking as much information as we intake. And for literally for guys like you and me where we're in this battle like we're in it all the time. It it doesn't stop that I don't I don't say that as a pat on my back. I mean there are plenty of people that don't that don't do this as a living that are in on it as well. Maybe more in but we're but I don't think we're supposed to be hit with this much information all the time. Um, I also use it as a massive time for like working out right and eating right, which I've been on a real quest on that for the last couple years anyway. But like really really focus on that. Last couple years now we have kids, so spending a lot of time with the kids. We're working on some house projects. But it really is just what started largely as kind of a it was a lark. Like it was just like ah let me see if I could do this. Then I did it and I came back and so many people were so fascinated. People can't do it for one day. When is the last time you went for one day without your phone? >> Yeah, totally without it. Very rare, >> right? I mean, no one does it. And yet, somehow we all live that way 25 years ago, right? I remember I got my phone. I think it was it was just two or three months before 911. I remember that very specifically cuz I had a phone on 911. I lived in New York City. I had a little candy bar phone that all I knew all I knew how to do was play uh snakes. Remember that that snake thing? >> Um but I remember I was like, "Oh, I finally have some use for this thing." And of course, it didn't work in New York City that day. I think I had got it right before that and never used it because I didn't even know what to do with the cell phone. But that shows you how that was, you know, 24 years ago. It shows you how much things change so quickly. So, it went from being something that was just kind of fun and almost silly in a way to something that's been unbelievably restorative. And if I was to try to take this show full circle where you where we started talking about some of that right woke rights stuff, you know, I've interviewed everybody on every side of all of this stuff and I've seen a lot of people flourish and do amazing things. And I've seen a lot of people go off the deep end and become consumed by the fame and the clicks and and the partisanship and all that stuff. And I think one of the things that kept me sane throughout it was doing this. I take one 12th of the year off and I get away and I come back and I have fresh eyes on all of it and I think it does something for my ego also like you know I go I go places where all the time where people recognize me say nice things to me see and to get away from that literally to get away from that not I'm not talking about the hate I get plenty of hate online but that I've largely figured out a way to inoculate myself or just ignore that but even getting away from some of the other part of just being that you know I was thinking this I might I was thinking I'm not sure I'm going to do it. But I was thinking this year I might not shave for 30 days and see what happens here. Maybe. Maybe. I'm not totally I'm not totally sold on that one. It's hot in Florida. So to walk around with that might be rough. Um but it's just to reset. It's just to reset. That's it. It's reset on the 8bit Nintendo man. Same game when I come back. >> But we're going to have some AI Dave if I'm not mistaken. >> We've been working on this for about a year. Yeah, we're working with this amazing AI company and Dave will be here. AI Dave hosting the show. Uh it won't we're not going to do an hourong show every day, but AI Dave will be talking about the the big story or two of the day. We've been fiddling with it and really trying to get the intonation right. But it's me here in studio, you know, normal shirt and jacket like I usually wear and we're and you know, we got some of the humor right and you know, there's still things. Look, AI is still as is, you know, you probably follow a lot of the same Instagram things that I do. Every day there's some incredible new like AI model that's put out there and you're like, "Holy cow, you can input one sentence and basically write a movie." I mean, it's freaking mind-blowing. There's still a lot of work that has to be done, but we've created a pretty great model of me that, you know, you you ask it. We were fiddling with it before. Like, you ask this thing, Dave, what do you think of Gavin Newsome? That's evil snake, lizard, son of a [ __ ] mother. Like, it it he gets it. So, we'll see what he uh thinks in the news and then we'll compare a little of reality Dave to AI Dave when I get back. >> Well, I hope uh when you do it that you release what your workflow is over here because we do game development. We are obsessive about the different AI workflows and what outputs what. >> So, I'll be very eager to see what you do. >> Let's do that when we get back. I'll get the guys that we're working on this with. That would be fun. Maybe we could figure out some other project or we could have AI Tom and AI Dave do some sort of they could do a co-inter or some sort of debate on something and yeah, let's figure it out. >> I love it. That'd be fun. Well, brother, thank you for taking the time, especially as you're about to bounce out. I appreciate it very much. Where can people connect with you? >> My branding guy is good. It's RubenReport everywhere. RubenReport.com X, YouTube, Rumble. Is there anything else on the Is is MySpace still? Apparently MySpace is down, but pretty much everywhere else. >> Awesome. Thank you for being here. Enjoy your vacation and I'll see you when you get back. >> Good to see you, my friend. >> Same. All right, everybody. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you like this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. America needs to do a better job selling America and expecting you to love America. Yes. >> Expecting you to be proud to be an American. Are we going to keep walking on eggshells and being afraid of this kind of stuff? You don't like being an American?